With the release of vRA 8 we are no longer able to simply tail a single vcac log file during investigations. We now need to work with Kubernetes and how containers handle logging.
Kubernetes comes with a tool called kubectl, which can be used to follow logs. The kubectl logs command can be used with the --follow parameter to tail the pods logs.
For example, to follow the postgres pods logs we can use kubectl logs --namespace [vra namespace] --follow [pod name]
kubectl logs --namespace prelude --follow postgres-0
Since this is a kubectl command it works across nodes in a clustered environment. Regardless if the pod is running locally or on another node in the cluster. Unfortunately, there are some drawbacks when leveraging this approach.
For example, one of my recent cases, 1/3 nodes had a networking issues which brought down the postgres pod. This meant we were unable to review the logs with kubectl
Fortunately the pods running on a node store their logs locally in /services-logs/prelude/
So, we can simply tail all the log files in the folder with tail -f /services-logs/prelude/postgres-0/*.log
To further expand on this, lets say we want to tail all of the logs for all of the pods in the prelude namespace on a node.
We can leverage find /services-logs/prelude/ -name "*.log" | xargs tail -f
vRA 8.x
- How do I work with logs and log bundles in vRealize Automation - https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Automation/8.0/Administering/GUID-EB314825-845A-4F31-8155-53F99F0B7B3C.html
vRA 8.2 has a new section regarding (Legacy) Pod logs
- How do I work with logs and log bundles in vRealize Automation - https://docs.vmware.com/en/vRealize-Automation/8.2/Administering/GUID-EB314825-845A-4F31-8155-53F99F0B7B3C.html
Happy Logging :)