vSAN Troubleshooting Dashboard
Empower developers with end-to-end visibility from build to production.
LEAD WITH CLARITY, NOT COMPLEXITY
Before this redesign, VI Admins spent significant time interpreting health checks, digging through knowledge base articles, and filing support tickets. I led in-depth research to uncover friction points in their troubleshooting workflow. The new dashboard experience brought clarity by surfacing what issues matter most, why they're happening, and how to resolve them faster.
Complex Domain
Cross-functional Collaboration
Design Process
MY ROLE
Staff Product Designer
COMPANY
VMware/Broadcom
IMPROVING ISSUE VISIBILITY AND RESOLUTION SPEED
Final vSAN cluster health dashboard showing root cause context and resolution steps.
TICKET REDUCTION
16%
Fewer GSS tickets after launch
ALERT RESOLUTION
42%
Alerts resolved directly without support
MEET THE PRIMARY USER
“When a health check fails, I don’t want to dig through these articles just to know what’s wrong.”
Anita - VI Admin
San Jose, CA
Manages hundreds of ESXi servers and vSAN clusters across complex data centers. Ensures uptime, performance, and storage efficiency while juggling troubleshooting, tickets, and cross-team coordination.
What she cares?
Reliable, resilient infrastructure
Fast issue resolution with clear context
Proactive alerting with fewer false positives
Challenges I face:
Health alerts lack actionable details
Fragmented troubleshooting across Skyline & KBs
Repeated tickets for already-resolved issues
Hard to view historical trends across clusters
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
PAIN POINTS IDENTIFIED THROUGH CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
vSAN works well for provisioning, but when something breaks, it’s hard to know where to start looking.
VI Admin | VMware Horizon
Ray Hollister
When alerts pop up, I spend hours jumping between pages and articles just to understand the issue.
VI Admin | VMware Horizon
Joe Stevenson
Managing clusters is simple, but troubleshooting feels scattered and slows me down during incidents.
Tanzu Application
Josh Adams
CURRENT EXPERIENCE
WHY VI ADMINS FEEL FRUSTRATED EVERY DAY
No Clear Starting Point
Receive multiple alerts from teammates and email systems.
Dive into the vSAN UI hoping for clarity — and find none.
Too Much Noise
Health alerts appear in a long, unprioritized list.
KB articles are often outdated or fragmented.
Forced to Escalate
With no clear guidance, VI Admins guess what to fix.
Most issues end up with GSS, flooding support with tickets.
DESIGN WORKSHOP SESSIONS
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL ALIGNMENT FOR ROADMAP DEFINITION
Why it mattered:
Different teams had conflicting views of “cluster health.” We needed a shared understanding to define MVP goals.
What I did:
- Ran a cross-functional workshop using a shared Miro board
- Aligned Product, Eng, Sales, and Support on priorities
- Defined a phased roadmap starting with Skyline MVP
The result:
A single planning session aligned multiple orgs and clarified delivery scope.
HOW I APPROACHED THE PROBLEM
COLLABORATE WITH CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
Brought clarity to troubleshooting by untangling alert noise and highlighting the true source of failure.
Collaborating
Partnered with architecture team to map root causes.
Helped reduce noise from cascading health check failures.
Understanding User Priorities
Mapped failures to what VI Admins actually care about.
Kept design focused on performance, uptime, and efficiency.
Shared Mental Model
Created a visual map of failure impact with Product & Eng.
Aligned teams on which issues to prioritize first.
DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
SHOW KNOWLEDGE (KB) ARTICLES
Exploration 1
Pros & Cons
🟢
Health Checks - Tailored to Anita’s role
🟢
Knowledge Based Articles appear inline
🟠
May take time to read
FINALIZED DESIGN OPTION1: SIMPLIFIED GUIDED TROUBLESHOOTING
SIMPLIFIED GUIDED TROUBLESHOOTING
Cluster Health updates in real-time — enabling operators to monitor, prioritize, and resolve issues through a simplified, guided workflow.
USER RESEARCH
WHO WE TALKED TO AND WHY IT MATTERED
We engaged real-world VI Admins to ensure the insights reflected real troubleshooting behaviors.
