Problem Determination Tool UserGuide

Copyright IBM Corp. 2014 All rights reserved. Licensed Materials / Property of IBM

TPC Health Check Problem Determination Tool (PDT)

Version 1.10.0 Installation and User Reference Guide


Copyright

Information in this document is subject to change without notice. Companies, names, and data used in examples herein are fictitious unless otherwise noted.

Copyright IBM Corp. 2014 All rights reserved. Licensed Materials / Property of IBM US Government Users Restricted Rights - Use, duplication or disclosure restricted by GSA ADP Schedule Contract with IBM Corp. IBM may have patents or pending patent applications, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights covering subject matter in this document. The furnishing of this document does not give you any license to these patents, trademarks, copyrights, or other intellectual property rights except as expressly provided in any written license agreement from IBM. The TPCHC Problem Determination Tool (PDT) software (Software) described and covered in this document is commercial computer software developed exclusively at private expense, and in all respects is proprietary data belonging solely to IBM. The customers right to use, reproduce or disclose the Software acquired under this Agreement is subject to the restrictions of between the Licensee and IBM.


Table of Contents

ABOUT THIS GUIDE....................................................................................................................................................5 PDT OVERVIEW ........................................................................................................................................................6 WHATS NEW IN PDT V1.10.0 ..................................................................................................................................6 INSTALLATION...........................................................................................................................................................6 WORKING WITH THE PROBLEM DETERMINATION TOOL ............................................................................................7 SAN PLAYBOOK......................................................................................................................................................12 RESOLUTION REPORTS AND LOGS ...........................................................................................................................31 RUNNING THE PDT ENGINE FROM COMMAND LINE/INTEGRATION WITH OTHER TOOLS.........................................34 CONNECTING TO THE PDT WEB SERVER.................................................................................................................37


Document Revision History Revision Date Comments Revised By

1.0 06/19/2012 Created Initial Document/Comments from D. Kodjo and Nicolas Druet

Michael ONeill

1.2.0 10/01/2012 Updates to Prerequisite software requirements

Michael ONeill

1.3.0 10/12/2012 Add PDT v130 new capabilities Michael ONeill

1.4.0 03/31/2013 New PDT v140, new SAN Playbook GUI and Workflow

Michael ONeill

1.5.0 06/20/2013 New PDT v150, commenting capabilities, wizard view integration in runbook, and PDF export mechanism.

Michael ONeill

1.6.0 09/12/2013 Add PDT v170 Michael ONeill

1.7.0 12/20/2013 New version PDT v180 Michael ONeill

1.8.0 03/28/2014 New version PDT v190 Michael ONeill

1.9.0 06/27/2014 New version PDTv1.10.0 Michael ONeill

Copyright IBM Corp, 2014 All rights reserved. Licensed Materials / Property of IBM

5

About this Guide

This document describes how to install the Problem Determination Tool (PDT) and the requirements that must be fulfilled in order to get a successful result.

If you have a technical issue that you cannot answer with the provided resources, please contact the Support Center.

By Email:

Send email requests to [email protected] to:

Open cases for Severity 2, 3, or 4 problems;

Track the status of open problem cases;

Ask questions;

Submit enhancements requests.

By Phone:

For severity 1 problems - system production down caused by SAT tools, contact the Support Center using the following toll-free phone numbers:

North America: 1-800-667-6383

Europe:

Germany, Ireland, Italy, and UK: 00-800-6676-3835

All Other European Countries: +1 303-354-5280

Asia-Pacific Region:

Australia: 0011-800-6676-3835

Hong Kong: 001-800-6676-3835

Japan: 010-800-667-63835

South Korea: 002-800-6676-3835

Philippines: 00-800-6676-3835

China: 800 810 1818-5174

Other Countries: +800-667-6383

Alternate number: +1-303-354-5280


6

PDT Overview

The Problem Determination Tool (PDT) is a tool developed to assist the storage administrator in troubleshooting the SAN (Storage Area Network) environment when a device has issues based on inventory from TPC. The PDT is a high-level indicator of health of a device. The PDTs goal is to speed up the time spent during the investigation process and to determine what devices have problems. PDT also allows administrator to document errors with custom information as resolution procedures or external links.

