How to debug & Troubleshoot NMS connectivity problems?

Well, When the NMS/EMS server comes to halt at any point of time, how would you proceed with the analysis?
As per my experience working on three different NMS product, i'd proceed with following steps:
1. Check the connectivity to NMS server using ping from client.
    If this is OK, then go to next step.Else fix the network connectivity issue.
2. Login to the NMS server and check the NMS processes using ps -aef  | grep "name-of-nms-server.*"
    If this is ok, then Go to next step.Else restart the NMS server.
3. Check the NMS log file and see if any errors in log file.
    If this is ok, then go to next step.Else take the corrective actions according to the error information in log.
4. Check the firewall status using " service iptables status"
    If Firewall is not running then go to next step.Else stop the firewall using "service iptables stop"
5. Check if  the /etc/hosts.conf file is corrupted
    If /etc/hosts.conf file is correct then go to next step.Else correct the file(as a reference you can compare the
    file with the another similar configuration server)
6. At this point you must think that this could be environment issue on this particular box.Hence change the    
    NMS server and try out.
7. Still if the problem exists then there is problem with NMS software code.Hence fix the code & try out.

This approach is out of my debugging and troubleshooting experience.Request to the readers to share their approach based on their experience.