CUSTOMER TYPE
Mid to Large Enterprises
USAGE PROFILE
vSAN Cluster (1+), 1+ Year Usage, v6.0+
USERS TESTED
12 VI Admins, Multi-Continent
RESEARCH ANALYSIS
RESEARCH ANALYSIS DOWNLOAD
Selection based on real-world vSAN admins to ensure actionable insights.
FINAL DESIGNS
BASED ON USER RESEARCH
With engineering and product teams, aligning on what was feasible within existing resource constraints. We scoped the work across near-term, mid-term, and long-term priorities, and implemented the MVP accordingly.
TO SUMMARIZE
EMPATHY MAPPING
USER NEEDS
Discovered key troubleshooting challenges for VI Admins through user interviews, discovery sessions, and contextual inquiries.
PRIMARY USER
VI ADMIN
Mapped Anita’s goals, pain points, and motivations to streamline troubleshooting steps and reduce resolution time.
DESIGN GOAL
IMPROVE EXPERIENCE
Simplified troubleshooting workflows so VI Admins can resolve alerts quickly and depend less on GSS support.
MEASURE SUCCESS
PRODUCT VALUE
Released features that resolved 42% of alerts directly and reduced GSS tickets by 16% after release.
Developer Experience
Troubleshooting Dashboard
Predictive Maintenance
About Raj
vSAN Troubleshooting Dashboard
Help VI Admins resolve issues quickly with focused, meaningful data.
LEAD WITH CLARITY, NOT COMPLEXITY
Before this redesign, VI Admins spent significant time interpreting health checks, digging through knowledge base articles, and filing support tickets. I led in-depth research to uncover friction points in their troubleshooting workflow. The new dashboard experience brought clarity by surfacing what issues matter most, why they're happening, and how to resolve them faster.
Complex Domain
Cross-functional Collaboration
Design Process
MY ROLE
Staff Product Designer
COMPANY
VMware/Broadcom
IMPROVING ISSUE VISIBILITY AND RESOLUTION SPEED
Final vSAN cluster health dashboard showing root cause context and resolution steps.
TICKET REDUCTION
16%
Fewer GSS tickets after launch
ALERT RESOLUTION
42%
Alerts resolved directly without support
MEET THE PRIMARY USER
Anita - VI Admin
San Jose, CA
Manages hundreds of ESXi servers and vSAN clusters across complex data centers. Ensures uptime, performance, and storage efficiency while juggling troubleshooting, tickets, and cross-team coordination.
What she cares about?
Reliable, resilient infrastructure
Fast issue resolution with clear context
Proactive alerting with fewer false positives
Challenges I face:
Health alerts lack actionable details
Fragmented troubleshooting across Skyline & KBs
Repeated tickets for already-resolved issues
Hard to view historical trends across clusters
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
PAIN POINTS IDENTIFIED THROUGH CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
vSAN works well for provisioning, but when something breaks, it’s hard to know where to start looking.
VI Admin | VMware Horizon
Ray Hollister
When alerts pop up, I spend hours jumping between pages and articles just to understand the issue.
VI Admin | VMware Horizon
Joe Stevenson
Managing clusters is simple, but troubleshooting feels scattered and slows me down during incidents.
Tanzu Application
Josh Adams
CURRENT EXPERIENCE
WHY VI ADMINS FEEL FRUSTRATED EVERY DAY
No Clear Starting Point
Receive multiple alerts from teammates and email systems.
Dive into the vSAN UI hoping for clarity — and find none.
Too Much Noise
Health alerts appear in a long, unprioritized list.
KB articles are often outdated or fragmented.
Forced to Escalate
With no clear guidance, VI Admins guess what to fix.
Most issues end up with GSS, flooding support with tickets.
DESIGN WORKSHOP SESSIONS
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL ALIGNMENT FOR ROADMAP DEFINITION
Why it mattered:
Different teams had conflicting views of “cluster health.” We needed a shared understanding to define MVP goals.
What I did:
- Ran a cross-functional workshop using a shared Miro board
- Aligned Product, Eng, Sales, and Support on priorities
- Defined a phased roadmap starting with Skyline MVP
The result:
A single planning session aligned multiple orgs and clarified delivery scope.
