Using Diagnostic Tools

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Using Diagnostic Tools Various support tools provide monitoring of errors and faults, configuration information, and troubleshooting for hardware components, including disks. Support Tool Manager HP Support Tool Manager (STM) is a set of tools for HP-UX systems that is used for verifying and troubleshooting system hardware. These tools provide the ability to determine device status, get configuration information, and diagnose hardware problems. These tools are available using a GUI or through commands, and have the flexibility to be invoked automatically at periodic intervals. STM includes the Automatic Configuration Mapper, which provides a graphical view of your hardware configuration using color-coded icons that show device status, as well as logical relationships, such as the peripherals connected to an I/O card. Each icon on the map represents a hardware device. These icons display the device type, device identifier, device path, last active tool, and test status (from the last active tool). From this view, you can launch the other STM tools. Figure 5-7 shows the Automatic Configuration Mapper, which is the main screen of STM. Figure 5-7. STM Automatic Configuration Mapper shows disk hardware devices. The Information tool provides product identity information, product description, hardware path, vendor name, firmware revision, and error log statistics, including read errors, which can be used to trend and anticipate problems. This tool can also be used to track configuration changes. Several other tools under STM perform varying levels of testing to stress a device or determine and diagnose problems: Verifier: Can be invoked on a particular device to verify quickly that the device is connected and functioning properly Exerciser: Stresses a device to help troubleshoot intermittent problems Diagnose: Helps to isolate failures down to the FRU level, so that you can determine whether the selected FRU is failing Note that the Information, Verifier, and Exerciser tools are free, but the Diagnose tool may require the purchase of a special license. The Logtool Utility in STM helps you to format, filter, and extract error information from raw data contained in system logs. The raw data collected by the Logtool includes many of the recoverable errors generated by the operating system, including bus errors, memory errors, and low-priority machine checks. You can use this data to troubleshoot and look for trends in historical information, so that you can fix failures before they become critical. You should use STM in conjunction with the EMS Hardware Event Monitors, because after you receive an EMS event regarding your system hardware, you can run some of the diagnostic tools under STM to diagnose the problem further. HP Predictive Support HP Predictive Support is a high level of support from the Hewlett-Packard customer support team. It provides fault monitoring, trending, and HP Response Center notifications. Predictive Support includes monitoring of system hardware devices for faults. With Predictive Support, you can have Hewlett-Packard proactively monitor your HP-UX systems for you. Predictive Support provides detection of potential problems in your system before the system's availability is noticeably affected. Predictive Support includes both software for hardware monitoring and a link to the HP Response Center. Predictive Support monitors detect failures and predict potential problems. Predictive Support then informs the HP Response Center via e-mail or modem (if allowed) to take any necessary action to prevent unscheduled downtime at the customer. Predictive Support monitors determine potential problems by analyzing patterns in logged errors pertaining to disk drives, such as bad blocks and recoverable I/O errors. Errors are periodically extracted from system log files and other logs. Based on the rule sets, a notification may be sent to the Response Center, which could result in a service call by an HP support engineer to replace a device having sporadic errors before it actually fails. Predictive Support now uses EMS to receive alerts for fibre channel disk devices. EMS Hardware Monitors are used to send alerts as errors and faults are detected. These events are logged and correlated by the Predictive Support monitors.

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