Chapter 2. Commonly Used Tools for Troubleshooting Storage

Now that we have established a little bit of background knowledge on some of the storage concepts and how to identify different components as it pertains to storage within vSphere, it's time to look at a few tools we can use to aid us in troubleshooting storage issues.

This chapter will give you basic knowledge of a troubleshooting methodology provided by VMware and then show us how we can use some of the built-in tools and logs from within vSphere, ESXi, and other applications to discover and solve storage issues. This fundamental knowledge of how to use these tools is key to understanding and interpreting some of the examples throughout the book.

This chapter will cover the following:

• The vSphere troubleshooting methodology

• Using vCenter Storage Maps and Storage Reports

• Using esxtop/resxtop

• Common logfiles used in storage troubleshooting