IBM Support

Collecting data: Read first for Guardium Appliances and Guardium STAPs on all platforms

Question & Answer


Question

For every problem, collecting data can aid in problem determination and save time resolving Problem Management Records (PMRs). Gathering this data before calling IBM support will help you understand the problem and save time analyzing the data. This document will help answer the question - "Which information should I collect?"

Answer

Collecting data early, even before opening the PMR, helps IBM® Support quickly determine if:


    1. Symptoms match known problems (rediscovery).
    2. There is a non-defect problem that can be identified and resolved.
    3. There is a defect that identifies a workaround to reduce severity.
    4. Locating root cause can speed development of a code fix.

IBM® Support have built (and continue to build) a large volume of technotes that cover specific problems that you may come across whilst using Guardium products. These can be found via searches on the Internet using keywords/error messages you may see.

As well as the technotes IBM® Support have provided a means for you to gather diagnostic information for the Guardium products that can be analysed to help identify problems.

Gathering Specific Information

Guardium Appliances have a series of "must_gather" commands that can be run when logged into the appliance via the user cli - or in later versions from the GUI. Each "must_gather" command collates a set of diagnostic files ready for you and IBM® Support to analyse


Topic
Appliance Must Gather


must_gather commands
commandexplanation / when to use
    support must_gather system_db_info
    DB space and system space information
    support must_gather purge_issues
    purging problems and space problems
    support must_gather audit_issues
    audit runs failing
    support must_gather agg_issues
    for Aggregator merge problems
    support must_gather cm_issues
    for any Central Manager problems
    support must_gather alert_issues
    alerts are not firing
    support must_gather miss_dbuser_prog_issues
    reports show incorrect DB User Name / Source Program
    support must_gather sniffer_issues
    slow machine / not collecting all expected data
    support must_gather backup_issues
    backup / restore problems
    support must_gather scheduler_issues
    if any scheduled jobs do not fire as expected
    support must_gather patch_install_issues
    if any patch installations fail
    support must_gather network_issues
    any network problem - eg can't ping
    support must_gather ocr_issues
    for Optim Workload Replay only
    support must_gather datamining_issues
    datamining issues
    support must_gather app_issues
    for any problem - allows you to set debugger and capture a trace as you reproduce the problem

STAP must gather for the DB Server



'Slon' captures - These are useful when you can reproduce a problem where DB User Names or other data is not captured as expected - You may have a report that does not show expected data and the slon capture is useful for IBM to have and replay in-house to help diagnose.

SLON captures




Submitting information to IBM Support

Once you have collected your information, you can begin Problem Determination through the product Support web page, or simply submit the diagnostic information to IBM support. Use the document below for instructions on submitting your files to IBM DB2 Support.

Submitting diagnostic information to IBM Technical Support for problem determination


Further Reading / Useful Links

Setting the Correct PMR Severity
Deployment Guide - Best Practices for Guardium Deployment

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Document Information

Modified date:
16 June 2018

UID

swg21693937

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