HOW I APPROACHED THE PROBLEM
COLLABORATE WITH CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
Brought clarity to troubleshooting by untangling alert noise and highlighting the true source of failure.
Collaborating
Partnered with architecture team to map root causes.
Helped reduce noise from cascading health check failures.
Understanding User Priorities
Mapped failures to what VI Admins actually care about.
Kept design focused on performance, uptime, and efficiency.
Shared Mental Model
Created a visual map of failure impact with Product & Eng.
Aligned teams on which issues to prioritize first.
DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
SHOW KNOWLEDGE (KB) ARTICLES
Exploration 1
Pros & Cons
🟢
Health Checks - Tailored to Anita’s role
🟢
Knowledge Based Articles appear inline
🟠
May take time to read
Finalized Design Option1: Simplified Guided Troubleshooting
SIMPLIFIED GUIDED TROUBLESHOOTING
Cluster Health updates in real-time — enabling operators to monitor, prioritize, and resolve issues through a simplified, guided workflow.
USER RESEARCH
WHO WE TALKED TO AND WHY IT MATTERED
We engaged real-world VI Admins to ensure the insights reflected real troubleshooting behaviors.
CUSTOMER TYPE
Mid to Large Enterprises
USAGE PROFILE
vSAN Cluster (1+), 1+ Year Usage, v6.0+
USERS TESTED
12 VI Admins, Multi-Continent
RESEARCH ANALYSIS
RESEARCH ANALYSIS DOWNLOAD
Selection based on real-world vSAN admins to ensure actionable insights.
TO SUMMARIZE
EMPATHY MAPPING
USER NEEDS
Discovered key troubleshooting challenges for VI Admins through user interviews, discovery sessions, and contextual inquiries.
PRIMARY USER
VI ADMIN
Mapped Anita’s goals, pain points, and motivations to streamline troubleshooting steps and reduce resolution time.
DESIGN GOAL
IMPROVE EXPERIENCE
Simplified troubleshooting workflows so VI Admins can resolve alerts quickly and depend less on GSS support.
MEASURE SUCCESS
PRODUCT VALUE
Released features that resolved 42% of alerts directly and reduced GSS tickets by 16% after release.
Developer Experience
Troubleshooting Dashboard
Predictive Maintenance
About Raj
vSAN Troubleshooting Dashboard
Empower developers with end-to-end visibility from build to production.
LEAD WITH CLARITY, NOT COMPLEXITY
Before this redesign, VI Admins spent significant time interpreting health checks, digging through knowledge base articles, and filing support tickets. I led in-depth research to uncover friction points in their troubleshooting workflow. The new dashboard experience brought clarity by surfacing what issues matter most, why they're happening, and how to resolve them faster.
Complex Domain
Cross-functional Collaboration
Design Process
MY ROLE
Staff Product Designer
COMPANY
VMware/Broadcom
MEET THE PRIMARY USER
Anita - VI Admin
San Jose, CA
Manages hundreds of ESXi servers and vSAN clusters across complex data centers. Ensures uptime, performance, and storage efficiency while juggling troubleshooting, tickets, and cross-team coordination.
What she cares?
Reliable, resilient infrastructure
Fast issue resolution with clear context
Proactive alerting with fewer false positives
Challenges I face:
Health alerts lack actionable details
Fragmented troubleshooting across Skyline & KBs
Repeated tickets for already-resolved issues
Hard to view historical trends across clusters
“When a health check fails, I don’t want to dig through three dashboards just to know what’s wrong.”
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
PAIN POINTS IDENTIFIED THROUGH CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
vSAN works well for provisioning, but when something breaks, it’s hard to know where to start looking.
VI Admin | VMware Horizon
Ray Hollister
When alerts pop up, I spend hours jumping between pages and articles just to understand the issue.
VI Admin | VMware Horizon
Joe Stevenson
Managing clusters is simple, but troubleshooting feels scattered and slows me down during incidents.
Tanzu Application
Josh Adams
CURRENT EXPERIENCE
WHY VI ADMINS FEEL FRUSTRATED EVERY DAY
No Clear Starting Point
Receive multiple alerts from teammates and email systems.
Dive into the vSAN UI hoping for clarity — and find none.
