Virtual Labs troubleshooting steps - Appsembler

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Virtual Labs troubleshooting steps

When faced with a Virtual Labs issues, there are some common things to check. High priority issues that require Blue team intervention (such as the site being down) should be automatically alerting them anyway, but it can’t hurt to look!

Disclaimer: Not all steps are relevant to every issue. Don’t use this as a process for every time something is wrong in AVL.

Admin site access:

  • Is their Virtual Labs admin site accessible? If No, Call in Blue Team (High priority)


In Swarm Info:

  • Does the number of wharfhouses match the number of Nodes, and is the list of wharfhouse names sequential with no numbers skipped? (wharfhouse-0, wharfhouse-1, wharfhouse-2.. note: numbering on Wharf houses starts at 0) If No, call in Blue Team (High priority)
  • Is the health on all wharfhouses “Healthy” and do they have IP addresses? If No, call in Blue Team (High priority)
  • Is there any Reserved Memory left? If No, let the customer know they need to clean up some learner containers. If they can’t, the Blue team needs to increase their memory. (Note that this may be a good time to review if their containers are within their contractual bounds.)

In Studio:

  • Does the XBlock have the URL of the customer’s AVL site on the bottom? If no, you need to map their Tahoe site to their AVL site.
  • Do the XBlock settings (token, project name) match the project’s values exactly? Check for trailing/leading spaces, misplaced values etc.


In the User Containers dashboard:

  • Can you access any learner containers for that project that have issues? It’ll either load or give a 500 error. If it gives a 500 error, give it to Blue team. (There’s either something wrong with the image, or something wrong on our end, near impossible for us to tell until they dig deeper.)
  • What does the memory usage look like for that container vs the memory allocated in the image settings? If it’s completely maxed out, the container may be out of memory and require more to function. If so, give it to Blue team for a recommendation.
  • Is there anything blatantly obvious screaming at you in the logs for the user container? This may be useful for the customer or Blue team.


In the LMS:

  • Can you start your own container using the project? It’ll either load or give a 500 error. If it gives a 500 error, give it to Blue team.  (There’s either something wrong with the image, or something wrong on our end, near impossible for us to tell until they dig deeper.)