Manage System

Call Home in UCS Overview

Call Home provides an email-based notification for critical system policies. A range of message formats are available for compatibility with pager services or XML-based automated parsing applications. You can use this feature to page a network support engineer, email a Network Operations Center, or use Cisco Smart Call Home services to generate a case with the Technical Assistance Center.


Important

Call Home does not use a secure protocol. It is disabled by default.

The Call Home feature can deliver alert messages containing information about diagnostics and environmental faults and events.

The Call Home feature can deliver alerts to multiple recipients, referred to as Call Home destination profiles. Each profile includes configurable message formats and content categories. A predefined destination profile is provided for sending alerts to the Cisco TAC, but you also can define your own destination profiles.

When you configure Call Home to send messages, Cisco UCS Manager executes the appropriate CLI show command and attaches the command output to the message.

Cisco UCS delivers Call Home messages in the following formats:

  • Short text format which provides a one or two line description of the fault that is suitable for pagers or printed reports.

  • Full text format which provides fully formatted message with detailed information that is suitable for human reading.

  • XML machine-readable format that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Adaptive Messaging Language (AML) XML Schema Definition (XSD). The AML XSD is published on the Cisco.com website. The XML format enables communication with the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center.

For information about the faults that can trigger Call Home email alerts, see the Cisco UCS Faults and Error Messages Reference.

The following figure shows the flow of events after a Cisco UCS fault is triggered in a system with Call Home configured:

Figure 1. Flow of Events after a Fault is Triggered

Flowchart showing events that can occur after a fault is triggered in a Cisco UCS domain


Important

Call Home is configured as Off by default. It is a non-secure feature, and must be explicitly enabled.

Call Home Considerations and Guidelines

How you configure Call Home depends on how you intend to use the feature. The information you need to consider before you configure Call Home includes the following:

Destination Profile

You must configure at least one destination profile. The destination profile or profiles that you use depends upon whether the receiving entity is a pager, email, or automated service such as Cisco Smart Call Home.

If the destination profile uses email message delivery, you must specify a Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server when you configure Call Home.

Contact Information

The contact email, phone, and street address information should be configured so that the receiver can determine the origin of messages received from the Cisco UCS domain.

Cisco Smart Call Home sends the registration email to this email address after you send a system inventory to begin the registration process.

If an email address includes special characters, such as # (hash), spaces, or & (ampersand), the email server might not be able to deliver email messages to that address. Cisco recommends that you use email addresses which comply with RFC2821 and RFC2822 and include only 7bit ASCII characters.

IP Connectivity to Email Server or HTTP Server

The fabric interconnect must have IP connectivity to an email server or the destination HTTP server. In a cluster configuration, both fabric interconnects must have IP connectivity. This connectivity ensures that the current, active fabric interconnect can send Call Home email messages. The source of these email messages is always the IP address of a fabric interconnect. The virtual IP address assigned to Cisco UCS Manager in a cluster configuration is never the source of the email.

Smart Call Home

If Cisco Smart Call Home is used, the following are required:

  • An active service contract must cover the device being configured.

  • The customer ID associated with the Smart Call Home configuration in Cisco UCS must be the CCO (Cisco.com) account name associated with a support contract that includes Smart Call Home.

Cisco UCS Faults and Call Home Severity Levels

Because Call Home is present across several Cisco product lines, Call Home has its own standardized severity levels. The following table describes how the underlying Cisco UCS fault levels map to the Call Home severity levels. You need to understand this mapping when you configure the Level setting for Call Home profiles.

Table 1. Mapping of Faults and Call Home Severity Levels

Call Home Severity

Cisco UCS Fault

Call Home Meaning

(9) Catastrophic

N/A

Network-wide catastrophic failure.

(8) Disaster

N/A

Significant network impact.

(7) Fatal

N/A

System is unusable.

(6) Critical

Critical

Critical conditions, immediate attention needed.

(5) Major

Major

Major conditions.

(4) Minor

Minor

Minor conditions.

(3) Warning

Warning

Warning conditions.

(2) Notification

Info

Basic notifications and informational messages. Possibly independently insignificant.

(1) Normal

Clear

Normal event, signifying a return to normal state.

(0) debug

N/A

Debugging messages.

Configuring Call Home

Procedure

Step 1

In the Navigation pane, click Admin.

Step 2

Expand All > Communication Management > Call Home.

Step 3

In the Work pane, click the General tab.

Step 4

In the Admin area, complete the following fields to enable Call Home:

Important 

Call Home is configured as Off by default. It is a non-secure feature, and must be explicitly enabled.

Name Description

State field

This can be one of the following:

  • Off—Call Home is not used for this Cisco UCS domain.