Too Much Noise
Health alerts appear in a long, unprioritized list.
KB articles are often outdated or fragmented.
Forced to Escalate
With no clear guidance, VI Admins guess what to fix.
Most issues end up with GSS, flooding support with tickets.
DESIGN WORKSHOP SESSIONS
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL ALIGNMENT FOR ROADMAP DEFINITION
Why it mattered:
Different teams had conflicting views of “cluster health.” We needed a shared understanding to define MVP goals.
What I did:
- Ran a cross-functional workshop using a shared Miro board
- Aligned Product, Eng, Sales, and Support on priorities
- Defined a phased roadmap starting with Skyline MVP
The result:
A single planning session aligned multiple orgs and clarified delivery scope.
HOW I APPROACHED THE PROBLEM
COLLABORATE WITH CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
Brought clarity to troubleshooting by untangling alert noise and highlighting the true source of failure.
Collaborating
Partnered with architecture team to map root causes.
Helped reduce noise from cascading health check failures.
Understanding User Priorities
Mapped failures to what VI Admins actually care about.
Kept design focused on performance, uptime, and efficiency.
Shared Mental Model
Created a visual map of failure impact with Product & Eng.
Aligned teams on which issues to prioritize first.
DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
SHOW KNOWLEDGE (KB) ARTICLES
Exploration 1
Pros & Cons
🟢
Health Checks - Tailored to Anita’s role
🟢
Knowledge Based Articles appear inline
🟠
May take time to read
FINALIZED DESIGN OPTION1: SIMPLIFIED GUIDED TROUBLESHOOTING
SIMPLIFIED GUIDED TROUBLESHOOTING
Cluster Health updates in real-time — enabling operators to monitor, prioritize, and resolve issues through a simplified, guided workflow.
USER RESEARCH
WHO WE TALKED TO AND WHY IT MATTERED
We engaged real-world VI Admins to ensure the insights reflected real troubleshooting behaviors.
CUSTOMER TYPE
Mid to Large Enterprises
USAGE PROFILE
vSAN Cluster (1+), 1+ Year Usage, v6.0+
USERS TESTED
12 VI Admins, Multi-Continent
RESEARCH ANALYSIS
RESEARCH ANALYSIS DOWNLOAD
Selection based on real-world vSAN admins to ensure actionable insights.
TO SUMMARIZE
EMPATHY MAPPING
USER NEEDS
Discovered key troubleshooting challenges for VI Admins through user interviews, discovery sessions, and contextual inquiries.
PRIMARY USER
VI ADMIN
Mapped Anita’s goals, pain points, and motivations to streamline troubleshooting steps and reduce resolution time.
DESIGN GOAL
IMPROVE EXPERIENCE
Simplified troubleshooting workflows so VI Admins can resolve alerts quickly and depend less on GSS support.
MEASURE SUCCESS
PRODUCT VALUE
Released features that resolved 42% of alerts directly and reduced GSS tickets by 16% after release.
Developer Experience
Troubleshooting Dashboard
Predictive Maintenance
About Raj
vSAN Troubleshooting Dashboard
Help VI Admins resolve issues quickly with focused, meaningful data.
LEAD WITH CLARITY, NOT COMPLEXITY
Before this redesign, VI Admins spent significant time interpreting health checks, digging through knowledge base articles, and filing support tickets. I led in-depth research to uncover friction points in their troubleshooting workflow. The new dashboard experience brought clarity by surfacing what issues matter most, why they're happening, and how to resolve them faster.
Complex Domain
Cross-functional Collaboration
Design Process
MY ROLE
Staff Product Designer
COMPANY
VMware/Broadcom
IMPROVING ISSUE VISIBILITY AND RESOLUTION SPEED
Final vSAN cluster health dashboard showing root cause context and resolution steps.
TICKET REDUCTION
16%
Fewer GSS tickets after launch
ALERT RESOLUTION
42%
Alerts resolved directly without support
MEET THE PRIMARY USER
“When a health check fails, I don’t want to dig through these articles just to know what’s wrong.”
Anita - VI Admin
San Jose, CA
Manages hundreds of ESXi servers and vSAN clusters across complex data centers. Ensures uptime, performance, and storage efficiency while juggling troubleshooting, tickets, and cross-team coordination.
