How to Enable and Disable the Call Home Feature

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.

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

Enabling 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:

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.

Step 5

Click Save Changes.

What to do next

Ensure that Call Home is fully configured.

For more information on the Call Home feature, see the Cisco UCS System Monitoring Guide.

Disabling 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, 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.

What to do next

For more information on the Call Home feature, see the Cisco UCS System Monitoring Guide.

Creating a Call Home Profile

By default, you must configure the Cisco TAC-1 profile. However, you can also create additional profiles to send email alerts to one or more specified groups when events occur at the level that you specify.

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 Profiles tab.

Step 4

On the icon bar to the right of the table, click +.

If the + icon is disabled, click an entry in the table to enable it.

Step 5

In the Create Call Home Profile dialog box, complete the following information fields:

Name Description

Name field

A user-defined name for this profile.

This name can be between 1 and 16 alphanumeric characters. You cannot use spaces or any special characters other than - (hyphen), _ (underscore), : (colon), and . (period), and you cannot change this name after the object is saved.

Level field

Cisco UCS faults that are greater than or equal to this level trigger the profile. This can be one of the following:

  • Critical

  • Debug

  • Disaster

  • Fatal

  • Major

  • Minor

  • Normal

  • Notification

  • Warning

Alert Groups field

The group or groups that are alerted based on this Call Home profile. This can be one or more of the following:

  • Cisco Tac—Cisco TAC recipients

  • Diagnostic—POST completion server failure notification recipients

  • Environmental—Recipients of notifications about problems with PSUs, fans, etc.

Step 6

In the Email Configuration area, complete the following fields to configure the email alerts:

Name Description

Format field

This can be one of the following:

  • Xml—A machine readable format that uses Extensible Markup Language (XML) and Adaptive Messaging Language (AML) XML schema definition (XSD). This format enables communication with the Cisco Systems Technical Assistance Center.

  • Full Txt—A fully formatted message with detailed information that is suitable for human reading.

  • Short Txt—A one or two line description of the fault that is suitable for pagers or printed reports.

Max Message Size field

The maximum message size that is sent to the designated Call Home recipients.

Enter an integer between 1 and 5000000. The default is 5000000.

For full text and XML messages, the maximum recommended size is 5000000. For short text messages, the maximum recommended size is 100000. For the Cisco TAC alert group, the maximum message size must be 5000000.

Step 7

In the Recipients area, do the following to add one or more email recipients for the email alerts:

  1. On the icon bar to the right of the table, click +.

  2. In the Add Email Recipients dialog box, enter the email address to which Call Home alerts should be sent in the Email field.

    This email address receives Callhome Alerts/Faults.

    After you save this email address, it can be deleted but it cannot be changed.

  3. Click OK.

Step 8

Click OK.

Deleting a Call Home Profile

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 Profiles tab.

Step 4

Right-click the profile you want to delete and choose Delete.

Step 5

Click Save Changes.

Configuring a Call Home Policy


Tip

By default, all Call Home policies are enabled to ensure that email alerts are sent for all critical system events.

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 Policies tab.

Step 4

On the icon bar to the right of the table, click +.

If the + icon is disabled, click an entry in the table to enable it.

Step 5

In the Create Call Home Policy dialog box, complete the following fields:

Name Description

State field

If this field is Enabled, the system uses this policy when an error matching the associated cause is encountered. Otherwise, the system ignores this policy even if a matching error occurs. By default, all policies are enabled.

Cause field

The event that triggers the alert. Each policy defines whether an alert is sent for one type of event.

Step 6

Click OK.

Step 7

Repeat Steps 4 and 5 if you want to configure a Call Home policy for a different type of fault or event.

Deleting a Call Home Policy

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 Policies tab.

Step 4

Right-click the policy that you want to disable and choose Delete.

Step 5

Click Save Changes.