callhome

Role Definition

• Role name: Callhome
• Definition:
  • The call home feature collects files, logs, traces, and details of certain system events from different nodes and services.
  • The mmcallhome command provides options to configure, enable, run, schedule, and monitor call home related tasks in the IBM Spectrum Scale cluster.
  • Information from each node within a call home group is collected and securely uploaded to the IBM® ECuRep server.

Prerequisite

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.x, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8.x nodes are supported.
• Intel x86_64, Power LE/BE are supported.
• GPFS CCR (Clustered Configuration Repository) must be enabled.
• The call home node must be able to access the following IP addresses and ports. In the configurations with a proxy, these IP addresses and ports should be accessible over the proxy connection.
  • Host name: esupport.ibm.com
  • IP address: 129.42.56.189, 129.42.60.189, 129.42.54.189
  • Port number: 443
• The parameters required to configure callhome are as follows:
  • Customer information such as customer_name, customer_email, customer_id, customer_country.
  • If proxy is enabled, the proxy information such as proxy_ip, proxy_port, proxy_user, proxy_password.

Design

• Directory Structure:
  • Path: /ibm-spectrum-scale-install-infra/roles/callhome
  • Inside the callhome role, there are four more roles to enable microservice architecture:
    • Precheck: This role checks that all the prerequisites are satisfied before installing the callhome rpms. It checks the following things:
      • Whether callhome is enabled or not.
      • If callhome is enabled, it checks whether proper customer information is provided or not. This is necessary for proper configuration of callhome. Without this information callhome installation will fail.
      • Check whether proxy is enabled. If yes, check if all the information required for setting up proxy is defined.
      • Check if connection can be established to URL https://esupport.ibm.com.
    • Node: This role installs the rpms required for callhome functionality. There are 3 methods to install callhome rpms:
      • via local package, requires scale_install_localpkg_path variable to be set in main playbook.
      • via remote package, requires scale_install_remotepkg_path variable to be set in main playbook.
      • via yum repository, requires scale_install_callhome_repository_url variable to be set in main playbook.
    • Cluster: This role configures the callhome functionality. All the parameters required for configuration can be found in /group_vars. If callhome is already configured, this step is skipped. Following configurations are made:
      • Check if callhome is enabled. If yes, skip this step.
      • Setup the call home proxy configuration if enabled.
      • Setup the call home customer configuration.
      • Enable callhome.
      • Check if callhome group is already created. If yes, skip next step.
      • Create callhome group.
      • Setup the call home schedule configuration.
    • Postcheck: This role performs the connection test and returns the status.

Implementation

• Precheck

  • All the parameters required for setting up callhome is defined in /ibm-spectrum-scale-install-infra/group_vars/all.yml. We need to extract these parameters and set them as ansible facts. This is done by the play defined in /ibm-spectrum-scale-install-infra/roles/callhome/precheck/tasks/storage.yml. These parameters are extracted in the ansible fact ‘callhome_params’. ‘set_fact’ ansible module is used for this purpose.
  • All the parameters are then checked if they are defined and not empty. These parameters only need to be checked on callhome server node.

• Node

  • Installation via local package: rpms are on local machine
    • File name: install_local_pkg.yml
    • Path: /ibm-spectrum-scale-install-infra/roles/callhome/node/tasks
    • This playbook checks whether the package exists, checks for valid checksum, extracts all the rpms and creates a list ‘scale_install_all_rpms’ that contains all the rpms and dependencies required to install callhome.
  • Installation via remote package: rpms are on remote machine
    • File name: install_remote_pkg.yml
    • Path: /ibm-spectrum-scale-install-infra/roles/callhome/node/tasks
    • This playbook checks whether the package exists, checks for valid checksum, extracts all the rpms and creates a list ‘scale_install_all_rpms’ that contains all the rpms and dependencies required to install callhome.
  • Installation via repository: rpms are in yum repo
    • File name: install_repository.yml
    • Path: /ibm-spectrum-scale-install-infra/roles/callhome/node/tasks
    • This playbook configures the yum repo using the URL mentioned in variable scale_install_callhome_repository_url and creates a list ‘scale_install_all_rpms’ that contains all the rpms and dependencies required to install callhome.
  • The installation method is selected in the playbook ‘install.yml’ . Installation method depends on the variables defined.
    • If ‘scale_install_callhome_repository_url’ is defined, then the installation method is repository.
    • If ‘scale_install_repository_url’ is undefined and ‘scale_install_remotepkg_path’ is defined, then the installation method is remote.
    • If ‘scale_install_repository_url’ is undefined and ‘scale_install_remotepkg_path’ is undefined and ‘scale_install_localpkg_path’ is defined, then the installation method is local.
  • Depending on the installation method, appropriate playbook is called for collecting the rpms and rpms are installed.

• Cluster

  • To check if callhome is enabled or not, the command used is mmcallhome capability list -Y
  • For making proxy configuration, the command used is mmcallhome proxy change --proxy-location {proxy_location } --proxy-port { proxy_ip } --proxy-username {proxy_user } --proxy-password { proxy_password }
  • For making customer configuration, the command used is mmcallhome info change --customer-name { customer_name } --customer-id { customer_id } --email {customer_email} --country-code {customer_country }
  • For enabling callhome, the command used is mmcallhome capability enable
  • To check if callhome group is already present or not, the command used is mmcallhome group list
  • To create a callhome group with a given callhome server, the command used is mmcallhome group auto --server {callhome_server }
  • To setup callhome schedule, the command used is mmcallhome schedule add –task [daily/weekly]

• Postcheck

  • The command used to test callhome connection is mmcallhome test connection.