The Troubleshooting Workbench is where you perform advanced troubleshooting tasks on an alert that triggered on an object. You can investigate both known and unknown issues in VMware Aria Operations.
Where You Find the Troubleshooting Workbench
- To start the Troubleshooting Workbench with an alert in context, in the menu, click Troubleshoot > Alerts. Click an alert from the alert list and click Launch Workbench from the Potential Evidence tab.
- To start the Troubleshooting Workbench with an alert in context, in the menu, click , then select a group, custom data center, application, or inventory object. Click the object and then the Alerts tab. Click Launch Workbench from the Potential Evidence tab.
- On the Troubleshooting Workbench page (), to investigate known or unknown issues with an object in context, search for the object or click to locate the object and click the Troubleshoot button on the top right.
- On the Troubleshooting Workbench page (), search for a metric and start a troubleshooting session in the context of the metric. The metric search has the same enhanced search capabilities that is available in the global search. For more information about the advanced search capabilities, see the topic, Enhanced Search Capability. Recent searches are saved and displayed when you start a search. After you locate the metric you are looking for, VMware Aria Operations displays the metrics within the Troubleshooting Workbench page. You can minimize the search result and come back to it later. If you are done seeing the metrics, you can close the search result window. To start troubleshooting using the metric, click the vertical ellipsis and then Troubleshoot.
How the Troubleshooting Workbench Works
- You can select only the object that you are investigating, or include several upstream and downstream relationships by increasing the scope. As you increase the scope, more objects are displayed in the inventory tree.
- You can select a custom scope to include objects of your choice. Click Custom to open an interactive window where you use the pointer to visually rearrange your objects, view relationships and add peers to modify the relationships. To see details about the object, place the pointer for a few seconds above the object. You can reset a custom scope to start all over again.
- You can use the drop-down menu to narrow down the type of objects displayed.
The default time range is two hours, and thirty minutes before the alert triggered when the context is alert based, or one hour before the current time, when the context is object based. You can select a different time range, up to seven days, using the date and time controls.
The potential evidences are based on Events, Property Changes, and Anomalous Metrics which are displayed on the right of the Troubleshooting Workbench change in the Potential Evidence tab. Information in these sections is displayed as cards.
- Events
- Displays events, based on a change in the metrics. Events for metrics that have breached the usual behavior, and major events that have occurred within the selected scope and time are displayed. The cards are based on dynamic thresholds for a metric, which is calculated based on historical and incoming data.
- Property Changes
- Displays important configuration changes that occurred within the selected scope and time. Both single and multiple property changes are displayed. For multiple property changes, you can view the latest and previous changes.
- Anomalous Metrics
- Metrics which have shown drastic changes within the selected scope and time. Ranks the results based on the degree of change. The most recent anomalous metric based on a time-sliced comparison in the current time range is given the highest weightage.
You can explore more details about any of the cards displayed in the Troubleshooting Workbench by clicking the card pop-out option. You can close a card and it is no longer displayed in the Troubleshooting Workbench. To load the cards again, click Go in the Time Range.
When you pin a metric, it appears in the Metrics tab of the Troubleshooting Workbench. You can perform further investigation on the metric in the Metrics tab. You can compared the pinned metrics with other metrics displayed in the tab. You can close the pinned metrics and browse other metrics for specific objects.
Similarly, the Alerts and Events tabs are where you investigate the potential evidences further. You can filter and group alerts. If you want to focus on the alerts for a specific object in your selected scope, you can clear all the alerts and then click the object in the scope. You can view logs in the Logs tab, and launch VMware Aria Operations for Logs for further investigation of the logs.
