I recently tried to export the system logs from an ESXi via the vSphere client. Instead of receiving the generated bundled the host returned:

A general system error occurred: internal error

Very informative error message, no? I looked at the logs visible from the vSphere client and realized they were all dated before ESXi was installed. What was going on?

I went directly the ESXi host to collect the logs as I thought this would be a one-time event. Due to the error, I decided to check the syslog server as the host was configured for syslog. The syslog server did not have log information for the ESXi host. At this point, I decided to:

• Restarting management services - did not help
• Removing / Changing syslog settings - did not help

At this point I decided to reboot the host and wouldn't you know the logs started working. I have no idea what caused the problem and due to time constraints I could not dig in deeper.