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Table Of Contents
Getting Started with vSphere Command-Line Interfaces
140 VMware, Inc.
IfmultiplehostsshareadiagnosticpartitiononaSANLUN,configurealargediagnosticpartitionthat
thehostsshare.
Ifahostthatusesashareddiagnosticpartitionfails,rebootthehostandextractlogfilesimmediatelyafter
thefailure.Otherwise,thesecondhostthatfailsbeforeyoucollectthediagnosticdataofthefirsthost
mightnotbeabletosavethecoredump.
Diagnostic Partition Creation
YoucanusethevSphereWebClienttocreatethediagnosticpartitiononalocaldiskoronaprivateorshared
SANLUN.Youcannotusevicfg-dumpparttocreatethediagnosticpartition.TheSANLUNcanbesetup
withFibreChannelorhardwareiSCSI.SANLUNsaccessedthroughasoftware
iSCSIinitiatorarenot
supported.
Diagnostic Partition Management
Youcanusethevicfg-dumppartortheesxcli system coredumpcommandtoquery,set,andscananESXi
system’sdiagnosticpartitions.ThevSphereStoragedocumentationexplainshowtosetupdiagnosticpartitions
withthevSphereWebClientandhowtomanagediagnosticpartitionsonaFibreChannelorhardwareiSCSI
SAN.
Diagnosticpartitions
caninclude,inorderofsuitability,paralleladapter,blockadapter,FC,orhardwareiSCSI
partitions.ParalleladapterpartitionsaremostsuitableandhardwareiSCSIpartitionstheleastsuitable.
Managing Core Dumps
Withesxcli system coredump,youcanmanagelocaldiagnosticpartitionsorsetupcoredumponaremote
serverinconjunctionwithESXiDumpCollector.ForinformationaboutESXiDumpCollector,seethevSphere
Networkingdocumentation.
Managing Local Core Dumps with ESXCLI
ThefollowingexamplescenariochangesthelocaldiagnosticpartitionwithESXCLI.Specifyoneofthe
connectionoptionslistedin“ConnectionOptionsforvCLIHostManagementCommands”onpage 18inplace
of<conn_options>.
To manage a local diagnostic partition
1ShowthediagnosticpartitiontheVMkernelusesanddisplayinformationaboutallpartitionsthatcanbe
usedas
diagnosticpartitions.
esxcli <conn_options> system coredump partition list
2 Deactivatethecurrentdiagnosticpartition.
esxcli <conn_options> system coredump partition set --unconfigure
TheESXisystemisnowwithoutadiagnosticpartition,andyoumustimmediatelysetanewone.
3Settheactivepartitiontonaa.<naa_ID>.
esxcli <conn_options> system coredump partition set --partition=naa.<naa_ID>
4Listpartitionsagaintoverifythatadiagnosticpartitionisset.
CAUTIONIftwohoststhatshareadiagnosticpartitionfailandsavecoredumpstothesameslot,thecore
dumpsmightbelost.
Ifahostthatusesashareddiagnosticpartitionfails,rebootthehostandextractlogfilesimmediatelyafterthe
failure.
IMPORTANTWhenyoulistdiagnosticpartitions,softwareiSCSIpartitionsareincluded.However,SANLUNs
accessedthroughasoftwareiSCSIinitiatorarenotsupportedasdiagnosticpartitions.