System Event Logs (SEL) are important logs maintained by hardware devices, including servers and ESXi hosts, to record important events related to the hardware’s health, status, and operation. These logs are typically stored in the hardware’s Baseboard Management Controller (BMC) or equivalent management interface.

To access SEL logs in ESXi environments, you can use tools such as:

• vCenter Server: vCenter Server provides hardware health monitoring features that can alert you to potential hardware issues based on SEL logs and sensor data from the host hardware.
• Integrated Lights-Out Management (iLO) or iDRAC: If your server hardware includes management interfaces like iLO (HP Integrated Lights-Out) or iDRAC (Dell Remote Access Controller), you can access SEL logs through these interfaces.
• Hardware Vendor Tools: Many hardware vendors provide specific tools or utilities for managing hardware health, including accessing SEL logs.

Here’s a general approach to validate SEL logs using the command line on ESXi:

1. Connect to ESXi Host: Use SSH or the ESXi Shell to connect to the ESXi host.
2. Access Vendor Tools: Depending on your hardware vendor, use the appropriate tool to access SEL logs. For example:
   • HP ProLiant Servers (iLO): You can use the hplog utility to access the ILO logs.
   • Dell PowerEdge Servers (iDRAC): Use the racadm utility to access iDRAC logs.
   • Cisco UCS Servers: Use UCS Manager CLI to access logs.
   • Supermicro Servers: Use the ipmicfg utility to access logs.
   These commands may differ based on your hardware and the version of the management interfaces.
3. Retrieve and Analyze Logs: Run the appropriate command to retrieve SEL logs, and then analyze them for any hardware-related issues or warnings. The exact command syntax varies between vendors.

As for validating SEL logs in a cluster using PowerShell, you can use PowerCLI to remotely connect to each ESXi host and retrieve the logs. Below is a high-level script that shows how you might approach this. Keep in mind that specific commands depend on your hardware vendor’s management utilities.

# Connect to vCenter Server
Connect-VIServer -Server 'YOUR_VCENTER_SERVER' -User 'YOUR_USERNAME' -Password 'YOUR_PASSWORD'

# Get all ESXi hosts in the cluster
$clusterName = 'YourClusterName'
$cluster = Get-Cluster -Name $clusterName
$hosts = Get-VMHost -Location $cluster

# Loop through each host and retrieve SEL logs
foreach ($host in $hosts) {
    $hostName = $host.Name
    
    # Replace with the appropriate command for your hardware vendor
    $selLog = Invoke-SSHCommand -VMHost $host -User 'root' -Password 'YourRootPassword' -Command 'your-sel-log-retrieval-command'
    
    # Process $selLog to analyze the SEL logs for issues
    
    Write-Host "SEL logs for $hostName retrieved and analyzed."
}

# Disconnect from vCenter Server
Disconnect-VIServer -Server 'YOUR_VCENTER_SERVER' -Force -Confirm:$false

In the script above, replace 'YOUR_VCENTER_SERVER', 'YOUR_USERNAME', 'YOUR_PASSWORD', 'YourClusterName', and the command 'your-sel-log-retrieval-command' with appropriate values based on your environment and hardware.