Whats New in PDT V1.10.0

Version 1.10.0 contains the following updates;

Some of the PDT features are now accessible via a web browser, when connected to the PDT web server. In this release, you can access the PDT reports to download or e-mail them.

Installation

The following is the Problem Determination Tools (PDT) installation steps.; The PDT Client applications (PDT Wizard and Playbook Runner) can now be installed separately from the rest of SAT.

Caution: The PDT Client is not backward compatible, which means that: SAT V1.10.0 (and higher) PDT Client doesnt work with SAT V1.8.0 SAT V1.8.0 PDT Client does not work with SAT V1.10.0 (and higher)

There is a separate installer on the CD for the client apps (ProblemDeterminationTool\ClientSetup\setup.exe). Click on setup.exe to begin the installation. Upon successful completion of install, go to the Start menu to launch the PDT Wizard/Playbook Runner


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Working with the Problem Determination Tool

Launch the Wizard from the regular Windows Start button

The first step of the Problem Determination Tool wizard asks for the location of the analysis data.

Allows user to select where to get the data from: locally or on another server where SAT is installed

o Local PDT Data option is enabled only if SAT is installed locally (on the same computer where the PDT Wizard is running)

o Remote PDT Server to be able to connect to a remote server, SAT should be installed on that machine and the web server must be enabled and configured. If the web server was configured to use non-default port (80 by default), you need to enter that port here to be able to connect to the server.


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Some behaviors are different when you use a remote server as your data source:

o Opening reports/log files: The files will open in the default web browser

o Some options are disabled:

send report as e-mail

collect support files

Select Run New Analysis to gather updated PDT information.


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Click on Select from list to display a list of devices and the PDT results from a prior date. Reports can be generated by clicking on the link for the format requested (i.e. pdf, xls, and mef). Right click on any of the report formats provides options such as sending via email.


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Click Next.


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The Devices screen displays devices related to the issue. Select the device analyzed (whether they have issues or not) to display related information and/or right click on a device to browse the problem log related to the device. Click Next.


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The Issues screen shows the issues that were found. Select from the drop down menu to filter group into 3 categories; by Severity, Device or Issue. The bottom section of the screen is used to display information about the test performed. The Alert Segment is the output of the command that caused the test to fail. Click Close to close the PDT dialogue.

SAN Playbook

The SAN Playbook Runner is an application that guides a user to follow a repeatable investigation path. User has the capability to add a comment at each step and save in-progress investigation.


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Upon successful completion of install, go to the Start menu to launch the Playbook Runner application.

The SAN Playbook template includes the official SAN playbook that is designed to be used to perform an investigation.

Once selected, the template instantiate a playbook that will be used by the user to perform the process. User can rename it, edit it, and add comments.


14

Selecting a data source

When starting a playbook from a template, the user is asked the location for the PDT data. The following window will appear:

As in the PDT Wizard, you can select local data or data located on a remote server. In addition, you can choose to continue without using PDT Data at all.

The data source location is saved with the playbook. Different playbooks can use different data sources (or none)


15

Playbook Properties

After selecting the data source, the user is asked to input some (optional) information about the case/customer/etc.. The following window will appear:

The information entered here will be shown in the exported report.

You can go back at any time and change this information via the menu Playbook > Properties


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User navigates step by step responding to question and documenting in the user log tab what is necessary to keep track on the information and investigation need.

*Please note that functions displayed in lower left shown below

Are now displayed as menus:


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PDT Data Server List

The list of servers/hosts using the storage devices is available in the PDT Data window.


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Then server list can be hidden/shown by clicking the Hide Servers/Show Servers button. When you select a server, all devices associated with the server is highlighted.


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As is already the case for devices, you can click on a server and flag it as suspect/not suspect etc. You can at the same time flag the associated devices.


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This information (servers/devices marked as suspect or non-suspect) is saved in the playbook.

PDT Data Issue Filters

You can filter the issue list to show only a subset of the checks that failed. There is a filter drop down list. Selecting one of the build-in filters will update the view to show a subset of the issues.


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.

For advanced users, a custom filter can be entered by selecting the Custom Filter item. The following window will appear. User can enter a custom filter here. The data will be filtered accordingly after clicking OK


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.


