7 Feedback and Support
This chapter contains information about how to provide feedback and contact support for the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance (PCA) product.
Note:
Customers who use Oracle Auto Service Request (ASR) do not need to submit a service request through My Oracle Support for the specific hardware failure scenarios covered by ASR.
To install ASR, see How to Install Auto Service Request (ASR) on Private Cloud Appliance (PCA) 2.4.1 or Later (Doc ID 2560988.1)
Providing Feedback and Reporting Problems
If you need to report an issue and have an Oracle Premier Support Agreement, you should open a case with Oracle Support at https://support.oracle.com/.
If you are reporting an issue, please provide the following information where applicable:
-
Description of the problem, including the situation where the problem occurs, and its impact on your operation.
-
Machine type, operating system release, browser type and version, locale and product release, including any patches you have applied, and other software that might be affecting the problem.
-
Detailed steps on the method you have used, to reproduce the problem.
-
Any error logs or core dumps.
Contacting Oracle Specialist Support
If you have an Oracle Customer Support Identifier (CSI), first try to resolve your issue by using My Oracle Support at https://support.oracle.com/. Your Oracle Premier Support CSI does not cover customization support, third-party software support, or third-party hardware support.
If you cannot resolve your issue, open a case with the Oracle specialist support team for technical assistance on break/fix production issues. The responding support engineer will need the following information to get started:
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Your Oracle Customer Support Identifier.
-
The product you are calling about.
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A brief description of the problem you would like assistance with.
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Any logs or support data you have, see Feedback and Support for details.
If your CSI is unknown, find the correct Service Center for your country (https://www.oracle.com/support/contact.html), then contact Oracle Services to open a non-technical service request (SR) to get your CSI sorted. Once you have your CSI, you can proceed to open your case through My Oracle Support.
Data Collection for Service and Support
When submitting a Service Request (SR), please include an archive file with the relevant log files and debugging information as listed in this section. This information can be used by Oracle Support to analyze and diagnose system issues. The support data files can be uploaded for further analysis by Oracle Support.
Tip:
Collecting support files involves logging in to the command line on components in your Oracle Private Cloud Appliance rack and copying files to a storage location external to the appliance environment, in the data center network. This can only be achieved from a system with access to both the internal appliance management network and the data center network. You can set up a physical or virtual system with those connections, or use the active management node.
The most convenient way to collect the necessary files, is to
mount the target storage location on the system using
nfs
, and copy the files using
scp
with the appropriate login credentials
and file path. The command syntax should be similar to this
example:
# mkdir /mnt/mynfsshare # mount -t nfs storage-host-ip:/path-to-share /mnt/mynfsshare # scp root@component-ip:/path-to-file /mnt/mynfsshare/pca-support-data/
Collecting Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Support Data
Attention:
For more accurate diagnosis of physical server issues, Oracle Support Services
require a system memory dump. For this purpose, kdump
must be installed
and configured on the component under investigation. The entire procedure is described in
the support note with Doc ID 2142488.1. By default, kdump
is
installed on all Oracle Private Cloud Appliance compute nodes and
configured to write the system memory dump to the ZFS Storage Appliance at this location:
192.168.4.100:/export/nfs_repository1/
.
Caution:
For diagnostic data collection, Oracle Support Services recommend that the OSWatcher tool be run for an extended period of time. For general information about the use of OSWatcher, please consult the support note with Doc ID 580513.1. OSWatcher is installed by default on all Oracle Private Cloud Appliance compute nodes.
For diagnostic purposes, Oracle Support Services use a tool called
pca-diag
that automatically collects vital troubleshooting information
from your Oracle Private Cloud Appliance environment. This tool is part of
the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance controller software installed on both
management nodes and on all compute nodes. Its capabilities are described in the "Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Diagnostics Tool" topic of the
Software Components section in the Oracle Private Cloud Appliance Administrator's Guide.
To collect support data from your system, proceed as follows:
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Log in to the active management node as root.
-
Run
pca-diag
with the appropriate command line arguments.Note:
Oracle Support teams may request that the tool be run in a specific manner as part of an effort to diagnose and resolve reported hardware or software issues.
For the most complete set of diagnostic data, run the command with both arguments:
pca-diag ilom vmpinfo
.-
pca-diag ilom
Use this command to detect and diagnose potential component hardware and software problems.
