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.

• Read-only by design — and provable (v1.8.0): all 7 MCP tools are read, none write; set VMWARE_READ_ONLY=true (or the per-skill VMWARE_LOG_INSIGHT_READ_ONLY, or read_only: true in config) and the family read-only gate verifies that at startup instead of taking the docs' word for it. See Read-Only Mode.

Companion Skills

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

MCP Tools (7 — all read-only)

Read-Only Mode

vmware-log-insight is read-only by design — all 7 MCP tools carry the [READ] marker and there are no write tools to withhold. Since v1.8.0 that is provable rather than merely documented: set VMWARE_READ_ONLY=true and the family read-only gate enumerates the registry at startup and verifies that zero write tools are exposed — structural, not a prompt instruction a model can ignore. Off by default. Fail-closed: if the mode is requested but cannot be guaranteed, the server refuses to start rather than running open.

The same variable is family-wide: one env var also strips every write tool from the write-capable siblings (aiops, storage, vks, nsx, ...), so a whole-estate audit posture is a single setting.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "vmware-log-insight": {
      "command": "vmware-log-insight",
      "args": ["mcp"],
      "env": { "VMWARE_READ_ONLY": "true" }
    }
  }
}

• Per-skill override: VMWARE_LOG_INSIGHT_READ_ONLY=true (takes precedence over the family-wide VMWARE_READ_ONLY)
• Config alternative: read_only: true in ~/.vmware-log-insight/config.yaml

Precedence: per-skill env → family env → config → off. Nothing is logged as withheld because nothing is — the gate's empty result is the assertion (write-capable siblings log Read-only mode active ... withheld N write tool(s) instead).

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 log_search results (plus vCenter events from vmware-monitor and metrics from vmware-aria) to vmware-debug 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; default API port is 9543 (set port if different).

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.

License

MIT.