Course Objectives

By the end of the course, you should be able to meet the following objectives:

• Describe troubleshooting principles and procedures
• Use the vSphere Client, the command line, and log files to configure, diagnose, and correct problems in vSphere
• Explain the key vSphere log files from troubleshooting perspective
• Describe the benefits and capabilities of VMware Skyline
• Identify the networking issues by examining the reported symptoms, and troubleshoot the reported problems
• Identify the storage issues by examining the reported symptoms, and troubleshoot the reported problems
• Troubleshoot vSphere cluster failure scenarios and analyze possible causes
• Diagnose common VMware vSphere® High Availability (vSphere HA) problems and provide solutions
• Trouble virtual machine problems, including migration problems, snapshot problems, and connectivity problems
• Identify VMware ESXi™ host and VMware vCenter Server® problems, analyze failure scenarios, and find resolutions
• Troubleshoot performance problems with vSphere components

Target Audience
• System administrators
• System engineer

Prerequisites

This course requires completion of one the following courses:

• VMware vSphere: Fast Track
• VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage
• VMware vSphere: Operate, Scale and Secure

The course material presumes that you can perform the following tasks with no assistance or guidance before enrolling in this course:

• Install and configure ESXi
• Install vCenter Server
• Create vCenter Server objects, such as data centers and folders
• Create and modify a standard switch
• Create and modify a distributed switch
• Connect an ESXi host to NAS, iSCSI, or Fibre Channel storage
• Create a VMware vSphere VMFS datastore
• Modify a virtual machine’s hardware
• Migrate a virtual machine with VMware vSphere® vMotion® and VMware vSphere® Storage vMotion®
• Configure and manage a VMware vSphere® Distributed Resource SchedulerTM cluster
• Configure and manage a VMware vSphere HA cluster
• Basic knowledge of command line tools like ESXCLI, DCLI, and PowerCLI

If you cannot complete these tasks, VMware recommends that you take the VMware vSphere: Install, Configure, Manage course instead.

1 Course Introduction

• Introductions and course logistics
• Course objectives

2 Introduction to Troubleshooting

• Define the scope of troubleshooting
• Use a structured approach to solve configuration and operational problems
• Apply troubleshooting methodology to diagnose faults and make troubleshooting efficient

3 Troubleshooting Tools

• Identify the utilities and tools used to run commands
• Identify how to access the vSphere ESXi shell
• Run commands to view, configure, and manage vSphere components
• Use Standalone ESXCLI for troubleshooting
• Run ESXCLI commands from the Standalone ESXCLI tool
• Use Data Center CLI commands for troubleshooting
• Run commands to view, configure, and manage your vSphere components
• Identify the best tool to use for CLI troubleshooting
• Locate important log files
• Identify how to use log files in troubleshooting
• Describe the benefits and capabilities of VMware Skyline™
• Explain how VMware Skyline works at a high-level
• Identify the types of health information provided by Skyline™ Health
• Identify uses for VMware Skyline™ Advisor
• Describe the support bundle REST API
• Use the support bundle REST API

4 Troubleshooting Virtual Networking

• Analyze and troubleshoot standard switch problems
• Analyze and troubleshoot virtual machine connectivity problems
• Analyze and troubleshoot management network problems
• Analyze and troubleshoot distributed switch problems

5 Troubleshooting Storage

• Recognize components in the vSphere storage architecture
• Identify the possible causes of problems in the various types of datastores
• Analyze the common storage connectivity and configuration problems and discuss the possible causes
• Resolve the storage connectivity problems, correct misconfigurations, and restore LUN visibility
• Analyze log file entries to identify the root cause of storage problems
• Use ESXi and Linux commands to troubleshoot storage problems
• Investigate ESXi storage issues
• Troubleshoot virtual machine snapshots
• Troubleshoot storage performance problems
• Recognize how multipathing works
• Identify the common causes of missing paths
• Resolve the missing path problems between hosts and storage devices

6 Troubleshooting vSphere Clusters

• Identify and troubleshoot potential vSphere HA problems
• Analyze and solve vSphere potential vMotion problems
• Diagnose and troubleshoot potential vSphere DRS problems

7 Troubleshooting Virtual Machines

• Describe virtual machine files
• Identify, analyze, and solve virtual machine snapshot problems
• Discuss virtual machine files and disk content IDs
• Troubleshoot virtual machine power-on problems
• Identify possible causes and troubleshoot virtual machine connection state problems
• Diagnose and recover from VMware Tools™ installation failures

8 Troubleshooting vCenter Server and ESXi

• Analyze and resolve vCenter service problems
• Diagnose and troubleshoot vCenter database problems
• Use vCenter appliance shell and the Bash shell to identify and solve problems
• Identify and troubleshoot ESXi host problems