Table Of Contents

Usage of Cisco Smart Call Home in RME

What is Smart Call Home?

Use of Cisco Call Home by Smart Call Home

Integration of Cisco IOS Features GOLD and EEM into Smart Call Home

Support for Smart Call Home in RME

RME NetConfig Tasks for SCH

Smart Call Home Task

Configuring the Devices with SCH Using RME

Smart Call Home Report Generation

Call Home Configuration and RME NetShow Commandsets

Report on Call Home Configuration for each Device

Usage of Cisco Smart Call Home in RME

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This chapter consists of the following:

•What is Smart Call Home?

•Use of Cisco Call Home by Smart Call Home

•Integration of Cisco IOS Features GOLD and EEM into Smart Call Home

•Support for Smart Call Home in RME

What is Smart Call Home?

Smart Call Home is a new, secure connected service that is currently available on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 devices. It offers proactive diagnostics and real-time alerts on select Cisco devices and provides higher network availability and increased operational efficiency.

Smart Call Home offers higher network availability through proactive, fast issue resolution by:

•Identifying issues quickly with continuous monitoring, real-time, proactive alerts, and detailed diagnostics.

•Anticipating some failures before they occur and providing notification to you or to Cisco TAC (Technical Assistance Center) to allow preventative action to be taken.

•Resolving critical problems faster with direct, automatic access to experts at Cisco TAC.

Smart Call Home offers increased operational efficiency by allowing you to:

•Use staff resources more efficiently by reducing troubleshooting time.

•Generate Service Requests to Cisco TAC automatically, routed to the appropriate support team. This team provides detailed diagnostic information that quickly resolves problems.

Smart Call Home offers fast, web-based access to needed information that allows you to:

•Review all Call Home messages, diagnostics, and recommendations in one place.

•Check Service Request status quickly.

•View the most up-to-date inventory and configuration information for all Call Home devices.

Use of Cisco Call Home by Smart Call Home

The Smart Call Home service provides proactive messaging by capturing and processing Call Home diagnostics and inventory alarms. The Call Home feature on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 devices allows you to configure Call Home profiles that define:

•Events of interest.

•Destination of event and system messages.

•Transport method for event and system messages.

Events of interest have customer-defined rules applied from a profile. These rules specify the action that you need to take for various events.

Some examples of how you can configure a profile could be:

•Allow an individual to be paged at home through a short text e-mail when a major diagnostic failure occurs.

•All environmental events might be sent through HTTPS to a network management stations.

•Generate Call Home messages through HTTPS (or email) to Cisco TAC for specific types of events that will generate a service request to Cisco TAC. This message will also proactively send all needed error information to Cisco TAC for further analysis.

Accessing Cisco Smart Call Home

You can access Cisco Smart Call Home using the following URL:

https://tools.cisco.com/sch/

You should be any of the following to login to Smart Call Home:

•Registered Guest

•Partner

•Reseller

•Registered Customer

Integration of Cisco IOS Features GOLD and EEM into Smart Call Home

The Smart Call Home Service, along with the Call-Home IOS feature on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 device, allows Cisco hardware to send the following information to Cisco TAC.

•Periodic system messages

•Real time system event messages

Call Home messages that are sent periodically, include inventory and configuration information. The inventory and configuration messages are used to generate the Device Report and improve hardware and software quality, by identifying failure trends.

Call Home also uses Syslog messages. Whenever a certain specified event occurs, Syslog messages are sent from the devices to Call Home.

Call Home messages that are generated by system events include diagnostic and environmental messages:

•Diagnostic messages are generated when Generic OnLine Diagnostics (GOLD) failures occur.

For more information on GOLD, see Usage of GOLD in RME.

•Environmental messages, through Embedded Event Manager (EEM), are sent when temperature, power and other types of system related thresholds are crossed. This causes major, minor or recovery alarms.

For more information on EEM, see Usage of Embedded Event Manager in RME.

The information in these messages enable Cisco TAC to provide timely and proactive service to assist you to manage their network.

•For Smart Call Home support, a Cisco Catalyst 6500 device must be running the IOS Software Modularity Image version 12.3(33)SXH image.

