Cisco Virtual Security Gateway for VMware vSphere Troubleshooting Guide, Release 5.2(1)VSG2(1.2)
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- Updated:
- June 23, 2013
Chapter: Before Contacting Technical Support
Before Contacting Technical Support
This chapter describes the steps to take before calling for technical support.
This chapter includes the following sections:
- Gathering Information for Technical Support
- Obtaining a File of Core Memory Information
- Copying Files
Note
If you purchased Cisco support through a Cisco reseller, contact the reseller directly. If you purchased support directly from Cisco, contact Cisco Technical Support at this URL: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/support/tsd_cisco_worldwide_contacts.html
Gathering Information for Technical Support
Use this procedure to gather information about your network that you will provide to your customer support representative or Cisco TAC.
Note Required logs and counters are part of volatile storage and do not persist through a reload. Do not reload the module or the switch until you have completed this procedure.
DETAILED STEPS
Step 1 Configure your Telnet or Secure Shell (SSH) application to log screen output to a text file.
Step 2 Set the number of lines that appear on the screen so that pausing is disabled:
Step 3 Display the configuration information needed to troubleshoot your network by entering the show tech-support command.
Step 4 Capture the error codes that appear in your message logs by entering the following commands:
Step 5 Gather your answers to the following questions:
- On which Cisco VSG is the problem occurring?
- Are Cisco Virtual Security Gateway (VSG) software, driver versions, operating systems versions, and storage device firmware in your fabric?
- Are you running ESX and vCenter Server software?
- What is your network topology?
- Did you make any changes to the environment (VLANs, adding modules or upgrades) before or at the time of this event?
- Are there other similarly configured devices that could have this problem but do not?
- Where was this problematic device connected (which switch and interface)?
- When did this problem first occur?
- When did this problem last occur?
- How often does this problem occur?
- How many devices have this problem?
- Were any traces or debug output captured during the problem time? What troubleshooting steps have you tried? Which, if any, of the following tools were used?
– Ethanalyzer, local or remote SPAN
– What was the original Cisco VSG version?
– What is the new Cisco VSG version?
Obtaining a File of Core Memory Information
Cisco customer support engineers often use files from your system for analysis. One such file that contains memory information is referred to as a core dump. The file is sent to a TFTP server or to a flash card in slot0: of the local switch. You should set up your switch to generate this file under the instruction of your TAC representative, and send it to a TFTP server so that it can be e-mailed to TAC.
This example shows how to generate a file of core memory information or a core dump:
Note The filename (indicated by svr15svc_cores) must exist in the TFTP server directory.
Copying Files
You might need to move files to or from the switch. These files may include log, configuration, or firmware files.
The Cisco VSG always acts as a client. For example, an FTP/SCP/TFTP session always originates from the switch and either pushes files to an external system or pulls files from an external system.
The copy CLI command supports 4 transfer protocols and 12 different sources for files.
This example shows the copy options:
This example shows how to use secure copy (SCP) as the transfer mechanism:
This example shows how to copy /etc/hosts from 203.0.113.11 using the user user1, where the destination is hosts.txt:
This example shows how to back up the startup configuration to an SFTP server:
Tip You should back up the startup-configuration file to a server daily and before you make any changes. You could use a short script to be run on the Cisco VSG to perform a save and a backup of the configuration. The script must contain two commands: copy running-configuration startup-configuration and copy startup-configuration tftp://server/name. To execute the script, use the run-script [filename] command.
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