ibm system storage n series autosupport overview

7/26/2019 IBM System Storage N Series Autosupport Overview

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IBM SystemStorage N seriesAutosupportOverview

Autosupport is a sophisticated, event-driven logging agent featured in the Data ONTAP operatingsystem inside IBM System Storage N series storage systems that continuously monitors the health ofyour system. It keeps a watchful eye on a multitude ofpreset conditions.

How does Autosupport work?

The Autosupport feature triggers the automatic sending ofnotification messages to one or more

customer-specified e-mail addresses and to IBM Service and Support. These notifications can alertrecipients to potential problems with the N series storage system. As necessary, IBM Service and Supportwill contact customers based on the contact information in the customers record to help resolve potentialsystem problems.

Interaction with mail hosts

Because N series storage systems do not function as mail hosts, they rely on another host at thecustomer site that listens on the SMTP port (25) to send mail. Therefore, Autosupport requires atleast one host reachableby an N series storage system that runs an SMTP server or a mailforwarder, such as the sendmail program.

After an occurrence of an event, an Autosupport notification is sent to IBM Service and SupportNetwork, via HTTPS or HTTP to IBMby a direct connection to the predefined location specified

in Data ONTAP.Subject line of Autosupport e-mail messages

The subject line of the notification messages sent by the Autosupport mechanism contains a textstring that identifies the reason for the notification. The subject also contains a relativeprioritization of the message, using syslog severity levels from DEBUG to EMERGENCY. Themessages and other information in the notification shouldbe used to check on the problem beingreported.

The format of the subject line is as follows:

System Notificationfrom (message)

Short notification messages for urgent events

The system can also be configured to send a short alert notification containing only the reason forthe alert to these recipients. The short e-mail messages contain the reason for the notification inthe subject line and the time of failure. These messages are triggered only by specific urgentevents. This feature is useful for system administrators who read e-mail messages onalphanumeric pagers.

Recipients of Autosupport e-mail messages

Customers can specify up to five e-mail recipient addresses for standard Autosupport notification.

Technical Support response

When IBM Service and Support receives an alert Autosupport notification, it takes correctiveaction to resolve the problem. So instead ofhaving to wait for a customer to call and report a


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problem, IBM Service and Support initiates a case and then contacts the customer to furtherinvestigate the situation or to provide a corrective action to the customer.

Cluster considerations

The Autosupport notification messages from an N series storage system in a cluster are different from the

Autosupport notification messages from a standalone N series storage system in the following ways:v The subject line in the Autosupport notification messages from an N series storage system in a clusterreads Cluster notification instead ofSystem notification.

v The Autosupport notification messages from an N series storage system in a cluster containinformation about the N series storage systems partner, such as the partner system ID and the partnerhost name.

v In takeover mode, ifyou reboot the live N series storage system, two Autosupport notificationmessages will be sent, notify the e-mail recipients of the reboot. The live N series storage system sendsone message; the failed N series storage system sends the other message.

v The live N series storage system sends an Autosupport notification message after it completes thetakeover process.

How to configure Autosupport on an N series storage system

The Autosupport daemon is enabledby default on the N series storage systems with Data ONTAPversions 7.1H2 and later. The Autosupport options control how the N series storage system sendsautomatic status messages. Autosupport options can be set from FilerView or from the command lineusing the Option commands.

autosupport.cifs.verbose

Ifon, includes CIFS session and share information in Autosupport messages. Ifoff, those sections areomitted. The default is off.

autosupport.content

The type ofcontent that the Autosupport notification should contain. Allowable values are complete andminimal. The default value is complete. The minimal option allows the delivery ofa sanitized andsmaller version of the Autosupport, at the cost of reduced support from IBM. Please contact IBM Serviceand Support ifyou feel you need to use the minimal option. The complete option is the traditional (anddefault) form ofAutosupport. If this option is changed from complete to minimal then all previous andpending Autosupport messages will be deleted under the assumption that complete messages should notbe transmitted.

