Getting to Know Your Controller

Hi All,

Before you start booing and throwing fruit, I'll be the first to admit, I've been a MAJOR slacker!  I know it's almost been a whole month since my last post so let's make peace and be friends. :-)  Anywho, I suppose this post will be another in the NetApp basics, since the two commands are easily overlooked, but extremely helpful!

Today I'm going to talk about AutoSupport and Sysconfig.

AutoSupport will help turn this unhappy guy into the happy guy below!

Before AutoSupport

After AutoSupport

  

For those that don't know, AutoSupport is NetApp's way of making sure you're controller and disks are happy.  If anything fails AutoSupport will send an email out to NetApp, which will open a case and depending on your support level, a support engineer will be contacting you before you even know anything is wrong!  You can also include other folks in the email, so if you're a system administrator that likes to keep up to date on their environment, you too will get the email.

AutoSupport commands can be found in the System Manager GUI or at the CLI.  For the CLI, they are under "options autosupport" for 7-Mode and under "system node autosupport" for my Clusted ONTAP friends.  You'll need to setup things like your mailhost, who's going to receive them, and than you're ready to go!  Here is a great knowledge base article written by James d'Angelo explaining all the fields and in depth setup steps.

I highly recommend setting this feature up unless your controller doesn't have access to the outside world, or you don't want NetApp to know certain details about your controller.  If you've got questions, contact your account manager, they'll be able to help!

Now how about Sysconfig?  Sysconfig is one of those commands that does so much and asks so little in return.  Say you want to know what's inside your controller, and I mean EVERYTHING!  At the CLI, if you do a "sysconfig -a" in 7-Mode or "system node run -node <nodename> -command sysconfig -a" for my Clustered ONTAP friends.  You will be rewarded with a HUGE amount of information.  ONTAP version, hardware, firmware, what's in each slot, disk drive numbers, etc, etc, etc.  Also a great way to see some of the health statistics of your controller.

So a couple of simple commands that are easily overlooked, but really help to make our lives easier.

Until Next Time!