Gathering logs
Logs provide support personnel detailed information about your appliance. You can share these logs with the Support team to resolve issues.
Note:
You can only generate one log package at a time.
The following log packages are available on a Flex appliance:
Appliance OS
This log package includes the Flex Appliance software, high availability, and OS static logs.
Data Collect
This log package includes debugging information for the system. It provides a more complete view of the overall system status, which is helpful for technical support representatives.
As part of a Data Collect package, you can also choose to include the following:
Application instance logs
This option includes the logs for all instances that are running on the selected node.
Advanced logs
These logs are helpful for storage and hardware failures.
Performance
This log package includes performance and configuration data from the appliance and the application instances.
Single application instance (NetBackup version 10.3.0.1 and later)
You can also gather the logs for a single application instance. This option provides a faster way to collect the logs for a specific instance only.
To generate and download an Appliance OS or Data Collect log package
- From the Flex Appliance Console, click the question mark icon in the upper-right corner of the page, then select Diagnostics.
- Click Generate log package.
- By default, the logs mask user information such as hostnames, IP addresses, usernames, etc. The masking process adds additional time to the log collection. If you need to view the user information or want to speed up the log collection, deselect the Enable data masking option.
- Select the node or nodes that you want to view logs for and the log type, then click Generate. Note that the Data Collect logs may take a long time to generate. When the operation is done, the generated log package appears in a table on the Diagnostics page.
- To download the log package, select it in the table and click Download. A pop-up window appears that lets you limit the download bandwidth. Select this option if needed, then click Download to confirm.
To generate and download a Performance log package
- Log in to the Flex Appliance Shell and run one of the following commands:
To generate the log package immediately:
support data-collect performance at=now
To generate the log package later:
support data-collect performance at=<yyyy-MM-dd-HH:mm>
Where <yyyy-MM-dd-HH:mm> is the year, month, day, hour, and minute when you want to generate the log package.
For example, to collect the logs on August 3, 2023 at 6:30 P.M., run the following command:
support data-collect performance at=2023-08-03-18:30
Note:
You can only run or schedule one log generation at a time. To check if any log generations are already scheduled, use the support data-collect list-job command.
- Depending on your environment, the logs take approximately one hour to generate. When they are ready, they appear in the table on the Diagnostics page of the Flex Appliance Console. To access this page from the console, click the question mark in the upper-right corner and select Diagnostics.
- To download the log package, select it in the table and click Download. A pop-up window appears that lets you limit the download bandwidth. Select this option if needed, then click Download to confirm.
Note:
This procedure is available for NetBackup primary and media server instances on version 10.3.0.1 or later and for NetBackup WORM storage server instances on version 20.4 or later. The option to generate the log package still appears for earlier versions of NetBackup, but if you generate a package, it is empty.
To generate and download an instance log package
- From the System topology page of the Flex Appliance Console, navigate to the Application instances section.
- Locate the instance that you want to gather logs for. If it is stopped, click Actions > Start.
- Click Actions > Generate log package.
- By default, the logs mask user information such as hostnames, IP addresses, usernames, etc. The masking process adds additional time to the log collection. If you need to view the user information or want to speed up the log collection, deselect the Enable data masking option.
- Depending on your environment, the logs take a few minutes to generate. You can track the progress from the Activity Monitor.
When the instance logs are ready, they appear in the table on the Diagnostics page of the Flex Appliance Console. To access this page from the console, click the question mark in the upper-right corner and select Diagnostics.
Note:
The instance logs are maintained for six hours after they are generated. After six hours, they are deleted.