Today i had to activate syslog on every ESXi host. Of course it is possible to configure it via Hostprofiles, and of course i forgot to configure it when i updated my hosts to ESXi 6 a few weeks ago. (Shame on me…)
So first i reconfigured the Hostprofiles. But then i don´t want to put every host into maintenance mode to be able to apply the Hostprofile. Instead i searched a solution to change this settings while the host is in production.
What i created was a Powercli one-liner which i want to share with you:
Get-Cluster -Name "myClusterName" | Get-VMHost | foreach { $curHost = $_; Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $curHost -Name Config.HostAgent.log.level | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value info -Confirm:$false; Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $curHost -Name Vpx.Vpxa.config.log.level | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value info -Confirm:$false; Get-VMHostFirewallException -VMHost $curHost -Name syslog | Set-VMHostFirewallException -Enabled:$True; Get-AdvancedSetting -Entity $curHost -Name Syslog.global.logHost | Set-AdvancedSetting -Value "udp://syslog.server.fqdn:514" -Confirm:$false }
This script does:
- Set “Host Agent Log Level” -> Info
- Set “vCenter Agent Log Level” -> Info
- Set the name of the Syslog Host
- Activate the Firewall rule to allow Syslog traffic
Happy scripting…
Michael