Top 10 things you must read about VMware Troubleshooting

By Eric Siebert
published: Wednesday, June 04 2008

Every administrator needs to ensure they know how to properly troubleshoot any problems and issues that may occur in their VMware environment. Locating and solving problems in virtual environments can be a challenge compared to traditional physical environments because of the additional complexity that virtual networking and the host server add. After reading through the material on this top 10 list you should have the knowledge needed to handle most of the problems that you may experience. Being able to know where to look for problems so they can be isolated and resolved quickly is vital when trouble occurs. The material in this top 10 list consists mostly of some great presentations from VMworld that cover troubleshooting the many different areas of your VI3 environment. Also included are some VMworld troubleshooting lab manuals that have some great real world examples of troubleshooting problem.

Top Support Issues and How to Solve Them - Batch 1

http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/mylearn?classID=11477 

A VMworld 2007 presentation on troubleshooting storage issues including multipathing, vmfs, SAN snapshots and VCB

Top Support Issues and How to Solve Them - Batch 2

http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/mylearn?classID=11152

A VMworld 2007 presentation on troubleshooting issues with the service console, networking, VM snapshots, vmfs and extents

Tips for Troubleshooting ESX Server 3.x Faults

http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/mylearn?classID=11476

A VMworld 2007 presentation on troubleshooting ESX faults including hardware, host, VMM, Guest OS and application faults

Troubleshooting VMware Infrastructure 3

http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/mylearn?classID=11012

A VMworld 2007 lab manual with troubleshooting tips for the networking, VirtualCenter, vMotion, Virtual Machine, DRS/HA and more

VI3 Advanced Diagnostics Logs Analysis

http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/mylearn?classID=11483

A VMworld 2007 presentation that provides in-depth detail on the ESX server logs and how to use them to troubleshoot problems

VI3 Networking - Advanced Configurations and Troubleshooting

http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/mylearn?classID=11647

A VMworld 2007 presentation on troubleshooting virtual NIC’s, switches and other networking functions

Using ESXtop to Troubleshoot Performance Problems

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/esx2_using_esxtop.pdf

A VMware Tech Note on how to use the esxtop utility to troubleshoot performance problems

Troubleshooting VMware ESX Server 3 and VMware VirtualCenter 2

http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/mylearn?classID=12819

A VMworld 2006 presentation with tips for troubleshooting ESX, VirtualCenter, Licensing Server, VC Database and vMotion

VirtualCenter 2 Diagnostics

http://www.vmworld.com/vmworld/mylearn?classID=14161

A VMworld 2006 presentation covering how to troubleshoot problems with VirtualCenter

Performance Troubleshooting

http://vmware-land.com/downloads/vmworld.06.lab04-PERFORMANCE-MANUAL.pdf

A VMworld 2006 lab manual with detailed information on performance troubleshooting 

Coming Next Week: Top 10 Things you must read about VMware Networking  

VMware , VirtualCenter , Top 10 things you must read about VMware Security, Top 10 Things you must read about VirtualCenter , VMworld 2007, vMotion