IBM Support

Collecting Data for TPC: VMware Hypervisor Problems

Question & Answer


Question

Collecting data documents aid in problem determination and save time resolving Problem Management Records (PMRs).

Cause

Support request for problem determination data.

Answer

Collecting problem data early, even before opening the PMR, helps IBM® Support quickly determine if:

  • Symptoms match known problems (rediscovery).
  • There is a non-defect problem that can be identified and resolved.
  • There is a defect that identifies a workaround to reduce severity.
  • Locating root cause can speed development of a code fix.

Collecting data: Read First table of contents:

Gathering general information
Manually Gathering General Information
Gathering TPC VMware Hypervisor Information
Submitting Information to IBM Support
Online Self-Help Resources
Related Information




Gathering General Information

Entering general information into an electronically-opened PMR (ESR) eliminates waiting on the phone to provide general information to Level 1 support.

Manually Gathering General Information

For all problems, please provide:
  • A detailed description of the problem, including the steps that led to the problem
  • Screenshot showing the problem (if applicable and a screenshot is available)
  • Related error messages

Refer to the next section for additional information that you should collect for the specific agent problem you are experiencing.

Manually Gathering TPC VMware Hypervisor Information

Determine the TPC VMware Hypervisor environment for the problem:
Collect/request the VMware ESX version, and validate for the TPC version using the TPC Supported Products and Platforms document.
Questions to ask:
1. What is the data source used (vCenter? Individual ESX servers?)
2. If ESX servers are they clustered?
3. Is DRS/vMotion enabled?

VMware troubleshooting/diagnostic steps:
1. Connect to the ESX/vCenter (whatever datasource you are using in TPC) via vSphere client. Do a rescan of HBA/VMFS and then see if there are any datastores gray/with error. If you see grayed storage have the customer VMware administrator resolve those issues, then retry the TPC job.
2. Connect to the ESX server via a web browser, then click on "Browse datastores in this host's inventory". Click on datastores and see if you are able to browse. If they take too long or hang, this can cause TPC timeouts.
3. Enable tracing on the TPC device server and recreate the problem to get more detailed information:
a) make a backup copy of <TPC>/device/conf/DataStore.properties
b) edit the file and set:
san.VMManagerMsgLogger.logging=true
san.VMManagerMsgLogger.level=ALL
san.VMManagerTraceLogger.level=ALL
san.VMManagerTraceLogger.logging=true
c) restart the device server, run the job that is failing, then collect the TPC service data

VMware logs:
From the related ESX server, collect the following logs:
1. hostd.log
2. vmkernel.log

TPC device server configuration settings:
Use one of the following options:
1. Collect the TPCDB database table T_RES_CONFIG_DATA by running a repocopy export without history or performance tables (extract and upload just this one table file)
2. Run the 'tpctool catdscfg' command and redirect the output to a file:
cd <TPC>/cli
windows:
tpctool catdscfg -user <tpcadminid> -pwd <hostauthpw> -url localhost:9550 >catdscfg.log
unix:
./tpctool.sh catdscfg -user <tpcadminid> -pwd <hostauthpw> -url localhost:9550 >catdscfg.log

TPC server logs and data:
  1. Collect a screenshot of the problem, details of any error messages, etc.
  2. Run the TPC Serviceability Tool if it is available.
  3. If the serviceability tool is not available, you should manually collect all of the following:
  • the version of TPC as listed in the 'version.txt' file (located in the TPC install directory on the server)
  • log and output files from steps A, B shown below.

A. TPC log and configuration data:
Collect the following files and directories, and package into a .zip or a compressed .tar file (<TPC> = c:\Program Files\IBM\TPC by default on Windows, /opt/IBM/TPC on Unix):
  • <TPC>/config, <TPC>/log, <TPC>/data/config, <TPC>/data/log, <TPC>/device/conf, <TPC>/device/log

B. Operating system environment information:
Windows:
cd c:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\MSInfo
msinfo32 /report c:\msinfo32.log /category all

Submitting Information to IBM Support

After a PMR is open, you can submit diagnostic data to IBM.

If using ESR, update the PMR to indicate that data has been sent.

Online Self-Help Resources

[{"Product":{"code":"SS5R93","label":"IBM Spectrum Control"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU058","label":"IBM Infrastructure w\/TPS"},"Component":"--","Platform":[{"code":"PF002","label":"AIX"},{"code":"PF016","label":"Linux"},{"code":"PF033","label":"Windows"}],"Version":"5.1;5.1.1;5.2;5.2.1;5.2.2;5.2.3;5.2.4;5.2.5","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB26","label":"Storage"}},{"Product":{"code":"SS5R93","label":"IBM Spectrum Control"},"Business Unit":{"code":"BU058","label":"IBM Infrastructure w\/TPS"},"Component":" ","Platform":[{"code":"PF002","label":"AIX"},{"code":"PF016","label":"Linux"},{"code":"PF033","label":"Windows"}],"Version":"4.2;4.2.1;4.2.2","Edition":"","Line of Business":{"code":"LOB26","label":"Storage"}}]

Document Information

Modified date:
22 February 2022

UID

swg21635248