VMware Log Insight

VMware Log Insight

Disclaimer: Community-maintained open-source project, not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by VMware, Inc. or Broadcom Inc. "VMware", "vSphere", and "Aria" are trademarks of Broadcom. Source is publicly auditable under the MIT license.

Read-only log search and aggregation for VMware Aria Operations for Logs (formerly vRealize Log Insight) — the appliance that collects syslog from ESXi hosts, vCenter, and VMs. The centralized-log data source for the VMware skill family. Strictly non-destructive: it queries, it never writes.

Upgrading to 2.0

2.0 renames all 7 MCP tools so every name starts with a verb (e.g. alert_get → get_log_alert, alert_history → get_log_alert_history, alert_list → list_log_alerts). The full old → new table is in RELEASE_NOTES.md. Nothing else changes: same tools, parameters, safety gates and CLI commands. If an agent prompt, script or ~/.vmware/rules.yaml names a tool, update it — though deny rules written with the old names keep working with vmware-policy ≥ 1.18 (vmware-audit policy lists any rule the renames widened), and vmware-pilot ≥ 1.13 translates old names in saved workflows. If an install older than 2.0 shares that rules.yaml, give it vmware-policy ≥ 1.18.2 too: it matches each rule against both the old and the new name, so one file serves both.

Companion Skills

Need	Skill	Tools
Raw centralized logs + spikes	vmware-log-insight (this)	7
vCenter events & alarms	vmware-monitor	27
Metrics, anomalies, capacity	vmware-aria	28
Incident correlation / root cause	vmware-debug — feed it search_logs output	2
VM lifecycle / operations	vmware-aiops	49

Install

uv tool install vmware-log-insight
mkdir -p ~/.vmware-log-insight
cp config.example.yaml ~/.vmware-log-insight/config.yaml   # edit host/username/provider
echo 'VMWARE_LOG_INSIGHT_PROD_PASSWORD=...' > ~/.vmware-log-insight/.env
chmod 600 ~/.vmware-log-insight/.env
vmware-log-insight doctor

Offline / Air-Gapped Install (from source)

This project uses the modern PEP 517 build system (hatchling), so there is no setup.py by design — that is expected, not a missing file. If you cloned the source and hit ERROR: File "setup.py" or "setup.cfg" not found ... editable mode currently requires a setuptools-based build, your pip is older than 21.3 and cannot do an editable (-e) install with a non-setuptools backend. Editable mode is a developer convenience, not needed to run the tool — do one of:

# From the source tree — a normal (non-editable) install builds a wheel:
pip install .              # NOT  pip install -e .

# ...or upgrade pip first, and editable works too:
pip install --upgrade pip && pip install -e .

For a truly air-gapped host, build the wheels on a connected machine and copy them over — the target then needs no network:

# On a connected machine, collect this package + its dependencies as wheels:
pip wheel . -w dist        # → dist/*.whl   (or: uv build, for just this package)

# Copy dist/ to the air-gapped host, then install offline:
pip install --no-index --find-links dist vmware-log-insight

MCP Tools (7 — all read-only)

Tool	What
search_logs	Search events by time window + text (whole-token match), up to 200 events
aggregate_logs	Count/aggregate over time bins (UCOUNT/AVG/... of a field), with z-score spike detection
list_log_fields	List the appliance's fields (name + type), for aggregate_logs field
get_log_insight_version	Appliance version/build
list_log_alerts / get_log_alert / get_log_alert_history	Query defined alerts and their trigger history

Workflows

• Find errors fast — vmware-log-insight search -q error -l 1h.
• Where did logs burst? — vmware-log-insight aggregate -q error -l 6h --bin-ms 300000, read spikes[], then search the spike window.
• Root cause — pass search_logs results (plus vCenter events from vmware-monitor and metrics from vmware-aria) to vmware-debug build_incident_timeline.

Troubleshooting

• 401 on /sessions → check username/password/provider and the VMWARE_LOG_INSIGHT_<TARGET>_PASSWORD env var.
• 503 everywhere → appliance starting up; doctor reports it as a status, not a crash.
• Empty results → widen --last; text matches whole words, not substrings (try word*); default API port is 9543 (set port if different).
• UCOUNT needs a field → pass --field (names from fields); COUNT and SAMPLE take none.

Security

Read-only by construction. Credentials in ~/.vmware-log-insight/.env (chmod 600); plaintext passwords auto-obfuscated to grep-safe b64: (obfuscation, not encryption — inject from a secret manager for real secrecy). TLS on by default. See SECURITY.md.

Remote access (HTTPS) and limiting tools

By default vmware-log-insight mcp speaks stdio to one local client and offers every tool. Two options change that (vmware-policy ≥ 1.21.0).

Serve over HTTPS so clients on other machines can connect. Every caller needs a bearer token:

vmware-audit token create alice          # prints the token once; give it to alice
vmware-audit token list                  # names only
vmware-audit token revoke alice          # refused from its next request, no restart
vmware-log-insight mcp --transport https --host 0.0.0.0 --port 8443 \
    --cert /etc/vmware-mcp/server.pem --key /etc/vmware-mcp/server-key.pem \
    --public-name mcp.example.com

Connect a client (Claude Code shown; any MCP client that supports streamable HTTP and custom headers works):

claude mcp add --transport http vmware-log-insight https://mcp.example.com:8443/mcp \
    --header "Authorization: Bearer $VMWARE_MCP_TOKEN"

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vmware-log-insight": {
      "type": "http",
      "url": "https://mcp.example.com:8443/mcp",
      "headers": { "Authorization": "Bearer ${VMWARE_MCP_TOKEN}" }
    }
  }
}

• The server will not start without a token, refuses Host/Origin values outside --public-name, and checks before it binds that unauthenticated requests get 401. Use a certificate your clients trust for those names.
• Behind a TLS-terminating reverse proxy on the same machine use --transport http --host 127.0.0.1 --public-name mcp.example.com and pass the Authorization header through.
• Behind a load balancer or gateway on another machine, keep --transport https (a self-signed certificate is fine), list in --public-name the host name the balancer sends as Host, and have it forward Authorization. Its health probe can use GET /healthz, which needs no token and returns only {"status": "ok"} (vmware-policy ≥ 1.23.0).
• Send traceparent or X-Request-ID with each request to have it stored on the audit row; vmware-audit log --correlation-id ID then finds the calls behind one platform request.
• The audit log records each caller as token:<name>. Calls run side by side, with or without a target: each target keeps up to VMWARE_MCP_POOL_SIZE sessions (default 2), and each session is a login on the target. A call that finds them all busy waits at most 300 s for one.
• Everyone who can reach the endpoint acts with this server's account. Tokens identify callers; they grant nothing on the platform. Run one endpoint per privilege level.
• Several people or roles on one endpoint: run vmware-audit roles enable once, then give each token a role (vmware-audit token create NAME --role reader, or a role in roles.yaml naming tools and targets; vmware-policy ≥ 1.24.0). A role limits what the token may call on this endpoint; it cannot grant more than the account has. See vmware-policy's README, "Roles for network callers".

Limiting tools: every tool of this server is read-only, so --expose read changes nothing here; it exists for the write-capable skills. Least privilege comes from the account the server uses.

Details: skills/vmware-log-insight/references/setup-guide.md ("Serving MCP over HTTPS", "Limiting which tools are offered").

License

MIT.