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Question
How to manually collect the vm-support data on a host that can not collect the data using the vSphere client graphical user interface or by typing the default vm-support command on the command line. Both of these methods will default to the local disk space that ESX is installed on which could either be out of space or in the case of ESXi embedded not have enough capacity to store the resulting data if no scratch space has been configured.
Answer
The solution is to run the vm-support command with the -w option to designate a vmfs volume (datastore) with sufficient spare capacity to store the data files (5 GB would be more than enough). After the data has been collected and uploaded to support then the data should be removed from the datastore. For assistance please contact VMware support.
To see all available vm-support options type: vm-support -h
The example command for an ESXi (embedded or installable) is here:
Use the df -h command to see how much available space is in each datastore, make sure not to use any of the vfat volumes they are for the Hypervisor and will not have enough capacity. Use only a vmfs3 volume:
~ # df -h
Filesystem Size Used Available Use% Mounted on
visorfs 1.5G 317.8M 1.2G 21% /
vmfs3 99.8G 93.0G 6.8G 93% /vmfs/volumes/4a3b687e-4ac8dd54-e433-02215e942a7b
vfat 285.9M 140.7M 145.2M 49% /vmfs/volumes/3c3693e8-f77a642a-1910-5c6bdcb26d3a
vfat 249.7M 103.6M 146.1M 42% /vmfs/volumes/65092bef-de8a06b5-22db-2bbbc32dc3d2
vfat 249.7M 97.8M 151.9M 39% /vmfs/volumes/ff060de6-cecc88e5-4d14-8726d7ed0132
/vmfs/volumes # ls -l
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8 Jan 1 1970 3c3693e8-f77a642a-1910-5c6bdcb26d3a
drwxr-xr-t 1 root root 3500 May 2 19:47 4a3b687e-4ac8dd54-e433-02215e942a7b
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8 Jan 1 1970 65092bef-de8a06b5-22db-2bbbc32dc3d2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 May 6 16:31 Hypervisor1 -> ff060de6-cecc88e5-4d14-8726d7ed0132
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 May 6 16:31 Hypervisor2 -> 65092bef-de8a06b5-22db-2bbbc32dc3d2
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 May 6 16:31 Hypervisor3 -> 3c3693e8-f77a642a-1910-5c6bdcb26d3a
drwxr-xr-x 1 root root 8 Jan 1 1970 ff060de6-cecc88e5-4d14-8726d7ed0132
lrwxr-xr-x 1 root root 35 May 6 16:31 iscsi-lun31 -> 4a3b687e-4ac8dd54-e433-02215e942a7b
This one has plenty of free space (6.8 Gigabytes).
So now type the command:
vm-support -w /vmfs/volumes/4a3b687e-4ac8dd54-e433-02215e942a7b
Will result in:
/vmfs/volumes/4a3b687e-4ac8dd54-e433-02215e942a7b/esx-2011-05-06--16.40.10870.tgz
This will result in a file that ends in .tgz in this datastore.
Copy it off to a desktop that has internet access using either the vSphere client or winscp then you can delete the file carefully using the rm command with the assistance of your VMware technical support.
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