This is week 7 out of 10 of my VCP 6.5 Study Plan. More info and links to the other weeks can be found at the Study Plan Intro page. Subscribe to the Study Plan using this feed.

The seventh section of the 10 sections in the VCP 6.5 blueprint covers troubleshooting a vSphere deployment.

Practice Exams

Simon Long’s VCP 6.5 Practice Exams – Section 7.

Study Material

The seventh section is made up of 5 high level objectives;

• Objective 7.1 – Troubleshoot vCenter Server and ESXi Hosts
  • Vladan Study Guide; Troubleshoot vCenter Server and ESXi Hosts
  • Official Blueprint Resource Link(s);
    • ESXi and vCenter Server 6.5 Documentation
    • Using ESXi Shell 
    • Enabling trivia logging in VMware vCenter Server 
    • Stopping, starting, or restarting service in vCenter Server 
• Objective 7.2 – Troubleshoot vSphere Storage and Networking
  • Vladan Study Guide; Troubleshoot vSphere Storage and Networking
  • Official Blueprint Resource Link(s);
    • ESXi and vCenter Server 6.5 Documentation
    • Using the pktcap-uw tool 
• Objective 7.3 – Troubleshoot vSphere Upgrades and Migrations
  • Vladan Study Guide; Troubleshoot vSphere Upgrades and Migrations
  • Official Blueprint Resource Link(s);
    • ESXi and vCenter Server 6.5 Documentation
    • Collect diagnostic information 
• Objective 7.4 – Troubleshoot Virtual Machines
  • Vladan Study Guide; Troubleshoot Virtual Machines
  • Official Blueprint Resource Link(s);
    • ESXi and vCenter Server 6.5 Documentation
    • Virtual machines appear as invalid or orphaned
    • vMotion failure
• Objective 7.5 – Troubleshoot HA and DRS Configurations and Fault Tolerance
  • Vladan Study Guide; Troubleshoot HA and DRS Configurations and Fault Tolerance
  • Official Blueprint Resource Link(s);
    • ESXi and vCenter Server 6.5 Documentation

Full Section 7 Objectives List

• Objective 7.1 – Troubleshoot vCenter Server and ESXi Hosts
  • Understand VCSA monitoring tool
  • Monitor status of the vCenter Server services
  • Perform basic maintenance of a vCenter Server database
  • Monitor status of ESXi management agents
  • Determine ESXi host stability issues and gather diagnostics information
  • Monitor ESXi system health
  • Locate and analyze vCenter Server and ESXi logs
  • Determine appropriate commands for troubleshooting
  • Troubleshoot common issues, including:
    • vCenter Server services
    • Identity Sources
    • vCenter Server connectivity
    • Virtual machine resource contention, configuration and operation
    • Platform Services Controller (PSC)
    • Problems with installation
    • VMware Tools installation
    • Fault Tolerant network latency
    • KMS connectivity
    • vCenter Certification Authority
• Objective 7.2 – Troubleshoot vSphere Storage and Networking
  • Identify and isolate network and storage resource contention and latency issues
  • Verify network and storage configuration
  • Verify that a given virtual machine is configured with the correct network resources
  • Monitor/Troubleshoot Storage Distributed Resource Scheduler (SDRS) issues
  • Recognize the impact of network and storage I/O control configurations
  • Recognize a connectivity issue caused by a VLAN/PVLAN
  • Troubleshoot common issues with:
  • Storage and network
  • Virtual switch and port group configuration
  • Physical network adapter configuration
  • VMFS metadata consistency
• Objective 7.3 – Troubleshoot vSphere Upgrades and Migrations
  • Collect upgrade diagnostic information
  • Recognize common upgrade and migration issues with vCenter Server and vCenter Server Appliance
  • Create/Locate VMware log bundles
  • Determine alternative methods to upgrade ESXi hosts in event of failure
  • Configure vCenter Server logging options
• Objective 7.4 – Troubleshoot Virtual Machines
  • Monitor CPU and memory usage
  • Identify and isolate CPU and memory contention issues
  • Recognize impact of using CPU/memory limits, reservations and shares
  • Describe and differentiate critical performance metrics
  • Describe and differentiate common metrics, including:
    • Memory
    • CPU
    • Network
    • Storage
  • Monitor performance through esxtop
  • Troubleshoot Enhanced vMotion Compatibility (EVC) issues
  • Compare and contrast Overview and Advanced Charts
• Objective 7.5 – Troubleshoot HA and DRS Configurations and Fault Tolerance
  • Troubleshoot issues with:
    • DRS workload balancing
    • HA failover/redundancy, capacity and network configuration
    • HA/DRS cluster configuration
    • vMotion/Storage vMotion configuration and/or migration
    • Fault Tolerance configuration and failover issues
  • Explain the DRS Resource Distribution Graph and Target/Current Host Load Deviation