The Hidden Value of VSI$SUPPORT Output
While attending the bootcamp in Malmo this year, I happened to attend the seminar that Homi gave regarding the tool he wrote and maintains, VSI$SUPPORT. If you have time, I suggest you watch the replay of this. The tool can do some interesting things that even I did not know about! As the manager of the support team, I get to hear from customers when they think we could have done something better. More than once, I have heard about our policy to collect an output from the VSI$SUPPORT tool on most calls. When we started this practice, I was also in doubt about the value of this output for calls. But, we adopted the policy and moved forward. Several months later, I can tell you first hand the value of this policy. I am generally a backline resource for some types of calls. When I ask the person seeking my assistance for information about the system or a configuration, they say to me, “I have the vsi$support output, let me look”. Every time I hear a sentence of that nature, I think, thank goodness we are doing this. In the short run, it can seem like overkill when you are logging a call. In the long run, that output can save and has saved a bunch of time when working an issue. We already have a bunch of data! The back and forth emails trying to collect data are cut way down! Time is saved since we already have the data in our hands. Fabulous!
During Homi’s talk, I learned of other uses for the VSI$SUPPORT output. Before a reboot, it is a good practice to generate a vsi$support report. If we look at how often we DON’T reboot in VMS, we can begin to see the prudence of this idea. If a system had not been rebooted in a while, it could come up with some changes – especially if that reboot involved autogen. If you had the vsi$support output, you would be able to quickly compare settings from the current and previous boots. It could save a bit of time.
Another idea from the talk that came out was to attach the running of vsi$support to your regular backups. This way, you would always have a fresh report. And, of course, you could just run a batch job that repeated at some regular interval. It could run the vsi$support report. It was suggested with any of these ideas that the vsi$support reports be stored off of the node from which they came. This way, if that node does not boot, you will still have easy access to that report.
If you are asking how to use this tool, don’t despair! Below is the write up Homi prepared regarding the tool.
Using VSI$SUPPORT for system management tasks
VSI$SUPPORT.COM is a DCL procedure that was written by VMS Software support to get a snapshot of customer systems configuration when they open a call.
The tool takes a snapshot of system information important to assist OpenVMS technical support and customers to diagnose reported problems or identify potential problems. The tool is distributed with OpenVMS and placed in the SYS$MANAGER: directory. However since it is updated frequently, the more recent copy can be found on the VSI Service Platform or on VSI’s web site.
VSI technical support recommends you download the tool and move it to the SYS$MANAGER directory of all your OpenVMS servers. When elevating an issue to VMS Software, including the output of VSI$SUPPORT.COM on the afflicted system is highly recommended.
The information collected is divided in 4 parts :
- system information
- hardware
- networking
- installed products
Using a web browser, you can navigate to each individual topic. The tool does not collect sensitive information like UAF users or a list of network node names. Customers can edit the HTML or text report to remove any information they consider confidential.
Reports can be in HTML or TEXT format, detailed or brief. When invoking the script the parameters are * P1: HTML, TEXT or BOTH (default is HTML) * P2: DETailed (default is Brief report)
Before attaching an .HTML report to an email, it is recommended to rename it with a .HTMTXT extension before zipping it as some firewalls block .HTML files even in a ZIP archive.
Although initially written for VSI support, the tool is also used by VSI Sales to provide quotes or by VSI Professional Services to prepare for a service provision like an OpenVMS upgrade or a performance assessment.
In day to day system management, VSI$SUPPORT can help in many areas: * To generate a detailed report and store it in a safe place before an OS upgrade or a hardware intervention to keep a snapshot of the configuration in case of issues (that should NOT replace an offline backup of the system disk) * Generate daily or weekly reports permitted in many occasions to troubleshoot issues and find when they began. * Generating a report at boot time and at shutdown can help determine system parameter settings, installed product versions and other system configuration changes that have occurred between the system boot and shutdown. For example, a system parameter change might not be written to the permanent database or recorded in the MODPARAMS.DAT file prior to system shutdown causing differences in behavior upon the reboot.
In summary, generating reports using VSI$SUPPORT – that will take usually less than 2 minutes- and keeping them in a safe location may help a lot in troubleshooting system issues.
Tech Support Manager