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Playbook Step Filtered PDT Data

For some specific steps in the playbook, there is a link to the PDT Data.

Clicking the Show Filtered PDT Data link will open the PDT Data Window, with a filter relevant to the step preselected.


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PDT Data Selecting/Updating the Data Source

From the PDT Data menu, Select Data Source option opens the data source selection window so you can change the data source (to a different server, or to use local data, etc.)

As in the PDTWizard, you can select local data or data located on a remote server. In addition, you can choose to continue without using PDT Data at all.

The data source location is saved with the playbook. Different playbooks can use different data sources (or none)

The PDT Data window is mostly the same as in the previous version:


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Refresh reloads the data from the server.


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Then server list can be hidden/shown by clicking the Hide Servers/Show Servers button. When you select a server, all devices associated with the server is highlighted.

As is already the case for devices, you can click on a server and flag it as suspect/not suspect etc. You can at the same time flag the associated devices.


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This information (servers/devices marked as suspect or non-suspect) is saved in the playbook.

When closing the application, user is asked to save the current playbook.

PDT Data Loading and Saving Playbook Data

When the application is re-launched, the saved playbook can be reopened.

User can go back and change a choice made at an earlier step. When that happens, the user can decide, if he/she wants to save a copy of the existing playbook before the change was made.

Note that user can send via email the saved playbook to another user of the Playbook runner: the file can be loaded locally on any Playbook runner instance.


31

Resolution Reports and Logs

The c:\IBM\TPC-HC\results directory contains the Daily and Monthly results of the TPC-HC runs. The Daily folder contains a directory(s) formatted as YYYY-MM-DD with both the log file and information for each device in a file TPC-HC-report.YYYY-M-D.xls.

The Monthly folder is a zip file with the TPC-HC results for that particular month.


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The Devices folder contains a file for each device name on a Daily or Monthly basis.

Clicking on the device .log file gives you error messages and information to help troubleshoot the root cause of the failure.


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The pdt.log file contains information (trace or debug) about the execution details of PDT. It is located in the same directory as the jar file.


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Running the PDT Engine from Command Line/Integration

with Other Tools

This chapter explains how the PDT can be run as a command line independently of the GUI and use the result for documentation or integration with other tools.

The PDT version is obtained with v option


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Running the jar file with no parameter will display the usage:

Option t is mandatory to successfully run the command. It indicates where the PDT will find the set of data to analyze. All the other options are optional.

A typical run of the PDT with C:\IBM\TPC-HC as TPC-HC home directory but first you need to create the directory where you direct the output such as .\PDTOutput. If -p is not specified, the result is output on the current directory.

The typical case when an issue is reported, is to run TPC Health Check and then analyze the results

The PDT results in the .\PDTOutput directory specified by the p option.


36

The results are 4 XML formatted files located under pdtreports folder; AlertList : contains the list of alerts for all TPC-HC runs DeviceList : contains the list of devices with type and IP for each of TPC-HC runs. Differences : contains all the differences detected in the configuration and run results between past TPC-HC runs. SummaryResults : contains high level descriptions of each TPC-HC runs. TpchcReport.pdf : A pdf file that contains the same level of information

Below is an example of the SummaryResults.xml file.


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Connecting to the PDT Web Server

To connect to the web server, the following info is needed:

PDT web server IP or host name

PDT web server port number (by default 9443, set when PDT is installed)

Windows user/password credentials valid on the server where PDT is installed

Connect your web browser to the PDT web server URL (change address and port number as appropriate):

Note: Make sure to connect via https (secure) protocol. Http is not enabled by default on the web server.

Note: Depending on which SSL certificate has been installed, you may get a security warning. This is normal when using the (default) self-signed certificate. You can safely ignore the warning.

You will then see an authentication form:


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Enter your credentials here. The credentials need to match a Windows user account where the PDT web server is installed.

You will then see the Welcome page:


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Click View Report List to open the Report List view:


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On the left you can see the list of PDT reports. Click the arrows icon to refresh the list manually. Click a date to see the report files available for this date.

You can open a report file by clicking on it, or you can check one or multiple files and send them by email by clicking on the envelope icon:


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Enter a valid email address and a message will be sent with the report files attached to it.

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