If you’ve got a Data Domain in your NetWorker environment, you obviously need to monitor it, just as you would any other appliance.
The two main forms of monitoring everyone is aware of with Data Domain systems are:
- Autosupport emails
- Data Domain Enterprise Manager – the Web front-end
If you’re logged onto the Data Domain console via ssh, you can also view the logs there via log list, log view and log watch, but if you’re running an enterprise environment, you’re equally likely to be interested in centralising the Data Domain logging to a syslog server. Thankfully, this is a breeze. From the Data Domain console, just enter the following two commands to set it up:
sysadmin@dd1# log host add logserver.fqdn Remote host logging is not currently enabled. Enable with 'log host enable'. Host "logserver.fqdn" added. sysadmin@dd1# log host enable Remote host logging enabled. sysadmin@dd1#
Data Domain logging to a syslog server is efficient and insightful. All commands executed on the Data Domain – regardless of whether they’re issued by a logged in user, a remote user, or the system itself – appear in the logging, giving you a very effective overview of what is going on for the system. For instance:
Aug 15 06:59:44 dd1 -ddsh: NOTICE: MSG-DDSH-00009: (tty=pts/0, session=7924) sysadmin: command "filesys clean start"
Aug 15 06:59:44 dd1 -ddsh: {epoch=1408049961;id='AUDIT-DDSH-00001';desc='DDSH CLI command';level=3;user='sysadmin';role='admin';app='ddsh';host='dd1';detail='cmd=filesys clean start';}
Aug 15 06:59:45 dd1 ddfs[19551]: NOTICE: MSG-GC-00009: Cleaning started
Aug 15 06:59:45 dd1 sms: {epoch=1408049962;id='AUDIT-SMS_FILESYS-00032';desc='Start file system clean.';level=1;user='sysadmin';role='admin';app='-ddsh';host='127.0.0.1';detail='{in='{gc_algo=1;gc_seconds=0;gc_bytes=0;gc_percent=0;}';out='{inactive='true';}';}';}
Logging gives you another avenue of understanding your environment – and, depending on your environment, may be more suitable for centralised monitoring of systems. While the autosupport emails sent by the Data Domain are comprehensive, and the alert emails are useful, the logs are an information provision point particularly applicable to many enterprise automated monitoring systems.
If you’ve get centralised syslog services operating within your environment, I’d strongly encourage you to enable the remote logging functionality on your Data Domains and start capturing the information.
