Dell SupportAssist Version 1.2.1 For OpenManage Essentials Technical White Paper

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2 Monitoring Dell EqualLogic Storage Arrays Using Dell SupportAssist | Version 1.0 | December 2013

THIS WHITE PAPER IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY, AND MAY CONTAIN TYPOGRAPHICAL ERRORS AND

TECHNICAL INACCURACIES. THE CONTENT IS PROVIDED AS IS, WITHOUT EXPRESS OR IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF

ANY KIND.

written permission of Dell Inc. is strictly forbidden. For more information, contact Dell.

Trademarks used in this text:

Dell™, the Dell logo, Dell Boomi™, Dell Precision™ ,OptiPlex™, Latitude™, PowerEdge™, PowerVault™,

PowerConnect™, OpenManage™, EqualLogic™, Compellent™, KACE™, FlexAddress™, Force10™ and Vostro™ are

trademarks of Dell Inc. Other Dell trademarks may be used in this document. Cisco Nexus®, Cisco MDS

®

, Cisco NX-

0S

®

, and other Cisco Catalyst

®

are registered trademarks of Cisco System Inc. EMC VNX

®

, and EMC Unisphere

®

are

registered trademarks of EMC Corporation. Intel

®

, Pentium

®

, Xeon

®

, Core

®

and Celeron

®

are registered trademarks of

Intel Corporation in the U.S. and other countries. AMD

®

is a registered trademark and AMD Opteron™, AMD

Phenom™ and AMD Sempron™ are trademarks of Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. Microsoft

®

, Windows

®

, Windows

Server

®

, Internet Explorer

®

, MS-DOS

®

, Windows Vista

®

and Active Directory

®

are either trademarks or registered

trademarks of Microsoft Corporation in the United States and/or other countries. Red Hat

®

and Red Hat

®

Enterprise

Linux

®

are registered trademarks of Red Hat, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. Novell

®

and SUSE

®

are

registered trademarks of Novell Inc. in the United States and other countries. Oracle

®

is a registered trademark of

Oracle Corporation and/or its affiliates. Citrix

®

, Xen

®

, XenServer

®

and XenMotion

®

are either registered trademarks or

trademarks of Citrix Systems, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. VMware

®

, Virtual SMP

®

, vMotion

®

,

vCenter

®

and vSphere

®

are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States or other

countries. IBM

®

is a registered trademark of International Business Machines Corporation. Broadcom

®

and

NetXtreme

®

are registered trademarks of Broadcom Corporation. Qlogic is a registered trademark of QLogic

Corporation. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming

the marks and/or names or their products and are the property of their respective owners. Dell disclaims proprietary

interest in the marks and names of others.

3 Monitoring Dell EqualLogic Storage Arrays Using Dell SupportAssist | Version 1.0 | December 2013

4 Monitoring Dell EqualLogic Storage Arrays Using Dell SupportAssist | Version 1.0 | December 2013

Table of contents

Introduction ............................................................................................................................................................................................ 5



1



Discovery and inventory .............................................................................................................................................................. 6



1.1



Prerequisites ........................................................................................................................................................................ 6



1.2



Discovery range configuration ........................................................................................................................................ 6



2



Discovering EqualLogic storage arrays .................................................................................................................................... 9



2.1



SNMP configuration ........................................................................................................................................................... 9



3



Configuring the EqualLogic storage array to send alerts to OpenManage Essentials .................................................. 11



4



Alerts in OpenManage Essentials .............................................................................................................................................. 12



4.1



Alert threshold .................................................................................................................................................................... 12



5



Automatic case creation and execution of the collection tool ........................................................................................14



6



Configuring periodic collection ................................................................................................................................................ 15



7



Sending system logs manually (collection on demand) ......................................................................................................16



Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................................................................16



5 Monitoring Dell EqualLogic Storage Arrays Using Dell SupportAssist | Version 1.0 | December 2013

Introduction

Dell SupportAssist is a remote support application providing proactive support capabilities that help

identify and resolve issues faster and more accurately. It integrates with Dell OpenManage Essentials and

enables transparent visibility to your server, storage, and networking infrastructure, and proactively

identifies hardware failures in your IT environment.

