3509 - Analyzing NIOS support bundle for Grid details

Scenario

Your colleague from one of the branch offices has requested you to log a support ticket with Infoblox Support. You are aware of the issue from their explanation, but your colleagues have left for a vacation before you could extract the grid details from them. Examine the support bundle they had provided and collect the information required to open a support ticket with Infoblox.

When opening a support ticket with Infoblox Tech Support, the minimal information required include the product line (NIOS in this case), version number, serial number, and other helpful information. In this lab, we walk you through retrieving the required information (version number and serial number) in the first and the second task. The remaining tasks help you extract additional information that could be helpful to the support engineer.

Estimate Completion Time

20 to 30 Minutes

Credentials

Description	Username	Password	URL or IP
Grid Manager UI	admin	infoblox	https://10.100.0.100/

Course References

3008: Troubleshooting Basics in NIOS
3007: Troubleshooting Methodology

Lab Initiation

Access jump-desktop

Once the lab is deployed, you can access the virtual machines required to complete this lab activity. To initiate the lab, click on the jump-desktop tile and login to the Linux UI:

Username: training

Password: infoblox

Initiate lab

To initiate the lab, double-click the Launch Lab icon on the Desktop.

Choose the lab number from the list and click OK.

After clicking OK, you will see a pop-up message with a brief description of the lab task. If the description looks correct, click Yes to continue lab initiation.

Lab initiation will take a couple of minutes to finish.

Once complete, you will see another pop-up message with the login credentials and the URL for the Grid Manager’s User Interface. Note that the credentials may differ from those from prior labs.

Tasks

For all tasks in this lab, please use the support bundle placed on the desktop of the jump-desktop. It is named 3509-supportBundle.tar.gz.

Task 1: Finding the NIOS version number in the support bundle

Retrieve the NIOS version number from the support bundle. This information is mandatory for opening a support ticket.

Task 2: Finding the serial number in the support bundle

Retrieve the serial number of the NIOS appliance from the support bundle. This information is mandatory for opening a support ticket.

Task 3: Finding the NIOS model type in the support bundle

Retrieve the model type of the NIOS appliance from the support bundle. This information may be helpful to your case.

Task 4: Finding the member role in the support bundle

Retrieve the member role (such as Grid Master, Grid Master Candidate, or Grid Member) from the support bundle. This information may be helpful to your case.

Task 5: Finding the number of Grid members in the support bundle

Retrieve the number of total Grid members from the support bundle. This information may be helpful to your case.

Solutions

Task 1 Solution: Finding the NIOS version number in the support bundle

You can find the NIOS version number in the file config.txt. Below is an example snippet:

CODE

CLIENT_VERSION=8.6.2-49947-c076923293a0
INTERNAL_VERSION=8.6.6002-49947-c076923293a0
EXTERNAL_VERSION=8.6.2-49947-c076923293a0

For the purpose of opening a support ticket, the first 3 digits should suffice: 8.6.2.

Task 2 Solution : Finding the serial number in the support bundle

You can find the serial number in the file support_serial_number.txt. Below is an example snippet:

CODE

Serial number: 696E666F626C6F78656475C7AA6470E8

The same information can also be found in the file support_hwid.txt, example:

CODE

Hardware ID: 696E666F626C6F78656475C7AA6470E8

In most cases, the hardware ID (hwid) and serial number are identical in NIOS. In this case, it is 696E666F626C6F78656475C7AA6470E8.

Task 3 Solution: Finding the NIOS model type in the support bundle

You can find the model type in 2 files. The first is hwtype.txt, it contains just the short model number:

CODE

IB-V1425

Another place to find the model type is the file support_license.txt, it contains more a slightly longer description:

CODE

Member Licenses

License Type    : NIOS (Model IB-1425)
Expiration Date : 12/16/2023
License String  : GwAAAAYF9Pd9NSXbbpo4jF6JFZYcbPll9v6UMuxTlA==

We can see from both of these files that the device model is IB-1425 (virtual).

Task 4 Solution: Finding the member role in the support bundle

You can look at the file cluster_status.txt to learn the role of the member.

CODE

ID Grid Master

From this we can see this support bundle was taken from the Grid Master.

Task 5 Solution: Finding the number of Grid members in the support bundle

There is not a file that directly contains the number of Grid members. Rather, we need to analyze the VPN connection information to find out the remote IP addresses of the Grid members over VPN, and count how many there are. This information can be found in the file ipset.txt.

CODE

Name: openvpnblockset
Type: hash:ip
Revision: 0
Header: family inet hashsize 1024 maxelem 65536 
Size in memory: 288
References: 1
Members:
185.64.246.250
184.170.237.25
45.120.106.133
172.17.1.15

Counting the number of IP addresses for the members, we can see that there are 4 members total, in addition to the GM itself.