The Call Home feature monitors your NetScaler appliance for common error conditions.
Call Home registers your appliance with the Citrix Technical Support server. If your appliance is sucessfully registered with the Support server, Call Home automatically uploads system data to that server in the event that one of the conditions occurs. The NetScaler Appliance keeps a full log of all upload events. If you are unable to correct the problem after reviewing the appliance's log, you can contact the Citrix Technical Support team and open a service request. The team can analyze the uploaded system data and recommend possible solutions.
Following is a typical set up for Call Home.
The process flow for using Call Home can be categorized as follows:
w Registration of the NetScaler appliance to the Citrix Technical Support server.
w Uploading of the appliance's data to the Citrix Technical Support server. The support server has the following URL: https://taas.citrix.com/.
w Opening a Technical Support case (Optional).
Registration of the NetScaler appliance. The appliance has to be registered to the Citrix Technical Support server before Call Home can upload the system data to the server when predefined error conditions occur on the appliance. Enabling the Call Home feature on the NetScaler appliance initiates the registration process. The process flow is as follows:
1. The Call Home process sends the unique serial number of the appliance to the Citrix Technical Support server.
2. The server checks its database for an active technical support service contract for the appliance.
3. If there is an active technical support service contract, the support server registers the NetScaler appliance for Call Home and sends a successful-registration response to the appliance. If there is no active technical support service contract, the server sends a registration-failure response to the NetScaler appliance.
4. The NetScaler appliance stores the status of the registration in its memory.
The following table lists the error conditions that Call Home monitors on a NetScaler Appliance
Table 5-3. List of error conditions monitored by Call Home
One of the SSL cards on the NetScaler appliance has restarted due to a failure of a system process.
Uploading of appliance's data to the Support server. An error condition triggers the following sequence of events:
1. The Call Home process checks the registration status, which is stored on the appliance. If the status indicates successful registration, the process advances to the next step.
2. The Call Home process runs a script that collects all of the system related data in a tar file, which is called the Call Home tar file. The data in the tar file includes configurations, logs, and statistics. Call Home locally saves the tar file at /var/tmp/
support/callhome.
3. Call Home uploads a copy of the tar file to the Citrix Technical Support server. The Appliance logs the uploading of the tar file in a log file named callhome.log located at /var/log. You can also configure the CALLHOME-UPLOAD-EVENT SNMP alarm to generate an SNMP alert whenever Call Home uploads a tar file.
4. If the SNMP alarm related to the error condition is enabled, the SNMP agent on the appliance generates an SNMP trap message and sends it to all of the configured SNMP trap destinations. For more information about configuring SNMP alarms and trap destinations, see http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/netscaler-admin-guide-10/ns-ag-snmp-intro-wrapper-con.html.
Note: Call Home creates the Call Home tar file and uploads it to the CITRIX tech support server for only the first occurrence of a particular error condition since the
appliance was last restarted. If you want the NetScaler appliance to send you alerts each time a particular error condition occurs, configure the corresponding SNMP alarm for the error condition.
The Call Home tar file has the following name format:
collector_callhome_<NSIP of the appliance>_<P for Primary or standalone, or S for Secondary>_<date>_<hours, in 24 hr format, according to the local time zone>_<minutes>.tar.gz. For example, collector_callhome_10.105.13.100_P_2Feb2012_20_30.tar.gz.
Opening a Technical Support Service Request . After you review the logs and SNMP trap messages for Call Home upload events, you have the option of contacting the Citrix Technical Support team and opening a service request. For more information about contacting the team and opening a service request, see http://kb.citrite.net/
article/CTX132307.
The Support team can then analyze the system data in the uploaded Call Home tar files and sends recommendations for possible solutions to the administrator's email address.
Before you begin configuring Call Home, do the following:
w Make sure that the NetScaler appliance is connected to the Internet.
w Make sure that you have an active Citrix Technical Support service contract for the appliance.
Configuring Call Home on the NetScaler appliance consists of the following tasks:
1. Enable the Call Home feature. When you enable the Call Home feature, the Call Home process registers the appliance with the Citrix Technical Support server. The registration takes some time to complete. During that time, the appliance displays the status as IN PROGRESS. When the registration is complete, the appliance displays the status as SUCCESSFUL.
2. (Optional ) Specify the administrator's email address. The Call Home process sends the email address to the Support server where it is stored for future correspondence regarding Call Home.
3. Enable the CALLHOME-UPLOAD-EVENT SNMP alarm. The SNMP agent on the NetScaler appliance generates a trap message and sends to all the configured SNMP trap destinations. The message includes the status of uploading of the Call Home tar file by the Call Home process. For more information about configuring SNMP alarms and trap destinations, see http://support.citrix.com/proddocs/topic/
netscaler-admin-guide-10/ns-ag-snmp-intro-wrapper-con.html.
4. (Optional) Enable all of the corresponding SNMP alarms. Call Home creates and uploads a Call Home tar file for the first occurrence of a monitored error condition since the appliance was last restarted. If you want to be alerted each time the error condition occurs, you can configure the corresponding SNMP alarm for the error condition. Table 1 lists all the corresponding SNMP alarms. For more information about configuring SNMP alarms and trap destinations, see http://