Redirecting VMkernel dumps to another server

vSphere 5 has introduced VMware vSphere Network Dump Collector—a service that allows an ESXi host to send diagnostic information to a remote location in case of a failure with the pink diagnostic screen.

Diagnostics information can be sent to a remote host instead, or in addition to the local store. This information is useful for troubleshooting host failures.

Note

For more information about interpreting the pink screen, refer to the VMware KB article 1004250 at http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004250.

The advantage of sending dump to a remote location is that under certain circumstances, it cannot be saved locally. For example, a failure can be caused by local storage issues. Another case is when the ESXi host does not have a local storage at all. The OS may be running from the USB drive or SD card. The absence of a local storage will also be the case for autodeploy configurations.

Dump Collector is available as a Windows service and has to be installed...