6.3

User Scenario: Investigate the Root Cause of a Problem by Using the
Troubleshooting Tab Options
One of your customers reports poor performance for his virtual machine, including slowness and fails. This
scenario provides one way that you can use vRealize Operations Manager to investigate the problem based
on information available in the Troubleshooting tabs.
As a virtual infrastructure administrator, you respond to a help ticket in which one of your customers
reports problems with his virtual machine, sales-10-dk. The reported conditions are poor application
performance, including slow load times and slow boot, some of his programs are taking longer and longer
to load, and his les are taking longer to save. Today his programs started to fail and an update failed to
install.
When you look at the Alerts tab for the virtual machine you see an alert for chronic high memory workload
leading to memory stress, where the triggered symptoms indicate memory stress and the recommendation
is to add memory.
Based on past experience, you are not convinced that this alert indicates the root cause, so you review the
Analysis tabs. All of the associated badges are green except for Capacity Remaining, which indicates
memory and disk space problems, and Time Remaining, which has 0 days remaining for memory and disk
space.
From this initial review, you know that problems exist in addition to the memory alert, so you use the
Troubleshooting tabs to do a more thorough investigation.
Procedure
1 Review the Triggered Symptoms When You Troubleshoot a Virtual Machine Problem on page 46
As a virtual infrastructure administrator, you respond to customer complaints and alerts, and identify
problems that occur on the objects in your environment. You use the information on the Symptoms
tab to help determine whether the triggered symptoms indicate conditions that contribute to the
reported or identied problem.
2 Compare Symptoms on a Timeline When You Troubleshoot a Virtual Machine Problem on page 47
Looking at the triggered symptoms for an object over time allows you to compare triggered
symptoms, alerts, and events when you are troubleshooting problems with objects in your
environment. The Timeline tab in vRealize Operations Manager provides a visual chart on which to
see triggered symptoms that you can use to investigate problems in your environment.
3 Identify Inuential Events When You Troubleshoot a Virtual Machine Problem on page 48
Events are changes to objects in your environment that are based on changes to metrics, properties, or
information about the object. Examining the events for the problematic virtual machine in the context
of the analysis badges and alerts might provide visual clues to the root cause of a problem.
4 Create Metric Charts When You Troubleshoot a Virtual Machine Problem on page 49
You create a custom group of metric charts when you troubleshoot a problem with a virtual machine
so that you can compare dierent metrics. The level of detail that you can create using the All Metrics
tab in vRealize Operations Manager can contribute signicantly to your eort to nd the root cause of
a problem.
Chapter 1 Monitoring Objects in Your Managed Environment by Using vRealize Operations Manager
VMware, Inc. 45