•Only Internet Explorer browsers are supported.

Support for Smart Call Home in RME

You can use RME to configure Call Home IOS feature on Cisco Catalyst 6500 devices. This section consists of:

•RME NetConfig Tasks for SCH

•Configuring the Devices with SCH Using RME

•Smart Call Home Report Generation

•Call Home Configuration and RME NetShow Commandsets

RME NetConfig Tasks for SCH

You can configure Call Home IOS feature on the Cisco Catalyst 6500 devices using RME NetConfig tasks. The SCH-specific NetConfig task is Smart Call Home Task

Smart Call Home Task

You can use this RME NetConfig task to configure the RME managed Cisco Catalyst 6500 devices with Call Home.

For more details, see NetConfig System-Defined Tasks Supported by the RME 4.2 Device Categories.

You can enter the details for this task in the Smart Call Home Configuration dialog box. To invoke this dialog box, see Starting a New NetConfig Job.

For the features of system-defined tasks and a description of the features of a system-defined task dialog box, see Understanding the System-defined Task User Interface (Dialog Box).

The fields in the Smart Call Home Configuration dialog box are:

Field/Button	Description
General Configuration
Call Home Service	Select any of the following: •Enable — Enable Smart Call Home service. •Disable — Disables Smart Call Home service. •No Change — No change to Smart Call Home Service.
Contact Email Addresses
Action	Select any of these: •Add — Adds the contact e-mail addresses •Remove — Removes the contact e-mail addresses •No Change — Not to change the contact e-mail addresses. This is the default option.
Contact Email Address	Enter contact email address. You can enter one or more email IDs on a per line basis.
Email Server
Action	Select any of these: •Add — Adds one or more email servers. You can add a maximum of 5 email servers. •Replace — Adds new email servers after removing all the email servers provided previously. •Remove — Removes one or more email servers •No Change —Not to change the email servers. This is the default option.
Email Servers	Enter one or more email servers. Enter each email server on a separate line and specify priority for each of them. The priority can be between 1 and 100.
Sender From Email Address
Action	Select any of these: •Add — Adds a sender email address •Remove — Removes the sender email address •No Change —Not to change the sender email address. This is the default option.
Sender Email Address (from)	Enter a Sender From email address.
Sender Reply-to Address
Action	Select any of these: •Add — Adds a sender reply-to email address •Remove — Removes the sender reply-to email address •No Change —Not to change the sender reply-to email address. This is the default option.
Sender Reply-to Address	Enter a sender reply to email ID.
Install Cisco Security Certificate
Install Cisco Security Certificate	Check to install the HTTP certificate.
Profile Configuration
Profile	Select either: •CiscoTAC-1 Profile Or •Other Profiles
Profile Name	Enter a profile name. This option is activated only if you have selected Other Profiles option in the Profile field.
Activate Profile	Select any of these: •Enable — Activates the selected profile. •Disable — Deactivates the selected profile. •No Change —Not to add or remove a profile. This is the default option
Transport Options
Connect To	Select either: •Cisco.com if you want to connect to Smart Call Home using Cisco.com Or •Transport Gateway, if you want to connect to Smart Call Home using a transport gateway. Or •Other, if you want to connect to Smart Call Home using transport option other than Cisco.com or Transport Gateway. CiscoTAC-1 profile does not support the Transport Gateway and Other option. So this option is not activated when you select CiscoTAC-1 profile.
Transport Details
Transport Method	Select either: •No Change — To not to change the transport settings Or •Email— To use email as the transport method. This option is selected if Transport Gateway is selected as the Connect to option and the HTTPS option is not activated. Or •HTTPS — To use HTTPS as the transport method.
Email Address	Enter the email address, if you have selected Email as the transport method.
HTTPS URLs	Enter the HTTPS URL, if you have selected HTTPS as the transport method.
Alert Groups
Inventory	Select any of the following: •Enable if you want to subscribe to the Inventory Alert Group. •Disable if you do not want to subscribe to the Inventory Alert Group. •No Change if you do not want to subscribe to or unsubscribe from Inventory Alert Groups. This is the default option. If you have selected CiscoTAC-1 Profile, you cannot change the Alert groups or Alert group settings. If you have selected Other Profiles, you can change the Alert groups and Alert group settings.
Periodicity	Specify the periodicity to receive these Inventory alerts. You can select: •Asynchronous — To receive the Inventory alerts on a specified day or time. In other words, not in a periodic manner. •Daily — To receive the Inventory alerts every day •Weekly — To receive the weekly consolidated Inventory alerts. •Monthly— To receive the monthly consolidated Inventory alerts