[root@ovcamn05r1 ~]# pca-diag ilom Oracle Private Cloud Appliance diagnostics tool Gathering Linux information... Gathering system messages... Gathering PCA related files... Gathering OS version information... Gathering host specific information... Gathering PCI information... Gathering SCSI and partition data... Gathering OS process data... Gathering network setup information... Gathering installed packages data... Gathering disk information... Gathering ILOM Service Processor data... this may take a while Generating diagnostics tarball and removing temp directory ============================================================================== Diagnostics completed. The collected data is available in: /tmp/pcadiag_ovcamn05r1_<ID>_<date>_<time>.tar.bz2 ==============================================================================
-
pca-diag vmpinfo
Use this command to detect and diagnose potential problems in the Oracle VM environment.
Note:
To collect diagnostic information for a subset of the Oracle VM Servers in the environment, run the command with an additional
servers
parameter, as shown in the example below.[root@ovcamn05r1 ~]# pca-diag vmpinfo servers='ovcacn07r1,ovcacn08r1' Oracle Private Cloud Appliance diagnostics tool Gathering Linux information... Gathering system messages... Gathering PCA related files... Gathering OS version information... Gathering host specific information... Gathering PCI information... Gathering SCSI and partition data... Gathering OS process data... Gathering network setup information... Gathering installed packages data... Gathering disk information... Gathering FRU data and console history. Use ilom option for complete ILOM data.
When the
vmpinfo3
script is called as a sub-process frompca-diag
, the console output continues as follows:Running vmpinfo tool... Starting data collection Gathering files from servers: ovcacn07r1,ovcacn08r1 This process may take some time. Gathering OVM Model Dump files Gathering sosreports from servers The following server(s) will get info collected: [ovcacn07r1,ovcacn08r1] Gathering sosreport from ovcacn07r1 Gathering sosreport from ovcacn08r1 Data collection complete Gathering OVM Manager Logs Clean up metrics Copying model files Copying DB backup log files Invoking manager sosreport
When all files have been collected, the data is compressed into two tarballs. One is from the
pca-diag
tool, whilevmpinfo3
writes a separate tarball with its own specific data.Compressing VMPinfo3 <date>-<time>. ======================================================================================= Please send /tmp/vmpinfo3-<version>-<date>-<time>.tar.gz to Oracle OVM support ======================================================================================= Generating diagnostics tarball and removing temp directory ============================================================================== Diagnostics completed. The collected data is available in: /tmp/pcadiag_ovcamn05r1_<ID>_<date>_<time>.tar.bz2 ==============================================================================
-
-
If necessary, run
pca-diag
, with or without theilom
argument, on some or all compute nodes as well. -
To allow better analysis of physical server issues, for example hanging, crashing or rebooting, also include the system memory dump file (
vmcore
). Refer to the Tip at the start of this section for a convenient way to collect the files.The location of the file is:
<kdump-partition-mount-point>/kdump/<compute-node-ip>-<date>-<time>/vmcore
. The partition and mount point are defined duringkdump
configuration. By default,kdump
writes to192.168.4.100:/export/nfs_repository1/
.For details, please consult the support note with Doc ID 2142488.1.
-
When required, collect the OSWatcher logs from the compute nodes. The default location is
/var/log/oswatcher/archive/
. -
Copy all diagnostic files to a location external to the appliance environment.
Uploading Support Data Files
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If you are still in the process of logging the SR, upload the support data in the Upload Files/Attachments step of the SR.
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If you have already logged the SR and need to upload files afterwards, proceed as follows:
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Log into MOS and open the Dashboard or Service Request tab.
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In the Service Request region, click the SR you want to update.
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In the Update section, select Add Attachment.
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In the pop-up window, select the file for upload, include any notes, and click Attach File.
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If uploading the support data with the SR is not an option, or
for support data files over 2 GB in size, use the FTPS file
upload service from Oracle support at
transport.oracle.com
. Oracle
Support might request that you upload using a different
mechanism.
-
Using an FTPS client, for example FileZilla or WinSCP, access the My Oracle Support File Upload Service
transport.oracle.com
in passive mode. -
Log in with your Oracle Single Sign-On user name and password.
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Select the support data file to upload.
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Select a destination for the file.
Use the directory path provided by Oracle Support.
Typically, the directory path is constructed as follows: "
/upload/issue/<sr_number>/
".The use of a SR number ensures that the file is correctly associated with the service request. Write down the full path to the file and the SR number for future reference in communications with Oracle Support.
-
Upload the file.
When the upload is complete, a confirmation message is displayed.
Note:
If you prefer to use a command-line client, for example cURL,
you typically enter a single command to connect, authenticate
and complete the upload. A cURL command will look similar to
this example: curl -T
<path_to_file> -u
"<user>"
ftps://transport.oracle.com/upload/issue/<sr_number>/
.
For security reasons, it is recommended that you leave the
password out of the command and be prompted to enter the
password.
For detailed information about uploading files to Oracle Support, refer to the support note with Doc ID 1547088.2.