autosupport.dafs.verbose

Ifon, includes more detailed DAFS information in Autosupport messages. Ifoff, this detail is omitted.The default is off.

autosupport.doit

Triggers the Autosupport daemon to send an Autosupport notification immediately. A text word enteredas the option is sent in the notification subject line and shouldbe used to explain the reason for thenotification.

autosupport.enable

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Enables/disables the Autosupport notification features. The default is on to cause Autosupportnotifications to be sent. This option will override the autosupport.support.enable option.

autosupport.from

Specifies the sender of the automatic message. The information entered in this field shouldbe the e-mailaddress of the person whom IBM contacts after receiving an automatic message.

autosupport.local.nht_data.enable

Enables/disables the NHT data Autosupport to be sent to the recipients listed in the autosupport.tooption. NHT data is the binary, internal log data from each disk drive, and in general, cannot be parsedby anyone other than IBM. There is no customer data in the NHT Autosupport. The default for thisoption is off.

autosupport.mailhost

Defines a list ofup to 5 mail host names. Enter the host names as a comma-separated list with no spacesin between. The default is an empty list.

autosupport.minimal.subject.id

Defines the type of string that is used in the identification portion of the subject line whenautosupport.content is set to minimal. Allowable values are systemid and hostname. The default issystemid.

autosupport.noteto

Defines the list of recipients for Autosupport.

autosupport.nht_data.enable

Enables/disables the generation of the NHT data Autosupport. Default is off

autosupport.retry.count

Number of times to try resending the mail before giving up and dropping the mail. Minimum is 5;maximum is 4294967295 ; The default is 15.

autosupport.retry.interval

Time in minutes to delaybefore trying to send the Autosupport again. Minimum is 30 seconds,maximum is 1 day. Values may end with s, m or h to indicate seconds, minutes or hours respectively,ifno units are specified than input is assumed to be in seconds. The default value is 4m.

autosupport.support.enable

Enables/disables the Autosupport notification to IBM Service and Support. The default is on to causeAutosupport notifications to be sent directly to IBM Service and Support as describedby theautosupport.support.transport option.

autosupport.support.proxy

Allows the setting ofan http based proxy ifautosupport.support.transport is https or http.

autosupport.support.to

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This option is read only; it shows where Autosupport notifications to IBM are sent ifautosupport.support.transport is smtp.

autosupport.support.transport

Allows setting the type ofdelivery desired for Autosupport notifications that are destined for IBMService and Support. Allowed values are https, http (for direct webbased posting) or smtp (for

traditional e-mail). The default value is https.

autosupport.support.url

This option is read only; it shows where Autosupport notifications to IBM Service and Support are sent ifautosupport.support.transport is https or http.

autosupport.throttle

Enables Autosupport throttling. When too many Autosupports are sent in too short a time, additionalmessages of the same type will be dropped. Valid values for this option are on or off. The default valuefor this option is on.

autosupport.to

Defines the list of recipients for the Autosupport e-mail notification. Up to 5 e-mail addresses areallowed. Enter the addresses as a comma-separated list with no spaces in between. The default is anempty list.

Contents of Autosupport notification messages

Each message generatedby Autosupport contains the following types of information:

v Date and time stamp of the message

v Data ONTAP software version

v System ID of the N series storage system

v Host name of the N series storage system

v Software licenses enabled for the N series storage system

v Product serial number

v SNMP contact name and location (if specified in /etc/rc)

v Contents of the messages log

v Output of the following console commands (some commands are applicable only to the licensedprotocols):

sysconfig -v

options

ifconfig -a nfsstat -c

cifs stat (included ifCIFS is licensed)

cifs sessions (included ifCIFS is licensed)

cifs shares (included ifCIFS is licensed)

httpstat

df

df -i

snap

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sched

sysconfig -r

contents of/etc/messages

contents of/etc/serialnum

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Data ONTAP is a registered trademark ofNetwork Appliance, Inc. in the United States, and/or othercountries.

Printed in USA - First Edition

January 2006

Copyright International Business Machines Corporation 2006. All rights reserved.

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ibm system storage n series autosupport overview

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