Alright this post is dedicated to my colleagues at VMware as well VMware partners who got access to the VMware Health Check Analyzer and use it to help them collect data to include in their vSphere health check report. I have noticed when running the VMware Health Check analyzer with the default options against a larger environment it get stuck at the inventory data collection stage or some time even at the inventory discovery stage. Increasing the number of CPU and memory of the VHA or the machine where the virtualized heath check analyzer application run does not seems to resolve this issue.

After researching internally for sometime, I have found out that adding extra memory to the appliance itself does not automatically allow the vSphere Health Check Analyzer collector to use it. You will actually have to increase the collector process memory setting using the VMware Health Check Analyzer web interface. I have tested this with VHA 3.3.2, though it should work with most other versions out there.

The below procedure explain how you can increase the collector process memory setting for your vSphere health check analyzer tools.

1.   In the Health Analyzer UI click the Admin menu and choose “Config Settings”.
2. A dialog will come up and display the “Memory Settings” tab.
3. Change the “Collector Process Memory (MB)” value to the required allocation
4. 128 MB is default one, so bump up to 256 MB or 512 MB should be enough for large environment and if problem persists increase memory of appliance also. Before increasing this memory please make sure that the machine where you are running this VHA instance has enough memory otherwise your application will not start.

The below screen shot demonstrate the VHA Collector Process Memory (MB) field.

This should resolve most of the incidents where your VMware Health Check tool get stuck while collecting data for a larger environment. If this did not resolve your problem, then you will need to collect the log and open a support ticket. The below process demonstrate how you collect VHA logs.

1. Go to the Admin menu in the upper right and select “Log Files”
2.  At the bottom of the resulting dialog, click the “Download Log Files” button.
3. Save the resulting zip file and email it to the VHA support team.

After collecting your VHA logs make sure you open a support ticket with the VHA team using the proper channel. Please note that support is handled differently depending upon whether you are a partner or a VMware consultant. To find out the right mean to open your VHA related support ticket please check the VHA Release note included within the VHA package.

I hope this help some one complete his health check analyzer a bit faster!