Course Introduction

Module 1

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

Module Number 1-1

Importance
Technical personnel who respond to incident reports in
VMware vSphere deployments are typically system
administrators whose expertise focuses on Windows or
Linux system administration. These personnel must be
able to rapidly and effectively troubleshoot issues.
This course will help prepare vSphere system
administrators to troubleshoot a variety of problems
caused by misconfigurations and hardware failures.

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

Module Number 1-2

Module Objectives
Understand the course goals
Understand the course objectives
Understand the course focus
List the course components
List the course modules

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Goals of This Course

To prepare you with the advanced knowledge, skills, and
abilities to achieve competence in troubleshooting the
vSphere virtual infrastructure
To increase your skill and competence in using the command
line to analyze and configure VMware ESX and ESXi
hosts

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Objectives for the Learner

Use the VMware vSphere Client and service console
commands to configure or diagnose and correct problems on
ESX
Use the vSphere Client and the VMware vSphere
Management Assistant (vMA) appliance to configure or
diagnose and correct problems on ESX and ESXi hosts
Use the ESXi technical support mode to diagnose and correct
problems on ESXi
Create and use a network packet capture utility to capture and
display virtual switch network traffic
Use the vSphere Client and command-line tools to
troubleshoot VMware VMotion, Storage VMotion, VMware
High Availability and Distributed Resource Scheduler clusters,
and virtual machine power-on problems
VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A
Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Course Focus
The lecture material provides only a brief, high-level review of
selected vSphere topics and features that have already been
covered in other VMware courses.
The lecture material provides more complete discussion of
selected vSphere topics and features that have not already
been covered in other VMware courses.
This course emphasizes hands-on troubleshooting. It focuses
on:
Detecting and correcting problems caused by administrator
misconfiguration
Detecting failures in the support infrastructure

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Course Components
This course is composed of three main components:
Student lecture guide

The student guide contains all the lecture material.

It provides background and review information only.

Troubleshooting reference guide (TRG)

The TRG contains helpful troubleshooting hints and tips that can be
applied during the labs.

The TRG also contains supplementary technical material,

examples, and case studies.

Student lab guide

The lab guide contains two types of labs: procedural labs and
troubleshooting labs.

Procedural labs provide step-by-step instructions to accomplish a

goal.

Troubleshooting labs consist mostly of a problem statement.

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

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VMware Online Resources

VMware Communities:
http://communities.vmware.com

vSphere documentation:
http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/

vMA documentation:
http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vima/vima40/doc/
vma_40_guide.pdf

vSphere CLI documentation:

http://www.vmware.com/support/developer/vcli/

VMware Education:
http://www.vmware.com/education

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Course Modules
Module 1:
Module 2:
Module 3:
Module 4:
Module 5:
Module 6:
Module 7:
Module 8:
Appendix A:

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

Course Introduction
VMware ESXi Command-Line Troubleshooting
VMware ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server Log
Files
Network Troubleshooting
Management Troubleshooting
Storage Troubleshooting
VMware VMotion Troubleshooting
VMware Infrastructure Troubleshooting
Using the VMware vSphere Client to
Examine Network Information

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You Are Here

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting

Course Introduction

Storage Troubleshooting

ESXi Command-Line Troubleshooting

VMotion Troubleshooting

ESX/ESXi and vCenter Server Log Files

VMware Infrastructure Troubleshooting

Network Troubleshooting
Management Troubleshooting

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

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Key Points
The focus of this course is on hands-on troubleshooting.
Troubleshooting discussions will focus on misconfigurations
and infrastructure problems.
This is not a course on performance tuning.
This is not a course on software bugs.
This course does not cover other VMware products, such as
VMware View or VMware vCenter Site Recovery
Manager.
Lecture content has purposely been minimized.

VMware vSphere: Troubleshooting Revision A

Copyright 2009 VMware, Inc. All rights reserved.

Module Number 1-11