What she cares about?
Reliable, resilient infrastructure
Fast issue resolution with clear context
Proactive alerting with fewer false positives
Challenges I face:
Health alerts lack actionable details
Fragmented troubleshooting across Skyline & KBs
Repeated tickets for already-resolved issues
Hard to view historical trends across clusters
CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
PAIN POINTS IDENTIFIED THROUGH CONTEXTUAL INQUIRY
vSAN works well for provisioning, but when something breaks, it’s hard to know where to start looking.
VI Admin | VMware Horizon
Ray Hollister
When alerts pop up, I spend hours jumping between pages and articles just to understand the issue.
VI Admin | VMware Horizon
Joe Stevenson
Managing clusters is simple, but troubleshooting feels scattered and slows me down during incidents.
Tanzu Application
Josh Adams
CURRENT EXPERIENCE
WHY VI ADMINS FEEL FRUSTRATED EVERY DAY
No Clear Starting Point
Receive multiple alerts from teammates and email systems.
Dive into the vSAN UI hoping for clarity — and find none.
Too Much Noise
Health alerts appear in a long, unprioritized list.
KB articles are often outdated or fragmented.
Forced to Escalate
With no clear guidance, VI Admins guess what to fix.
Most issues end up with GSS, flooding support with tickets.
DESIGN WORKSHOP SESSIONS
CROSS-FUNCTIONAL ALIGNMENT FOR ROADMAP DEFINITION
Why it mattered:
Different teams had conflicting views of “cluster health.” We needed a shared understanding to define MVP goals.
What I did:
- Ran a cross-functional workshop using a shared Miro board
- Aligned Product, Eng, Sales, and Support on priorities
- Defined a phased roadmap starting with Skyline MVP
The result:
A single planning session aligned multiple orgs and clarified delivery scope.
HOW I APPROACHED THE PROBLEM
COLLABORATE WITH CROSS-FUNCTIONAL TEAMS
Brought clarity to troubleshooting by untangling alert noise and highlighting the true source of failure.
Collaborating
Partnered with architecture team to map root causes.
Helped reduce noise from cascading health check failures.
Understanding User Priorities
Mapped failures to what VI Admins actually care about.
Kept design focused on performance, uptime, and efficiency.
Shared Mental Model
Created a visual map of failure impact with Product & Eng.
Aligned teams on which issues to prioritize first.
DESIGN EXPLORATIONS
SHOW KNOWLEDGE (KB) ARTICLES
Exploration 1
Pros & Cons
🟢
Health Checks - Tailored to Anita’s role
🟢
Knowledge Based Articles appear inline
🟠
May take time to read
FINALIZED DESIGN OPTION1: SIMPLIFIED GUIDED TROUBLESHOOTING
SIMPLIFIED GUIDED TROUBLESHOOTING
Cluster Health updates in real-time — enabling operators to monitor, prioritize, and resolve issues through a simplified, guided workflow.
USER RESEARCH
WHO WE TALKED TO AND WHY IT MATTERED
We engaged real-world VI Admins to ensure the insights reflected real troubleshooting behaviors.
CUSTOMER TYPE
Mid to Large Enterprises
USAGE PROFILE
vSAN Cluster (1+), 1+ Year Usage, v6.0+
USERS TESTED
12 VI Admins, Multi-Continent
RESEARCH ANALYSIS
RESEARCH ANALYSIS DOWNLOAD
Selection based on real-world vSAN admins to ensure actionable insights.
TO SUMMARIZE
EMPATHY MAPPING
USER NEEDS
Discovered key troubleshooting challenges for VI Admins through user interviews, discovery sessions, and contextual inquiries.
PRIMARY USER
VI ADMIN
Mapped Anita’s goals, pain points, and motivations to streamline troubleshooting steps and reduce resolution time.
DESIGN GOAL
IMPROVE EXPERIENCE
Simplified troubleshooting workflows so VI Admins can resolve alerts quickly and depend less on GSS support.
MEASURE SUCCESS
PRODUCT VALUE
Released features that resolved 42% of alerts directly and reduced GSS tickets by 16% after release.