Syslog on Brocade FC-Switches

Setting up syslog export on Brocade FC-Switches

Browsing through logs of many different devices can be a cumbersome duty. It is much better to aggregate logs from different devices on a dedicated syslog server. To make this possible, a syslog server needs to be registered on the device.

I will show here how to configure a Brocade FibeChannel switch that it will send logs to a syslog server.

Requirements

FOS 7.4 or higher
Access to CLI (serial or SSH)

Procedure

syslogadmin --set -ip <syslogserver>

To check status, use the show command.

syslogadmin --show -ip

To revert settings and deregister syslog server from switch use command:

syslogadmin --remove -ip <syslogserver>

Timesync

Timesync with a NTP source is crucial in order to correlate events precisely. Therefore we need to register a NTP server on the (principal) switch.

tsclockserver <IP>

Choosing the local timezone is best in interactive mode.

tstimezone --interactive

17. July 20189. October 2018

Exagrid Backup Appliance

Using Exagrid Deduplication Appliances as Veeam Repository

The importance of backup and recovery solutions today is beyond any discussion. Going back 10 years this was a rather neglected topic. But today no-one can afford data loss or services being unavailable. So the importance of backup solutions leveled up with that of production systems. Time windows for RPO and RTO have become smaller and smaller and the effort and cost to achieve that have become higher. If you’re planning a backup strategy, you need to find a good balance between speed, reliability and cost. Low cost NAS boxes are slow and not very reliable. Running an instant recovery from them can turn into a pain. Premium storages are fast and reliable, but also quite expensive. Backup data is in most cases very redundant, which means there’s a high capacity and cost saving potential in deduplication and compression. Continue reading “Exagrid Backup Appliance”

Pages: 1 2 3

15. July 20189. October 2018

Where is the VCSA OVA?

Extraction of the VCSA as OVA

Where is the Open Virtual Appliance (OVA) file of the vCenter Server Appliance (VCSA)?

The usual setup process utilizes a helper system (Win, Mac, Linux) to which the ISO is beeing mounted. In my case I had to import an OVA to Ravello-Cloud without using a helper system. Continue reading “Where is the VCSA OVA?”

12. July 20189. October 2018

Monitoring HPE Switches with Log Insight

Using Log Insight as Syslog Server for HPE 5000 series Switches

In one of my last posts I’ve shown how to collect and monitor status logs of many different systems wit vRealize Log Insight. In this post I will show how to leverage Log Insight as syslog target for HPE switches.

Basically you can use Log Insight for any system that uses the syslog protocol, but there might be slight differences in the data structure of the transmitted datasets. For example some HPE FlexFabric 5000 series switches sent the year of the timestamp where Log Insight expected to find the hostname. Not very useful, because you want to know WHO sent that dataset.

The following commands on the switch shell will prepare the switch for logging to a remotehost and adjust the dataset to read properly by Log Insight. Finally you tell the switch which VLAN interface should be used to communicate with the loghost. In my simple example it’s VLAN interface 1. You’ll have to adjust values for loghost and interface according to your infrastructure.

system-view
info-center enable
info-center loghost s-vlog.mydomain.local port 514
info-center timestamp loghost no-year-date 
info-center loghost source Vlan-interface 1