VMware vSphere Troubleshooting

VMware vSphere Troubleshooting

by Muhammad Zeeshan Munir
Released November 2015
Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
ISBN: 9781783551767

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Book description

Gain expertise in troubleshooting most common issues to implement vSphere environments with ease

About This Book

  • Plan, analyze, and design effective solutions for your vSphere environment
  • Troubleshoot problems related to vSphere performance
  • Familiarize yourself with the advanced troubleshooting conceptsand become an xpert level administrator

Who This Book Is For

The books is intended for mid-level System Engineers and System Integrators who want to learn VMware power tools to troubleshoot and manage the vSphere infrastructure. Good knowledge level and understanding of virtualization is expected.

What You Will Learn

  • Configure vSphere management assistant and troubleshooting tools
  • Use troubleshooting tools to monitor performance and troubleshoot different issues
  • Learn how to troubleshoot High Availability and other commonly known problems with clusters such as insufficient resources, failing heartbeats
  • Use Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) to verify configuration
  • Diagnose storage issues including iSCSI, NFS and VMFS problems
  • Manage vSphere Network Virtual and Distributed Switches, Trunks, VLANS
  • Monitor and shape network traffic, configure routes and DNS
  • Quickly resolve common day-to-day problems by analysing logs of VMware vSphere hosts and VMware vCenter Server
  • Debug and resolve commonly known vSphere Cluster problems

In Detail

VMware vSphere is the leading server virtualization platform with consistent management for virtual data centers. It enhances troubleshooting skills to diagnose and resolve day to day problems in your VMware vSphere infrastructure environment.

This book will provide you practical hands-on knowledge of using different performance monitoring and troubleshooting tools to manage and troubleshoot the vSphere infrastructure.

It begins by introducing systematic approach for troubleshooting different problems and show casing the troubleshooting techniques. You will be able to use the troubleshooting tools to monitor performance, and troubleshoot issues related to Hosts and Virtual Machines. Moving on, you will troubleshoot High Availability, storage I/O control problems, virtual LANS, and iSCSI, NFS, VMFS issues.

By the end of this book, you will be able to analyze and solve advanced issues related to vShpere environment such as vcenter certificates, database problems, and different failed state errors.

Style and approach

A step-by-step guide full of real world scenarios that will enhance advanced knowledge, skills, and abilities to achieve competence in troubleshooting the VMware vSphere environment. Basic concepts of vSphere and the most common vSphere infrastructure problems are explained with practical solutions to resolve it.

