VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting

Course overview

This 4-day, lab-intensive course focuses on providing system administrators with the advanced knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve competence in troubleshooting the VMware vSphere™ virtual infrastructure. In this course, you will spend most of the time diagnosing and rectifying configuration problems created on VMware® ESX™/ESXi hosts and VMware vCenter™ Server systems. This course is 25 percent lecture and 75 percent hands-on labs.

Course objectives

At the end of the course, you should be able to:

  • Use the VMware vSphere Client and service console commands to configure or diagnose and rectify problems on ESX
  • Use the vSphere Client and the VMware vSphere Management Assistant (vMA) appliance to configure or diagnose and rectify problems on ESX and ESXi hosts
  • Use ESXi technical support mode to diagnose and rectify problems on ESXi
  • Create and use a network sniffer to capture and display virtual switch network traffic
  • Use the vSphere Client and command-line tools to troubleshoot VMware VMotion™, VMware Storage VMotion, VMware High Availability, VMware Distributed Resource Scheduler, and virtual machine power-on problems

Course outline

Course Introduction

ESXi Command-Line Troubleshooting Methods

  • Install and use vMA
  • Learn common VMware vSphere Command-Line Interface commands and syntax
  • Configure ESXi technical support mode and SSH access

ESX, ESXi, and vCenter Server Log Files

  • View ESX, ESXi, and vCenter Server log files
  • Configure a centralized ESX/ESXi log host

Network Troubleshooting

  • Identify and configure vNetwork components
  • Configure and use a network traffic sniffer

Management Troubleshooting

  • Troubleshoot vSphere management components

Storage Troubleshooting

  • View, configure, and diagnose storage access problems
  • Configure iSCSI authentication and digests

VMotion Troubleshooting

  • Troubleshoot VMotion and Storage VMotion errors

VMware HA Cluster Troubleshooting

  • Troubleshoot errors with slot calculations, admission control, and host monitoring

DRS Cluster Troubleshooting

  • Troubleshoot errors with shares, pools, and limits

Virtual Machine Troubleshooting

  • Review power-on requirements
  • Troubleshoot virtual machine power-on failures

Graduation Lab

Complete a final multihour, multiproblem troubleshooting exercise