DOW	DOW refers to Date of Week. This list box is activated only if you select Weekly as the periodicity for receiving the Inventory alerts. Select any of the following week days: •Sun •Mon •Tue •Wed •Thu •Fri •Sat Sun is the default value. For example: Select Tue if you want to receive Inventory alerts on a weekly basis, every Tuesday.
DOM	DOM refers to Date of Month. This list box is activated only if you select Monthly as the periodicity for receiving the Inventory alerts. Select any value from 1 and 31 to receive Inventory alerts every month on that date. Day 1 is the default value. For example: Select 5, if you want to receive Inventory alerts on the 5th day of every month.
Begin Time	Specify the date and time at which you want to receive the Inventory alerts. The format supported is hh:mm The format supported is hh:mm, where hh refers to hours and mm refers to minutes.
Configuration	Select any of the following: •Enable if you want to subscribe to the Configuration Alert Group. •Disable if you do not want to subscribe to the Configuration Alert Group. •No Change if you do not want to subscribe to or unsubscribe from Configuration Alert Groups. This is the default option. If you have selected CiscoTAC-1 Profile, you cannot change the Alert groups or Alert group settings. If you have selected Other Profiles, you can change the Alert groups and Alert group settings.
Periodicity	Specify the periodicity to receive these Configuration alerts. You can select: •Asynchronous — To receive the Configuration alerts on a specified day or time. In other words, not in a periodic manner. •Daily — To receive the Configuration alerts every day. •Weekly — To receive the weekly consolidated Configuration alerts. •Monthly — To receive the monthly consolidated Configuration alerts
DOW	DOW refers to Date of Week. This list box is activated only if you select Weekly as the periodicity for receiving the Configuration alerts. Select any of the following week days: •Sun •Mon •Tue •Wed •Thu •Fri •Sat Sun is the default value. For example: Select Tue if you want to receive Configuration alerts on a weekly basis, every Tuesday.
DOM	DOM refers to Date of Month. This list box is activated only if you select Monthly as the periodicity for receiving the Configuration alerts. Select any value from 1 and 31 to receive Configuration alerts every month on that date. Day 1 is the default value. For example: Select 5, if you want to receive Inventory alerts on the 5th day of every month.
Begin Time	Specify the date and time at which you want to receive the Configuration alerts. The format supported is hh:mm, where hh refers to hours and hh refers to minutes.
Syslog	Select any of the following: •Enable if you want to subscribe to the Syslog Alert Group. •Disable if you do not want to subscribe to the Syslog Alert Group. •No Change if you do not want to subscribe to or unsubscribe from Syslog Alert Groups. This is the default option. If you have selected CiscoTAC-1 Profile, you cannot change the Alert groups or Alert group settings. If you have selected Other Profiles, you can change the Alert groups and Alert group settings.
Severity	Select from any of these severities: •catastrophic •disaster •fatal •critical •major •minor •warning •notification •normal •debugging You will be notified when the selected Syslog severity occurs.
Patterns	Specify a pattern of a Syslog for which you want to receive alerts if that pattern occurs.
Environment	Select any of the following: •Enable if you want to subscribe to the Environmental Alert Group. •Disable if you do not want to subscribe to the Environmental Alert Group. •No Change if you do not want to subscribe to or unsubscribe from Environment Alert Groups. This is the default option. If you have selected CiscoTAC-1 Profile, you cannot change the Alert groups or Alert group settings. If you have selected Other Profiles, you can change the Alert groups and Alert group settings.
Severity	Select from any of these severities: •catastrophic •disaster •fatal •critical •major •minor •warning •notification •normal •debugging You will be notified when the selected environment severity occurs.
Diagnostics	Select any of the following: •Enable if you want to subscribe to the Diagnostics Alert Group. •Disable if you do not want to subscribe to the Diagnostics Alert Group. •No Change if you do not want to subscribe to or unsubscribe from Diagnostics Alert Groups. This is the default option. If you have selected CiscoTAC-1 Profile, you cannot change the Alert groups or Alert group settings. If you have selected Other Profiles, you can change the Alert groups and Alert group settings.
Severity	Select from any of these severities: •catastrophic •disaster •fatal •critical •major •minor •warning •notification •normal •debugging You will be notified when the selected diagnostics severity occurs.
Applicable Devices	Allows you to view the IOS devices in your selection.
Save	Saves the information you have specified.
Reset	Clears all fields and reverts to the default setting.
Cancel	Ignores your changes.

