Random Alerts and Errant Notifications

[KSBTech]

RE: DCE 8.1.1

We get random alerts that DCE lost communication with a device, even though I can launch to the device from within DCE and there are no alerts on the device itself. Requesting a device scan does not make the alert go away and neither does rebooting the NMC on the device. The only effective way to get rid of these is to reboot the DCE server. And, unfortunately, every time I reboot the server, I then get tons of notifications from it about FTP logins to my devices and successful config.ini downloads. These issues have not been unique to the current build; it's been buggy like this for some time. When will these nuisance bugs get squashed?

[Cory_McDonald]

Hello @KSBTech,

I'm going to separate this into two different issues, the first being that you are getting notifications based on the notifications that you are receiving after reboot about file transfers.  These must be configured on the NMC itself to send notifications when these actions occur.  You can modify these to not send an email if you choose by logging into the NMC interface and going to: Configuration > Notification > Event Actions > By Event.

The events that you are looking to configure would be found within the System Events heading.  This would allow you to disable those notifications from sending emails, but still log them in the event log.

For the second issue, if the communication lost events "stick" and never clear until a DCE reboot, I would recommend starting with an SNMPwalk from DCE's web interface.  If that walk does not work, there is usually either a device or network issue at that time.

the server may be having some performance issues or some other issue unique to device communication.  I would recommend reaching out to technical support with the following information:

• DCE Serial Number
• DCE MAC Address
• Device Specific Information (for devices having the lost communication issues) such as Model & Firmware
• Capture Log Files (likely will need to wait for technical support to send an upload link)
• If the server is a VM, please provide VM resources (CPU, RAM, hard drives)

Kind Regards,

Cory

[KSBTech]

Thanks, Cory. So from your explanation, I gather that all of the events I'm seeing after a DCE reboot are legitimate actions that DCE is doing every time it is rebooted? It is logging into most/all devices and downloading config files on a random few? It's supposed to do that?

[Cory_McDonald]

Hello @KSBTech,

Data Center Expert will at times reach out to the end-devices to pull in a config.ini file.  I am not 100% sure of all of the triggers of this action, but a reboot could be one of them.

Update:  I ran a quick test and was able to see that upon a reboot there were some of my devices that had the config.ini file pulled.  This is likely a condition to ensure proper communication to certain device types and I would say that it is expected behavior.

Kind Regards,

Cory

[KSBTech]

Hi Cory,

I appreciate your response and the testing you did. I agree it's probably expected or known behavior, I'm just not sure I agree that it is correct behavior if it is decidedly random. If it pulled configs from all devices, I'd say it's by design, but random ones, not all of them, seems strange. Who knows? It's just a bit annoying as it creates a lot of unnecessary alert noise.

[Cory_McDonald · Accepted solution]

Hello @KSBTech,

I was able to get some more information on this.  Upon a reboot DCE is getting config.ini files for each unique device configuration type.  Once DCE pulls a config.ini file that also applies to some other devices, those other devices will not have their config.ini files pulled.  So although this may appear to randomly select devices (likely based on next to be polled for each configuration type), it is expected behavior.

Kind Regards,

Cory

[KSBTech]

Understood. Thanks again.