Cisco CCNP Troubleshooting Data Center Infrastructure (300-615 DCIT) v1.2

For IT leaders: When a production fabric degrades, the cause can sit in networking, compute, virtualization, or storage — and storage is often overlooked. This course gives IT teams a repeatable, divide-and-conquer troubleshooting method across Nexus, MDS, UCS, and ACI. The goal is faster root-cause isolation during high-visibility incidents and less reliance on escalation.

Role fit: Assign this course to experienced data center and network engineers. It is a troubleshooting course, not an introduction. Learners should already have hands-on configuration or management experience with data center infrastructure, or have completed the DCCOR (350-601) training. Each protocol section opens with only a brief refresher.

Time investment: Plan for about 54 hours across 65 skills per learner. Topics include OSPFv2 and OSPFv3, multiprotocol BGP, PIM multicast, HSRP, VRRP, vPC, VXLAN EVPN, ACI, UCS, Fibre Channel, EEM, Intersight, and Terraform CLI. Team Leads can stage the course by technology domain.

Change-management note: The instructor is clear that troubleshooting skill comes from keyboard time. Budget lab access before assigning the course. Learners can use Nexus virtualized platforms, the UCS Platform Emulator, the Cisco ACI Simulator, or their own environment where appropriate. Each skill ends with a troubleshooting or configuration challenge, so learners apply what they learned before moving on.

When a critical application slows down, the root cause could sit in the network, compute, virtualization, or storage layer. The instructor notes he has seen far more storage-related slowness than network or compute issues. This course teaches IT teams to work through those incidents with a documented, step-by-step process instead of guesswork. Engineers practice divide-and-conquer, a technique suited to data centers because many problems live at Layer 1 and Layer 2.

Each skill ends with a hands-on troubleshooting or configuration challenge, so engineers have done the work before they face it in production.

• Fewer traffic black holes during upstream failures: Engineers troubleshoot first-hop redundancy and adjacent switching technologies, including FHRPs, RSTP, LACP, and vPCs, so failover behavior is easier to validate and correct.
• Faster fault isolation in modern data center fabrics: Teams practice packet-flow mapping and troubleshooting in data center environments, helping them narrow issues across switching, routing, and fabric components.
• More reliable multicast and storage services: Engineers diagnose common PIM pitfalls, such as missing source-specific multicast range definitions. They also troubleshoot Fibre Channel logins, FSPF routing, and buffer credits.
• Confident support across ACI, UCS, and automation: Teams troubleshoot ACI tenants and logical constructs using the ACI Simulator, isolate UCS blade and rack server issues, and work with EEM and Terraform-driven workflows.

For IT Directors, the result is engineers who can lead high-visibility incidents with less escalation.

Knowledge

• How to apply structured troubleshooting methods in the data center, including divide-and-conquer, across network, compute, virtualization, and storage domains
• How OSPF adjacencies and costs, PIM sparse mode, and source-specific multicast behave on NX-OS, and where they commonly fail
• How FHRP object tracking works, and why decrement values, priority values, and preemption decide failover and failback
• How RSTP, LACP, and vPC operate, and how packets flow through a VXLAN EVPN spine-leaf fabric, including BUM, unicast, and L3 VNI traffic
• How Cisco ACI physical and logical models fit together, including tenants, VRFs, bridge domains, and endpoint groups, and how UCS VIC adapters and Fibre Channel services fit into data center operations
• How automation tools such as Embedded Event Manager and Terraform fit into data center troubleshooting and orchestration

Ability

• Isolate root causes by controlling variables, such as separating storage from compute and virtualization when diagnosing slow applications
• Troubleshoot OSPF adjacencies, PIM and SSM range misconfigurations, and upstream indirect failures that black-hole traffic behind an FHRP
• Diagnose RSTP, LACP, and vPC issues from the NX-OS CLI
• Trace packet flows through a VXLAN EVPN leaf-spine fabric to find forwarding problems
• Troubleshoot ACI fabric operations, UCS storage networking, and Fibre Channel login and routing issues
• Build EEM policies that run automated actions and use Terraform CLI as part of data center orchestration workflows