Cisco Unified Serviceability

Date: May 25, 2011 By Brion Washington. Sample Chapter is provided courtesy of Cisco Press.
A main section of CUCM is Unified Serviceability. Within in this section, you have access two useful web-based tools and resources that can be crucial to a healthy Unified Communications environment: Alarm Configuration and Traces. Both are discussed here.

Alarm Configuration

The options for configuring Alarms are clearly shown in Figure 3-1. You must select the server and service, and then chose which alarms you want to set up:

  • Configuration (where you configure your alarms)
  • Definitions (provides alarms definitions)
  • Select server
  • Select service
  • Select service group
Figure 3-1

Figure 3-1 Alarm Configuration Page

Alarm destinations are as follows:

  • Local syslogs
  • Remote syslogs
  • SDI (System Diagnostic Interface)
  • SDL (Signal Distribution Layer)

All alarms have a few options in the drop-down list:

  • Emergency: Designates the system is unusable.
  • Alert: Immediate action is required.
  • Critical: Critical issue.
  • Error: An error exists.
  • Warning: Informational warning message.
  • Notice: Significant condition, but normal.
  • Informational: Informational messages.
  • Debug: TAC engineers use these for debugging.

Traces

This section is where you configure the traces that can assist you in troubleshooting. They are trace configurations and troubleshooting traces. You can configure three types of traces: SDI, SDL, and Log4j. The trace configuration option you pick has a big impact on the information you will receive and how much time you will probably spend during problem resolution. You can see what type of traces you can configure by checking out Figure 3-2. The files can be viewed in RTMT:

  • Configuration: Configure traces.
  • Troubleshooting Trace Settings: Set up predefined troubleshooting traces.
Figure 3-2

Figure 3-2 Where and How You Set Up Traces

You are probably wondering how to choose between a trace and troubleshooting trace. The following table lists the main difference between these two.

Traces

Troubleshooting Traces

Minimal information, could miss relevant information

Lots of information, more than is needed to troubleshoot a specific problem

Apply filters

Turns on almost all trace options

Less system impact

Major system impact

Trace types include the following:

  • SDI

    Runtime events for the related software

    IP address

    Time stamp

    Device name

  • SDL

    Call processing from Unified Communications Manager and Cisco CTI Manager Services.

    Used by Cisco TAC engineers. Normal administrators provide this information to them only upon request.

    NOTE

    Traces affect system performance, so use them only for troubleshooting purposes. If you want to practice traces, use a nonproduction system. In addition, SDL traces can be more difficult to read than SDI. Therefore, you usually start with SDI traces to find logs related to CUCM issues.

  • Log4J

    Used for Java applications

To configure a trace, follow these steps:

  1. Select the server.
  2. Select the service group from the drop-down.
  3. Select the service.
  4. Check the trace boxes you want.
  5. Click Save.