Overview

 Note: This topic was previously named "Troubleshooting Quantum vmPRO Issues." It was renamed to better identify the content.

 

This topic covers the main resources that you can use to troubleshoot issues or errors related to the vmPRO appliance. These are: 

 

• Alerts
• Autosupport Reports
• Support Logs
• Referencing Datastore Cache Files
• Working with Log Rotate

These resources are covered below.

  

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Alerts

Quantum vmPRO alerts are typically posted in the GUI under the Alerts tab. Review the Alerts to see key warnings and errors about important conditions for which an alert has been issued. Quantum vmPRO also sends e-mails to the users who are defined in the Report & Alert Configuration section.

 

Here's a snip of an Alert: 

 

 

 

Typically, when the condition that triggered the alert is resolved, the alert is removed. You can also manually remove an alert by clicking  the X tab to the right of the alert. However, if you manually remove an alert, it will be issued again if the underlining cause is not resolved.

 

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Autosupport Reports

This is the "call home" feature of vmPRO. Reports are sent daily to customers, and are also sent to support@quantum.com or are uploaded by HTTP to Quantum support. Each report contains a few lines from all the logs for key vmPRO appliance services / daemons, from the /var/log/ directory of the appliance.

 

For help in seeing why a given problem occurred, look in the "Log Files" section of the Autosupport Report. This can be useful for issues such as problems creating a VM (virtual machine) snapshot for backup, errors communicating with a hypervisor (ESX server or vCenter server), or difficulty with VM recovery.

 

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Support Logs

If the information from the alerts and the Autosupport Report isn't enough to diagnose the cause of a problem, ask the customer to send the Support Logs. The support logs capture all details of the appliance's performance, including up to six generations of each appliance service log. For example, the messages log would have files called messages and then messages.1 through messages.5 and store log entries for the pancontroller service.

Downloading Support Logs

To get a copy of the support logs, go to the appliance's GUI and select Operations > Gather Support Logs > Create Support Package and then Download Support Package.

 

To upload support logs to Quantum, select Upload Support Logs to Quantum. This sends the logs to Quantum Support. Customers can also download, attach, and send a support package by e-mail.

Useful Files for Troubleshooting

• To troubleshoot snapshot creation and VM backup issues (including SmartMotion backup issues), look at the messages files, and at vm_proxy_fs and datastore_fs.  The messages log contains errors from all other logs (except for the SmartMotion log), so this is usually the best log to look through first.
• To troubleshoot VM recovery issues, look at  import_fs and recovery_fs (for image-level recovery), and recovery_fs_files (for file-level recovery).

Using Support Logs for Troubleshooting

When you analyze the support logs for troubleshooting: 

 

• Make sure you know the general time (useful) or the exact time (even better) when the problem occurred.
• Know the name of the virtual machine that the issue occurred on.
• Find an error message string that is indicative of the problem, then search for it in the support logs.

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Referencing Datastore Cache Files

The Datastore Cache Files are included in the support bundle on a different part of the file tree from the Support Logs. You can use the contents of these files to determine information about the environment’s datastores. A Qwikipedia topic that discusses Datastore Cache Files follows the "Log Descriptions and Locations" topic. Go directly to the Datastore Cache Files topic.

 

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What's Next?

Log Descriptions and Locations >