  • On—Cisco UCS generates Call Home alerts based on the Call Home policies and profiles defined in the system.

Note 

If this field is set to On, Cisco UCS Manager GUI displays the rest of the fields on this tab.

Switch Priority drop-down list

This can be one of the following:

  • Alerts

  • Critical

  • Debugging

  • Emergencies

  • Errors

  • Information

  • Notifications

  • Warnings

Throttling field

Indicates whether the system limits the number of duplicate messages received for the same event. This can be one of the following:

  • On—If the number of duplicate messages sent exceeds 30 messages within a 2-hour timeframe, then the system discards further messages for that alert type.

  • Off—The system sends all duplicate messages, regardless of how many are encountered.

  1. In the State field, click On.

    Note 

    If this field is set to On, Cisco UCS Manager GUI displays the rest of the fields on this tab.

  2. From the Switch Priority drop-down list, select one of the following levels:

    • Alerts

    • Critical

    • Debugging

    • Emergencies

    • Errors

    • Information

    • Notifications

    • Warnings

    For a large Cisco UCS deployment with several pairs of fabric interconnects, this field enables you to attach significance to messages from one particular Cisco UCS domain, so that message recipients can gauge the priority of the message. This field may not be as useful for a small Cisco UCS deployment, such as a single Cisco UCS domain.

Step 5

In the Contact Information area, complete the following fields with the required contact information:

Name Description

Contact field

The main Call Home contact person.

Enter up to 255 ASCII characters.

Phone field

The telephone number for the main contact.

Enter the number in international format, starting with a + (plus sign) and a country code. You can use hyphens but not parentheses.

Email field

The email address for the main contact.

Cisco Smart Call Home sends the registration email to this email address.

Note 

If an email address includes special characters, such as # (hash), spaces, or & (ampersand), the email server might not be able to deliver email messages to that address. Cisco recommends that you use email addresses which comply with RFC2821 and RFC2822 and include only 7bit ASCII characters.

Address field

The mailing address for the main contact.

Enter up to 255 ASCII characters.

Step 6

In the Ids area, complete the following fields with the identification information that Call Home should use:

Tip 

If you are not configuring Smart Call Home, this step is optional.

Name Description

Customer Id field

The Cisco.com ID that includes the contract numbers for the support contract in its entitlements.

Enter up to 510 ASCII characters.

Contract Id field

The Call Home contract number for the customer.

Enter up to 510 ASCII characters.

Site Id field

The unique Call Home identification number for the customer site.

Enter up to 510 ASCII characters.

Step 7

In the Email Addresses area, complete the following fields with email information for Call Home alert messages:

Name Description

From field

The email address that should appear in the From field on Call Home alert messages sent by the system.

Reply To field

The return email address that should appear in the To field on Call Home alert messages sent by the system.

Step 8

In the SMTP Server area, complete the following fields with information about the SMTP server where Call Home should send email messages:

Name Description

Host (IP Address or Hostname) field

The IPv4 or IPv6 address, or the hostname of the SMTP server.

Note 

If you use a hostname rather than an IPv4 or IPv6 address, you must configure a DNS server. If the Cisco UCS domain is not registered with Cisco UCS Central or DNS management is set to local, configure a DNS server in Cisco UCS Manager. If the Cisco UCS domain is registered with Cisco UCS Central and DNS management is set to global, configure a DNS server in Cisco UCS Central.

Port field

The port number the system should use to talk to the SMTP server.

Enter an integer between 1 and 65535. The default is 25.

Step 9

Click Save Changes.

Enabling Call Home

This step is optional. You only need to enable Call Home if you disabled it before you began the firmware upgrades.

Procedure

Step 1

In the Navigation pane, click Admin.

Step 2

Expand All > Communication Management > Call Home.

Step 3

In the Work pane, click the General tab.

Step 4

In the Admin area, click On in the State field.

Note 

If this field is set to On, Cisco UCS Manager GUI displays the rest of the fields on this tab.

Step 5

Click Save Changes.

Disabling Call Home

This step is optional.

When you upgrade a Cisco UCS domain, Cisco UCS Manager restarts the components to complete the upgrade process. This restart causes events that are identical to service disruptions and component failures that trigger Call Home alerts to be sent. If you do not disable Call Home before you begin the upgrade, you can ignore the alerts generated by the upgrade-related component restarts.

Procedure

Step 1

In the Navigation pane, click Admin.

Step 2

Expand All > Communication Management > Call Home.

Step 3

In the Work pane, click the General tab.

Step 4

In the Admin area, click Off in the State field.

Note 

If this field is set to Off, Cisco UCS Manager hides the rest of the fields on this tab.

Step 5

Click Save Changes.