Table of contents

  1. VMware vSphere Troubleshooting
    1. Table of Contents
    2. VMware vSphere Troubleshooting
    3. Credits
    4. About the Author
    5. About the Reviewers
    6. www.PacktPub.com
      1. Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more
        1. Why subscribe?
        2. Free access for Packt account holders
        3. Instant updates on new Packt books
    7. Preface
      1. What this book covers
      2. What you need for this book
      3. Who this book is for
      4. Conventions
      5. Reader feedback
      6. Customer support
        1. Downloading the example code
        2. Downloading the color images of this book
        3. Errata
        4. Piracy
        5. Questions
    8. 1. The Methodology of Problem Solving
      1. Troubleshooting techniques
        1. Precise communication
        2. Creating a knowledge base of identified problems and solutions
        3. Obtaining the required knowledge of the problem space
        4. Isolating the problem space
        5. Documenting and keeping track of changes
          1. Troubleshooting with power tools
      2. Configuring the vSphere management agent
        1. Installation
        2. Installation steps
      3. VMware vMA features
        1. Powering-on vMA
        2. AD integration
        3. AD unattended access
        4. vMA web UI
        5. vi-user
        6. Configuring vMA as a syslog server
        7. Creating a logrotate file
        8. The vMA authentication mechanism
          1. Accessing systems from vMA
        9. vMA scripts samples
      4. PowerCLI
        1. Connecting to vCenter Server or an ESX/vSphere host with PowerCLI
        2. Setting up a syslog server using PowerCLI
        3. Setting up a sysLog server manually
      5. A comprehensive reference of log files
        1. vSphere log files – vSphere host 5.1 and later
        2. Logs from vCenter Server components on vSphere host 5.1, 5.5, and 6.0
        3. vCenter log files
        4. vCenter inventory service log files
        5. vSphere Profile-Driven Storage log files
        6. Configuring logs and collecting logs
          1. Using vSphere Client
          2. Using vSphere Web Client
          3. Using the vm-support tool
        7. Running vm-support in a console session on vSphere hosts
        8. Generating logs on stdout
        9. Using vm-support in vMA to collect logs
        10. Using PowerCLI to collect the log bundle
          1. Collecting log bundles from vCenter Server
          2. Collecting log bundles from a vSphere host
          3. Collecting log bundles from the vSphere log browser
        11. Exporting logs
      6. Understanding the hardware health of vSphere hosts
      7. Miscellaneous tools
      8. Summary
    9. 2. Monitoring and Troubleshooting Host and VM Performance
      1. Tools for performance monitoring
        1. Using esxtop/resxtop
          1. Live resource monitoring – the interactive mode
          2. Offline performance monitoring – batch mode
          3. Replaying performance metrics – replay mode
        2. Using Windows Performance Monitor
      2. Analyzing esxtop results
        1. Understanding CPU statistics
        2. Enabling more esxtop fields
      3. Memory statistics
        1. Memory management in a vSphere host
        2. Memory overcommitment
        3. Memory overhead
        4. Transparent page sharing
          1. Ballooning
          2. Memory compression
            1. Esxtop for memory statistics
          3. Diagnosing memory blockage
      4. Network metrics
        1. Understanding network metrics
        2. Diagnosing network performance
      5. Storage metrics
        1. Using vMA and resxtop
      6. vCenter performance charts
        1. Creating a chart and configuring metrics
      7. Configuring logging level for performance
      8. Virtual machine troubleshooting
        1. USB-attached virtual machines
          1. Non-responsive USB/CD drives
          2. Unable VM migration with a USB device
        2. Fault-tolerant virtual machines
          1. Incompatible or hosts not available
      9. Summary
    10. 3. Troubleshooting Clusters
      1. An overview of cluster information
      2. Cluster performance monitoring
      3. vSphere HA
      4. Failing heartbeat datastores
        1. Changing heartbeating datastores
        2. Insufficient heartbeat datastores
        3. Unable to unmount a datastore
      5. Detaching datastores with vMA
      6. Detaching a datastore using vSphere PowerCLI
      7. vCenter server rejects specific datastores
      8. DRS-enabled storage
        1. Failed DRS recommendations
        2. Datastore maintenance mode failure
        3. More common errors of Storage DRS
      9. Insufficient resources and vSphere HA failover
      10. I/O control troubleshooting
        1. SIOC logging
        2. Changing vDisk shares and limits for a virtual machine
      11. vSphere Fault Tolerance for virtual machines
        1. Common troubleshooting of fault tolerance
        2. Configuring SNMP traps for continuous monitoring
          1. Configuring SNMP traps with vMA
          2. Tuning the SNMP agents
          3. Configuring SNMP agents from PowerCLI
      12. Summary
    11. 4. Monitoring and Troubleshooting Networking
      1. Log files
      2. Understanding the virtual network creation process
      3. Network troubleshooting commands
        1. Repairing a dvsdata.db file
        2. ESXCLI network
        3. Troubleshooting uplinks
        4. Troubleshooting virtual switches
      4. Troubleshooting VLANs
      5. Verifying physical trunks and VLAN configuration
      6. Verifying VLAN configuration from CLI
        1. Verifying VLANs from PowerCLI
        2. Verifying PVLANs and secondary PVLANs
          1. Testing virtual machine connectivity
      7. Troubleshooting VMkernel interfaces
      8. Verifying configuration from DCUI
        1. Verifying network connectivity from DCUI
        2. Verifying management network from DCUI
      9. Troubleshooting with port mirroring
        1. Monitoring with NetFlow
        2. Adding a default route
        3. Deleting a route
        4. Managing vSphere DNS
          1. PowerCLI - changing DNS on multiple vSphere hosts
      10. Summary
    12. 5. Monitoring and Troubleshooting Storage
      1. Storage adapters
      2. Storage log files
        1. The hostd.log file
        2. The storageRM.log file
        3. The vmkernel.log file
        4. DRMDump
      3. Multipathing and PSA troubleshooting
        1. Native Multipathing Plugins
        2. Changing the path selection policy from VMware vMA
        3. Storage path masking
      4. LUN and claim rules
      5. Identifying storage devices and LUNs
        1. Listing storage devices from vMA
      6. Troubleshooting paths
        1. Disabling vSphere APD
        2. Planned PDL
        3. VMware vMA to automate detaching of LUNs
        4. Unplanned PDL
      7. Multipath policy selection from the vSphere client
        1. Using vMA to change a path state
        2. Unmasking a path
      8. LUN troubleshooting tips
      9. Storage module troubleshooting
      10. Troubleshooting iSCSI-related issues
        1. iSCSI error correction
      11. Troubleshooting NFS issues
      12. Troubleshooting VMFS issues
        1. VMFS snapshots and resignaturing
      13. SAN display problems
      14. SAN performance troubleshooting
      15. Summary
    13. 6. Advanced Troubleshooting of vCenter Server and vSphere Hosts
      1. vCenter managed hosts
        1. Logging for an inventory service
        2. Viewing vCenter Server logs
      2. Setting up vCenter Server the statistics intervals from vSphere Web Client
        1. Relocating or removing a vSphere host
        2. vSphere host disconnection and reconnection
      3. vSphere SSL certificates
      4. Replacing machine certificates
        1. Replacing VMCA root certificate
        2. Replacing user solution certificates
      5. Implementing SSL certificates for ESXi
      6. Regenerating certificates
      7. vCenter Server database
      8. vSphere HA agent troubleshooting
        1. Unreachable or uninitialized state
      9. The HA agent initialization error
        1. Reinstalling the HA agent
      10. HA agent host failed state
      11. Network partitioned or network isolated errors
      12. Commonly known auto deploy problems
        1. Getting help
      13. Summary
    14. A. Learning PowerGUI Basics
      1. Using the VMware Community PowerPack
      2. Summary
    15. B. Installing VMware vRealize Operations Manager
      1. Summary
    16. C. Power CLI - A Basic Reference
      1. Summary
    17. Index

Product information

  • Title: VMware vSphere Troubleshooting
  • Author(s): Muhammad Zeeshan Munir
  • Release date: November 2015
  • Publisher(s): Packt Publishing
  • ISBN: 9781783551767