Configuring the Devices with SCH Using RME

You can configure the Call Home IOS feature on Cisco Catalyst 6500 devices using RME NetConfig:

To configure using RME:

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Step 1 Select Resource Manager Essentials > Config Mgmt > NetConfig > NetConfig Jobs.

The NetConfig Job Browser appears.

For the fields in the NetConfig Job Browser, see Browsing and Editing Jobs Using the NetConfig Job Browser.

Step 2 Click Create.

The Devices and Tasks dialog box appears.

Step 3 Select the devices from the Device Selector pane.

See the topic Using RME Device Selector in the section Adding and Troubleshooting Devices Using Device Management.

Step 4 Select Smart Call Home Task, using the Task Selector.

Step 5 Click Next.

Step 6 Select Smart Call Home from the Applicable Tasks pane and click Add Instances.

The Smart Call Home Configuration dialog box appears.

For more information on the fields, see Smart Call Home Task.

Step 7 Set the parameters in the task dialog box and click Save.

To reset the values that you have selected click Reset. Click Cancel to return to the previous dialog box, without saving your changes.

You will see the instance of the task in the Added Tasks pane of the Add Tasks dialog box. The instance appears in this format:

Taskname_n, where Taskname is the name of the task you have added, and n is the number of the instance. For example, the first instance of a Smart Call Home task is Smart Call Home_1.

You can add as many instances as required, for a task.

Step 8 Click Next.

The Job Schedule and Options dialog box appears with these panes:

Pane	Description
Scheduling	Allows you to schedule the job.
Job Options	Allows you to set the job options.

Step 9 Set the schedule for the job, in the Scheduling pane:

Field	Description
Scheduling
Run Type	Select the run type or frequency for the job—Immediate, Once, Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Last Day of Month. If Job Approval is enabled, the Immediate option is not available.
Date	Select the start date for the job.
at	Select the start time for the job from the hour and minute drop-down lists.
Job Info
Job Description	Enter the Job Description. Enter unique descriptions to help you to identify jobs easily. This is mandatory.
E-mail	Enter e-mail addresses to which the job will send status notices. Separate multiple addresses with commas or semicolons. You must configure the SMTP server to send e-mails (Common Services > Server > Admin > System Preferences). If the user who has created the job has a valid e-mail address, an e-mail notification is sent with the user's address in the sender address field, when job is started and completed. If the user who has created the job does not have a valid e-mail address, then the notification e-mails will be sent with the sender address field blank. Notification e-mails include a URL that displays the job details (see Viewing Job Details for the more information about what details are displayed). If you are not logged in, you must log in using the provided login panel to view the job details.
Comments	Enter your comments for the job. Comments appear in job work order and are stored in configuration archive.
Approver Comments	Enter comments for the job approver. This field is displayed only if you have enabled job approval for NetConfig. For more details the section Enabling Approval and Approving Jobs Using Job Approval.
Maker E-mail	Enter the e-mail-ID of the job creator. This field is displayed only if you have enabled job approval for NetConfig. This is a mandatory field. For more details the section Enabling Approval and Approving Jobs Using Job Approval.

