The occasion was anything but desirable but this week I had the pleasure to work with a very skilled VMware Support guy to fix a broken vCenter ELM replication at a customer’s site. In this session I really learned a lot. But what stood out the most was this pretty new VMware Fling:

https://flings.vmware.com/vsphere-diagnostic-tool

vSphere Diagnostic Tool is a python script that runs diagnostic commands on the vCenter Server Photon Appliance to return useful troubleshooting data. The Checks include the following tests for vCenter Server Appliance 6.5 or newer: Lookup Service, AD, Certificates, Core Dump Files, Disk Space, DNS, NTP, root account, vCenter Services & VCHA.

// use:
Using the vdt is very easy and very quick! You just have to upload the latest vdt zip file to your vCenter appliance, unpack it and start the script:
# python vdt.pyc
Then just enter the SSO Admin credentials and let vdt do his magic…

// conclusion:

I have used it yesterday again and we found out that the Reverse DNS entries for the vCenter were missing on one of two DNS servers. Extremely helpful!

From now on I will definitely use the vdt every time before I update or upgrade a vCenter and I hope you do too!

I hope this quick introduction was helpful to you. Feel free to share if you like…

// footnotes:

Date: 07.04.2022
Version: 1.0