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Troubleshooting with Extract Log Feature on PowerEdge MX
Tech Note by:
Vasantha Kumar
SUMMARY
Dell EMC PowerEdge MX7000
comes with a Management
Module that provides chassis
management. Management
Module supports High
Availability with the help of a
redundant module. An integral
feature of the management
firmware is to keep a detailed
log of events from managed
devices as well as software
events in the management
firmware.
Firmware logs collected from
Management Module
components, which can be
used for troubleshooting, are
grouped together as Extract
Logs. Extract Log saves time
and streamlines technical
support cases.
This 4 page technical white
paper describes a method to
collecting Extract Logs that
can be later used by Technical
Support to troubleshoot any
hardware or firmware issues.
Overview of Extract Logs
Management Module provides an application interface for gathering platform
information that enables support services (tech support) to resolve platform and
system problems.
Management Module consists of various firmware components used for
configuring, controlling and monitoring all hardware in the chassis. Each
firmware component produces debug logs at runtime that are stored internally in
the Management Module. Each debug log is capped and logs are rotated when
configured buffer size is reached (older logs removed to make place for new
ones).
Some of the types of logs collected are:
• REST API query history from user interface
• REST API communication between Management Module and
rest of chassis components
• Firmware and hardware revision information
• Redundancy logs to monitor health of Management Module
• Power management logs that includes power inventory,
allocation and PSU health
• IOM management logs that include inventory, power allocation,
health, etc
• Networking logs that manage communication link between
various chassis components
• Switchover logs that captures reason for last reboot of
Management Module
Management Module firmware code and debug logs have been vetted to never
log username, password and other Personally Identifiable Information (PII). As
an additional safeguard, the collected logs are run through a Log Filter (built in
to Extract Log feature) to detect and remove any PII before archiving.
Extract Log takes several minutes to collect, filter, and archive logs from local
and remote (if present) Management Modules. Management Module creates job
to monitor Extract Log collection progress.
Logs from various firmware components thus collected are archived into a
standard ZIP file. The ZIP file is then saved to a network share (that customer
has pre-configured).