Step 10 Set the job options, in the Job Options pane.

Option	Description
Fail on Mismatch of Config Versions	Causes the job to be considered as failed when the most recent configuration version in the configuration archive is not identical to the most recent configuration version that was in the configuration archive when you created the job.
Sync Archive before Job Execution	Causes the job to archive the running configuration before making configuration changes.
Copy Running Config to Startup	Causes the job to write the running configuration to the startup configuration on each device after configuration changes are made successfully. Does not apply to Catalyst OS devices.
Login Username	Enter the Login username. This option is available if you have set the appropriate job password policy in the Configuration Management module. This overrides the credentials that you had entered when you added the device in the Device and Credentials Administration module of Common Services
Login Password	Enter the Login password. This option is available if you have set the appropriate job password policy in the Configuration Management module. This overrides the credentials that you had entered when you added the device in the Device and Credentials Administration module of Common Services.
Enable Password	Enter the Enable password. This option is available if you have set the appropriate job password policy in the Configuration Management module. This overrides the credentials that you had entered when you added the device in the Device and Credentials Administration module of Common Services.
Failure Policy	Select one of these options to specify what the job should do if it does not run on a device. •Stop on failure: If the job does not run on a device, the job is stopped. The database is updated only for the devices on which the job was run successfully. •Ignore failure and continue If the job fails on a device, the job skips the device and continues running on the remaining devices. The database is updated only for the devices on which the job was run successfully. •Rollback device and stop Rolls back the changes on the failed device and stops the job. •Rollback device and continue Rolls back the changes on the failed device and continues the job. •Rollback job on failure Rolls back the changes on all devices and stops the job. Roll back configuration changes to failed device or all devices configured by job (see Configuring a Job to Roll Back on Failure.)
Execution	Specify the order in which the job should run on the devices. •Parallel Allows the job to run on multiple devices at the same time. By default, the job runs on five devices at a time. •Sequential Allows the job to run on only one device at a time. If you select sequential execution, you can click Set Device Order to set the order of the devices. In the Device Ordering dialog box: a. Select a device name b. Click Move Up or Move Down to change its place in the order. c. Click OK to save the current order and close the dialog box or Click Cancel to close the dialog box without making any changes.

Step 11 Click Device Order to view the device order.

The Set Device Order pop-up appears. You can reset the order in which the job should be run on the devices, using the Up and Down arrows.

Step 12 Click Done after re-ordering the devices.

The pop-up closes.

Step 13 Click Next.

The Job Work Order dialog box appears with information about the job policies, the job approval details (if you have enabled Job Approval), the device details, and the task. It also displays details of the CLI commands that will be run on the selected devices as part of this job.

Step 14 Click Finish after you review the details of your job in the Job Work Order dialog box.

A notification message appears along with the Job ID. The newly created job appears in the NetConfig Job Browser.

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Smart Call Home Report Generation

You can use Smart Call Home on Cisco.com to generate various reports.

Before you generate reports, ensure that all devices for which you want to generate report are configured with Call Home IOS feature.

After the devices are configured with Call Home IOS feature, they send Inventory, Syslog, and Configuration messages to Cisco.com at regular intervals.

You can generate two types of reports using Cisco Smart Call Home:

•Device Reports

Use this link to generate a Device report:

https://tools.cisco.com/sch/reports/deviceReport.do

•Call Home History Report

Use this link to generate a Call Home History report:

https://tools.cisco.com/sch/reports/historyLookup.do

Use this link to view the registration status of the device on Cisco.com:

https://tools.cisco.com/sch/modifyDevices.do?step=1

For more information on Smart Call Home and the various reports generated, see the Smart Call Home User Guide at:

http://www.cisco.com/en/US/services/ps2827/ps2978/ps7334/networking_solutions_products_genericcontent0900aecd806f52c2.pdf

Call Home Configuration and RME NetShow Commandsets

RME NetShow allows you to generate reports based on various commandsets.

You can use RME NetShow to generate the Report on Call Home Configuration for each Device

Report on Call Home Configuration for each Device

Use RME NetShow to view the result of Call Home configuration for each device.

