Collecting additional data for support cases

When you raise an issue with Customer Support, a support case is initiated that describes the observed behavior. This case is used to track the resolution of the problem. Frequently, you will be asked for information about the state of the appliance, configuration information, logs, record data, and so on.

Collecting additional data

You can collect additional data that Customer Support requests from the Appliance Support page (Administration > Appliance Support).

Based on whether you are using a standalone machine or a cluster, the way you gather additional data differs.

• On a standalone machine: You can directly access the Appliance Support page and collect additional data from the machine itself.
• On a cluster: You can collect additional data of the entire cluster, that is, cluster coordinator and the members of the cluster from the Appliance Support page of any member or the coordinator.

From the Appliance Support page you can do the following:

• Collect BMC Discovery logs between specified dates.
• Collect Target Host Data and session logs for specified IP addresses or ranges.
• Collect Miscellaneous files.
• Create named archives of collected data.
• Download and manage archives of collected data.

The following systems and aspects of the BMC Discovery application create logs which might be useful to Customer Support when diagnosing problems:

• AppServer: used to diagnose UI errors.
• Security: used to track user access and actions.
• Performance: used to diagnose performance problems.
• Discovery: used to diagnose discovery and data quality issues.
• Model: used to diagnose queries or reporting problems.
• Reasoning: used to diagnose discovery and data quality issues.
• Cluster Manager: Used to diagnose cluster problems.
• Integrations: used to diagnose problems with integrations.
• Others: used to diagnose miscellaneous problems, for example, script problems.
• Mainframe provider: used to diagnose mainframe computer discovery problems.
• AppServer Errors used to diagnose UI errors.
• Audit Logs used for general diagnostics and user errors.
• Windows proxies: used to diagnose Windows discovery problems.

The discovery data and logs are also stored on the appliance. These might help Customer Support diagnose discovery problems. Enter the IP Ranges for which you wish to collect data:

• Get session logs: raw discovery data used for diagnosing discovery and data quality issues.
• Record data: used to reproduce discovery problems on test appliances.
• Pool data: used to reproduce discovery problems on test appliances.

The following files and system logs might be useful to Customer Support when diagnosing problems with the appliance:

• Configuration files: used to check the appliance configuration.
• Customer extensions: used to check customer configured extensions.
• Export extensions: used to configure customer configured export extensions.
• System messages: used to diagnose appliance related problems.
• omniNames files: used to check communications configuration.
• Installed packages: used to ensure that the correct packages are installed.
• bash history: used to check the command line history.
• sar logs: used to diagnose performance problems.
• Tripwire reports: used to view these reports.
• Generated rules: used to check the generated rules.
• Report usage: provides information on the type of reports used and the number of times they were used.
• Tomcat output file: used to check the Tomcat configurations.
• Windows proxy configuration files: used to check the configuration of Windows proxies.

Creating an archive of collected data for customer support

You can choose to create an archive containing all information, though this could be very large. You should only do so if Customer Support request it. To do this, click Include Everything, and click create to complete the procedure.

To select and create an archive of collected data:

1. From the Appliance Support page (Administration > Appliance Support), click the Create button. This opens the Create Gather page.
2. In the Name field, enter a name for the archive.
3. In the Description field, enter a description for the archive.
4. To Select BMC Discovery Logs, from the Logs by Date section:
   1. In the From field, select the start date from which you want to collect logs using the drop-down list. You can also use the buttons to select Today, Last 3 days, Last Week, or Last Month.
   2. In the To field, select the end date using the drop-down list.
   3. Using the check boxes, select the log files that Customer Support requested.
5. From the Scan Data section, to select scan data, :
   1. In the IP Ranges field, enter the required addresses in any of the following formats:
      • IPv4 address (for example 192.168.1.100).
      • IPv4 range (for example 192.168.1.100-105, 192.168.1.100/24, or 192.168.1.*) up to a maximum of 256 addresses.
      • IPv6 address (for example fe80::655d:69d7:4bfa:d768).

      • A comma separated list of ranges (IPv4 only) and addresses (for example 192.168.1.100, 192.168.2.*, fe80::655d:69d7:4bfa:d768).

        Note

        If fully qualified domain hostnames (FQDNs) are important where the discovery target addresses include IPv6 addresses, then every IPv6 address that appears in the interface list on the root node (Host, NetworkDevice or SNMPManagedDevice) details page needs to be separately specified in the IP address list on the gather page (as well as any IPv4 addresses).

   2. Record and pool data is pre-selected.  To retrieve session logs for these IP addresses, select the Get session logs check box.

6. From the Cloud Data section, select the Cloud Provider that Customer Support have requested.

7. From the Miscellaneous section, select the additional data that Customer Support has requested.
8. Click Create.
   The selected logs, data, and files are gathered into an archive and saved on the appliance. The archive and information relating to the archive are displayed in a new row of the Gathered Data Files section.

The following information is displayed for each archive:

• Name: the name of the archive. Click this to download the gathered data file.
• Description: the description entered when the archive was created.
• Date: the date that the archive was created.
• Size: the size (in bytes) of the archive.
• User: the user who created the archive.
• State: the state of the archive. This can be: Creating or Complete.
• Summary: to see a list of the archive contents in a popup window, click View.

Retrieving archives to send to customer support

To retrieve an archive, from the Gathered Data Files section of the Appliance Support page, perform the following:

1. Click the name of the archive.
   A file download window specific to your browser type is displayed.
2. Save the compressed file containing the archived data to a location on your file system.

Based on whether you are using a standalone machine or cluster, the content of the compressed file is as follows:

• In a standalone machine, it contains the archived data in a compressed file.

• In a cluster, the file contains a separate compressed archive for each member, bearing the name of the member IP address or hostname (whichever was specified by the user when creating the cluster). Corresponding XML files list the contents of each member archive.

  Note

  The gathered record data for Windows hosts is available only in the compressed file of the member that performed the discovery.

You might be asked by BMC Support to run the tw_health_check tool in the event of an investigation. It will gather some generic configuration, performance and status information helpful to the support process.