“System logs on hosts are stored on non-persistent storage” message on VCenter

Posted on by Malinda RathnayakeLeave a Comment on “System logs on hosts are stored on non-persistent storage” message on VCenter

Ran into this pesky little error message recently, on a vcenter environment

If the logs are stored on a local scratch disk, vCenter will display an alert stating –  “System logs on host xxx are stored on non-persistent storage”

Configure ESXi Syslog location – vSphere Web Client

Vcenter > Select “Host”> Configure > Advance System Settings

Click on Edit and search for “Syslog.global.logDir”

Edit the value and in this case, I’m going to use the local data store (Localhost_DataStore01) to store the syslogs.

You can also define a remote syslog server using the “Syslog.global.LogHost” setting

Configure ESXi Syslog location – ESXCLI

Ssh on to the host

Check the current location

esxcli system syslog config get

*logs stored on the local scratch disk

Manually Set the Path

esxcli system syslog config set –logdir=/vmfs/directory/path

you can find the VMFS volume names/UUIDs under  –

/vmfs/volumes

remote syslog server can be set using

esxcli system syslog config set –loghost=’tcp://hostname:port’

Load the configuration changes with the syslog reload command

esxcli system syslog reload

The logs will immediately begin populating the specified location.

Unable to upgrade vCenter 6.5/6.7 to U2: Root password expired

Posted on by Malinda RathnayakeLeave a Comment on Unable to upgrade vCenter 6.5/6.7 to U2: Root password expired

As a Part of my pre-flight check for Vcenter upgrades i like to mount the ISO and go through the first 3 steps, during this I noticed the installer cannot connect to the source appliance with this error 

2019-05-01T20:05:02.052Z - info: Stream :: close
2019-05-01T20:05:02.052Z - info: Password not expired
2019-05-01T20:05:02.054Z - error: sourcePrecheck: error in getting source Info: ServerFaultCode: Failed to authenticate with the guest operating system using the supplied credentials.
2019-05-01T20:05:03.328Z - error: Request timed out after 30000 ms, url: https://vcenter.companyABC.local:443/
2019-05-01T20:05:09.675Z - info: Log file was saved at: C:\Users\MCbits\Desktop\installer-20190501-160025555.log

trying to reset via the admin interface or the DCUI didn’t work,  after digging around found a way to reset it by forcing the vcenter to boot in to single user mode

Procedure:

  1. Take a snapshot or backup of the vCenter Server Appliance before proceeding. Do not skip this step.
  2. Reboot the vCenter Server Appliance.
  3. After the OS starts, press e key to enter the GNU GRUB Edit Menu.
  4. Locate the line that begins with the word Linux.
  5. Append these entries to the end of the line: rw init=/bin/bash The line should look like the following screenshot:

After adding the statement, press F10 to continue booting 

Vcenter appliance will boot into single user mode

Type passwd to reset the root password

if you run into the following error message

"Authentication token lock busy"

you need to re-mount the filesystem in RW, which lets you change between read-only and read-write. this will allow you to make changes

mount -o remount,rw /

Until next time !!!