Objective 6.5 – Troubleshoot vCenter Server and ESXi Host Management

Knowledge - Identify CLI Commands And Tools Used To Troubleshoot Management Issues
CLI tools you can use are those to manage network switch configuration and VMkernel IP settings as well as service restart tools.

The ESXi host console can also be used to manage network connectivity issues.

Skills and Abilities - Troubleshoot vCenter Server service and database connection issues
Manage Virtual Center Appliance Services

• View status of all services service –-status-all
  
• View status of VPX daemon service vmware-vpxd status
• Restart service vmware-vpxd restart

For Windows Virtual Center,  manage services using services.msc

In the event of a database issue preventing the Virtual Center Service starting or error events are logged to

%ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware VirtualCenter\Logs\vpxd.log
 
Skills and Abilities - Troubleshoot the ESXi firewall

The firewall ruleset can be viewed and managed via the GUI or via CLI

esxcli network firewall

To diagnose firewall related issues it is important to understand what port specific traffic is communicating via

Skills and Abilities - Troubleshoot ESXi host management and connectivity issues

To restart host management agents
/etc/init.d/hostd restart
/etc/init.d/vpxa restart

If you have multiple VMkernel connections and want to reset only a specific
esxcli network ip interface set -e false -i vmk0; esxcli network ip interface set -e true -i vmk0

To restart all management agents
services.sh restart

Skills and Abilities - Determine The Root Cause Of a vSphere Management Or Connectivity Issue

ESX host and vCenter communicate over TCP,  to test base connectivity you can use vmkping from host to the IP of vCenter.

Communication often requires A and PTR records to be correctly reflecting name and IP combination. If you have multiple VMkernel ports for things like network attached storage you will need multiple DNS records with varying names to reflect each IP DNS record.

Skills and Abilities - Utilize Direct Console User Interface (DCUI) and ESXi Shell to troubleshoot, configure, and monitor an environment
From ESX console you can adjust network uplinks, VLAN info,  set IP address and test connectivity to the local gateway.