The commandset which is used for this purpose is Show Call Home Info. This commandset consists of the following commands:

Show call-home detail

Show call-home statistics

To generate this report:

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Step 1 Select Resource Manager Essentials > Tools > NetShow > NetShow Jobs.

The NetShow Job Browser window appears.

Step 2 Click Create .

The Select Devices and Commandsets window appears.

Step 3 Select the devices from the Device Type Selector.

Step 4 Select Smart Call Home commandset from the Commandset List

Step 5 Enter custom commands in the Custom Commands text area if required.

Step 6 Click Next to continue.

The Set Schedule Options dialog box appears.

Step 7 Enter the following information in the Set Schedule Options dialog box:

Field	Description
Scheduling
Run Type	The run type of the job. The Run Types could be any or all of these, depending on the type of the job: •Immediate—Runs the job immediately. •Once—Once at the specified date and time. •6 -hourly—Every 6 hours, starting from the specified time. •12 -hourly—Every 12 hours, starting from the specified time. •Daily—Daily at the specified time. •Weekly—Weekly on the day of the week and at the specified time. •Monthly—Monthly on the day of the month and at the specified time. •Last day of Month—On the last day of the month at the specified time. The subsequent instances of periodic jobs will run only after the earlier instance of the job is complete. For example, if you have scheduled a daily job at 10:00 a.m. on November 1, the next instance of this job will run at 10:00 a.m. on November 2 only if the earlier instance of the November 1 job has completed. If the 10.00 a.m. November 1 job has not completed before 10:00 a.m. November 2, the next job will start only at 10:00 a.m. on November 3.
Date	Scheduled date and time of the job.
Job Information
Job Description	Enter a description for the job. This is mandatory. You can enter only alphanumeric characters.
E-mail	Enter the e-mail addresses to which the job sends messages at the beginning and at the end of the job. You can enter multiple e-mail addresses; separate these addresses by commas. Configure the SMTP server to send e-mails in the View / Edit System Preferences dialog box (Common Services > Server > Admin > System Preferences). We recommend that you configure the CiscoWorks E-mail ID in the View / Edit System Preferences dialog box (Common Services > Server > Admin > System Preferences). When the job starts or completes, an e-mail is sent with the CiscoWorks E-mail ID as the sender's address.
Comments	Enter your comments for the job. Comments appear in the Job Work Order.
Job Options
Enable Job Password	•If you have enabled the Enable Job Password option and disabled the User Configurable option in the Job Policy dialog box (Resource Manager Essentials > Admin > Config Mgmt > Config Job Policies) enter the device login user name and password and Device Enable password. •If you have enabled the Enable Job Password option and enabled the User Configurable option in the Job Policy dialog box (Resource Manager Essentials > Admin > Config Mgmt > Config Job Policies) either: –Enter the device login user name and password and Device Enable password. The credentials are for contacting the device and not the DCR credentials. Or –Disable the Job Password option in the Set Schedule Options dialog box.
Execution	Specify the order in which the job should run on the devices. •Parallel—Allows the job to run on multiple (up to five) devices at the same time. •Sequential—Allows the job to run on only one device at a time.
Maker Comments	This field appears if you have enabled Job Approval Policies for NetShow. Enter the Maker Comments. See Setting Up Job Approval for more details on enabling Job Approval Policies.
Maker E-mail	This field appears if you have enabled Job Approval Policies for NetShow. Enter the Maker E-mail address. This is mandatory. See Setting Up Job Approval for more details on enabling Job Approval Policies.

Step 8 Click Next.

The View Job Work Order page appears with the Job Work Order.

The Job Work Order contains general information on the job and on the:

•Job policies.

•Job Approval details (if you have enabled Job Approval).

•Device details.

•Command sets and the commands to be executed.

Step 9 Click Finish after you review the details of your job in the Job Work Order.

A message appears, Job ID created successfully.

The newly created job appears in the NetShow Job Browser.

If your job failed and you want to run the same job, click Retry and perform steps 7 through 9 above.

Step 10 Click on the Job ID to view the results of the NetShow job created.

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