SupportAssist is designed with automated proactive features to help streamline support process steps,

maintain your systems’ health, and identify hardware failures faster and more accurately.

The key features of SupportAssist include:

 Remote monitoring for critical hardware alerts.

 Automatic collection of diagnostic logs and configuration information.

 Automatic case creation and alert notifications through email.

 Proactive support from a ProSupport Engineer, who has the information required to start resolving

your case immediately.

SupportAssist gives you more oversight and control over your environment without the hassle of manual

processes and more time. Equipping your OpenManage Essentials server with SupportAssist is voluntary,

and results in improved support, products, and services designed to meet your needs.

OpenManage Essentials interacts with supported devices that are to be monitored and receives SNMP

traps. The SNMP traps are periodically retrieved as alerts by the SupportAssist client. The alerts are filtered

using various policies to decide if the alerts qualify for creating a new support case or updating an existing

support case.

All qualifying alerts are securely sent to the SupportAssist server hosted by Dell, for creating a new support

case or updating an existing support case. After the support case is created or updated, the SupportAssist

client runs the appropriate collection tools on the devices that generated the alerts, and uploads the log

collection to Dell.

The information in the log collection is used by Dell technical support to troubleshoot the issue and

provide an appropriate solution.

This technical white paper provides information about monitoring Dell EqualLogic storage arrays using

Dell SupportAssist. The following are the high-level areas covered:

 Steps to perform discovery and inventory

 Case creation in SupportAssist for an alert

 Execution of the log collection tool

 Configuring periodic collection

 Sending system logs manually

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12 Monitoring Dell EqualLogic Storage Arrays Using Dell SupportAssist | Version 1.0 | December 2013

4 Alerts in OpenManage Essentials

Dell OpenManage Essentials administrators can monitor the health of discovered assets through a

centralized, easy-to-use dashboard and through automated, custom alerts. The dashboard provides an

at-a-glance view and a scoreboard displaying the health and well-being of the infrastructure.

4.1 Alert threshold

The alert threshold specifies under what conditions the alert should cause a support case to be created (or

appended). The syntax resembles a programming method and optionally may take additional arguments

to refine its behavior.

Currently there are two possible values:

 FirstMatch () – The case should be created/appended each time this alert is detected.

 Occurs (count,duration) – The case should be created/appended only when the alert has occurred

so many times within a specified duration.

The duration argument of the Occurs threshold defines a relative time in days, hours, minutes and

seconds and is formatted as dd-hh:mm:ss. The following are some examples of the Occurs threshold and

their descriptions.

Table 1 Examples of Occurs threshold

Example Description

Occurs (5,1-00:00:00) Create/append case if the alert occurs 5 or more times within the previous 1

day

Occurs (3,0-05:00:00) Create/append case if the alert occurs 3 or more times within the previous 5

hours

Occurs (8,1-12:00:00) Create/append case if the alert occurs 8 or more times within the previous

day and a half

Valid duration values – Days: 0 to 365, Hours: 0 to 23, Minutes: 0 to 59, Seconds: 0 to 59

Policies which specify the Occurs () threshold instruct the SupportAssist server to retain the timestamps of

each alert. With each new alert occurrence, the SupportAssist server evaluates if the number of alerts

within the duration exceeds the count, and if so, creates/appends the case. The timestamps are discarded

to ensure the Occurs () threshold will not append the case until an entirely new set of alerts are received

which fulfills the criteria.

13 Monitoring

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Dell SupportAssist Version 1.2.1 For OpenManage Essentials Technical White Paper

Dell SupportAssist Version 1.2.1 For OpenManage Essentials Technical White Paper

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