How to test Smart Call Home in cisco router?

[Aakriti Pandit]

Hi ,

I have done basic configuration n cisco router for Smart call Home.Please help me out on testing SCH if its proper or requres more configuration.Below is the configuration;

call-home

contact-email-addr abc@efg.com

mail-server 10.0.0.59 priority 1

mail-server "" priority 2

mail-server "" priority 3

mail-server"" priority 3

profile "CiscoTAC-1"

  active

profile "Test"

  destination preferred-msg-format long-text

  destination address email ""

  destination address email ""

  subscribe-to-alert-group environment severity critical

  subscribe-to-alert-group syslog severity minor pattern ".*"

  subscribe-to-alert-group configuration periodic weekly Tuesday 17:00

  subscribe-to-alert-group inventory periodic monthly 30 20:30

[Bryan Williams]

First, make sure you have enabled the call-home service with

service call-home

The CiscoTAC-1 profile will probably work as is.  Just to be sure, let's add a couple of commands:

destination transport-method email

destination address email callhome@cisco.com

Messages sent to callhome@cisco.com are automatically filetered and analyzed.  The contact-email-addr specified above will receive a notifiation for the most critical messages along with Cisco's analysis and recommendations.

The "Test" profile is probably not needed.  The specified destination email addresses will receive every message that matches the alert group subscription.  You can expect to receive a lot of email based on this profile.

Please do not specifiy callhome@cisco.com in the "Test" profile.  Smart Call Home will not accept messages in the long-text format.

[Aakriti Pandit]

hi bryan,

But how will i know the cisco is receiving the alerts for the devices.Is there any way for checking that.

Profile Name: CiscoTAC-1

    Profile status: ACTIVE

    Preferred Message Format: xml

    Message Size Limit: 3145728 Bytes

    Transport Method: email

    Email address(es): callhome@cisco.com

    HTTP  address(es): https://tools.cisco.com/its/service/oddce/services/DDCEService

    Periodic configuration info message is scheduled every 13 day of the month at 10:03

    Periodic inventory info message is scheduled every 13 day of the month at 09:48

    Alert-group               Severity

    ------------------------  ------------

    diagnostic                minor

    environment               warning

    inventory                 normal

    Syslog-Pattern            Severity

    ------------------------  ------------

    .*                        major

Please suggest..

[tfitch]

Hello Aakriti,

I may have not correctly understood the question however; the historical alerts can be viewed on the SCH portal:

https://tools.cisco.com/sch/overview.jsp

Regards, Tim

[Aakriti Pandit]

I wanted to know how will I get confirmed that Cisco TAC is receiving my alerts.Is there any URL through which we have to check or we ll receive any mail or etc....

[tfitch]

Hi,

The contact-email-addr specified in the configuration will receive a notifiation for the most critical messages along with Cisco's analysis and recommendations. The alerts can also be viewed on the SCH portal:

https://tools.cisco.com/sch/overview.jsp

Regards, Tim

[Bryan Williams]

Exactly right Tim. 

Aakriti, you should also receive an acknowledgement for non-fault messages like inventory and config.  Using your example config above, that acknowledgement will be an email from call-home-notify@cisco.com to abc@efg.com.

If you are not receiving email, then your messages are probably not making it to Cisco.  Your mail admin can determine if the device is initiating email and if those messages are handed off to Cisco's inbound mail servers.  If that much is working, open a case with TAC to trace your messages through the Smart Call Home servers.

To troubleshoot at the device:

Enable debugging for call-home:

     debug call-home error

Initiate a message and watch for errors:

     call-home send alert-group inventory profile CiscoTAC-1

"Show call-home statistics" will indicate if a message was succesfully sent.  You may want to disable the test profile temporarily so that it does not skew the statistics.