Troubleshooting an issue should follow a workflow process that allows you to discover the cause of problems and then help you decide whether you can fix them on your own, or allow you to gather the information needed by a technical support team that can give you further assistance.

This chapter will not review all the methodologies or try to choose one that is better, but will stress the use of a methodology that helps to put a repeatable process around finding and solving problems in your vSphere environment. This process can be used for most areas of the IT infrastructure, and can also be used to provide any technical support services provided by the vendor or other third-party companies with the information needed to solve the problem.

The following diagram gives an example of a troubleshooting workflow. A description of each component of the workflow will be provided in this chapter.

The preceding diagram shows an example of a troubleshooting flow. There are two...