Check The Debug Log - VMware VCM 5.3 Troubleshooting Manual

VCM Troubleshooting Guide
For example, if collections are stalling at a specific step in the process, you may occasionally find that a
single CPU is running at 100% capacity. This may indicate any number of problems, but knowing that the
CPU running at 100% always correlates with the behavior you are investigating is the most important
thing at this stage. With this approach, you may be able to isolate a specific time of day, or a set of
conditions that must be present for the undesired behavior to occur.
Another good method for identifying external factors is reviewing Event Log. Many simple problems may
be detected by reviewing the Security and Application logs. The most common errors you will see in the
Event Log are authentication problems (as seen below), but any error or warning message occurring in
the Event Viewer during the time frame surrounding the undesired behavior is suspect, especially if the
same error message always accompanies the undesired behavior.
Errors and behaviors that involve hardware problems or failures may be extremely erratic. You may see
a series of seemingly unrelated errors occur in sequence, or you may see the same error at random times.
You may also see that the behavior of VCM appears to degrade over time. These sorts of behaviors may
indicate a need for system hardware diagnostics.

Check the Debug Log

VCM produces several files in various locations through its normal operation with the extension ".dbe".
The .dbe files contain information about VCM operations. The Collector also writes debug information to
the database whenever jobs are running in the Portal.
The Collector log is the most important log file as it records the primary functionality of VCM, and when
VMware Customer Support technicians speak of "the debug log" in the singular, they are typically
referring to this Collector debug log. Debug logs are a common troubleshooting tool for VMware
Customer Support technicians, so you may already be very familiar with the process of gathering them.
You may even recognize several of the messages mentioned in the logs, which may or may not be helpful.
10 VMware, Inc.