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In order to provide fast time to resolution for all support tickets we'd like our customers to provide the following information when a support case is opened. We have found that with this information we can reduce time to resolution in some cases by days.
Opening Support Cases
Opmantek Note: We have migrated our support portal to improve the efficiency and quality of the service we offer. From now on, we provide the new modality in which we will be working.
Accessing the Support Portal as a Client:
A) The link to create a new support ticket for 'op*/nmis' products using the portal is as follows: Support Portal.
Clients may not have access to this by default. Therefore, it is important to contact us if any account needs access. Please contact us by sending an email to support.nmis@firstwave.com mentioning that you have trouble accessing the portal.
Email:
B) The new email to raise a ticket is: 'support.nmis@firstwave.com' instead of 'support@opmantek.com'. This will quickly generate a ticket in the support portal.
Remember to include the person or team from FirstWave who has provided attention and follow-up on previous cases in the CC of the email. Example:
LATAM clients such as TELMEX, Claro EC, ClaroDR, Ferromex should add the following emails as they belong to the region:
- arnulfo.garcia@firstwavecloud.com
- julio.mendoza@firstwavecloud.com
- jhosep.ramirez@firstwave.com
- david.romero@firstwave.com
Email Structure for Opening a Case/Ticket:
FirsWave customers may open support cases by sending an email to support@opmantek support.nmis@firstwave.com. We recommend the following rules of engagement.
- Open a separate ticket for each discreet problem.
- Please avoid opening a ticket that contains multiple problems.
- Begin a new email thread to describe a new problem.
- Please avoid responding to an old email thread to address a new problem.
Support Case Opening Checklist
- Email Structure
- Email Subject - The email subject will become the support ticket name. A subject format such as the following will assist support engineers in finding your ticket quickly:
- <Customer_Company_Name> - <OMK Product> - <Very Brief Problem Description - 8 words or less>
- Email Body
- Problem description
- State the priority for this case
- Priority 1 - Business Critical - Production system is down.
- Priority 2 - Severe Impact - Production system unreliable.
- Priority 3 - Degraded Operations - Production system presents inconsistencies.
- Priority 4 - Informational - Customers are requesting information.
- State the OMK products that are exhibiting the problem.
- Explain any recent changes that may have led to the current problem.
- For customers that have deluxe support contracts with Opmantek; please provide the following information:
- State the following in regard to the affected servers:
- Hostname
- FQDN
- IP Address
- State the node name(s) that are exhibiting the problem
- State the following in regard to the affected servers:
- Email Attachments - Email attachments to JIRA have a 10MB size limit. If pertinent documents/files exceed this suport@opmantek.com will direct the customer as to the best method to share them.
- Support Zip(s) - See more specific instructions concerning support zips below.
- Anything that may be relevant.
- Email Subject - The email subject will become the support ticket name. A subject format such as the following will assist support engineers in finding your ticket quickly:
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From: customer@customer.com
To: suport@opmantek.com
Subject: Smith & Smith Holdings - NMIS - No Stats For MegaFast Routers
Body:
Opmantek Support,
Problem Description:
Our company has recently installed MegaFast routers, but we are not collecting and stats from them.
Priority: 2
Product: NMIS
Recent Changes: Added new vendor's hardware.
NMIS Server Hostname: NMIS01
NMIS Server FQDN: NMIS01.smithsmithholdings.com
NMIS Server IP: 10.1.1.1
Problem Nodes: r1, r2, r3
Attachments: nmis-support-2017-11-28-2304.zip |
NMIS Cases
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Each email sent must contain the following structure:
Customer name: Client's name (Example: NextLink, BrennanIT, ATIVU, etc.).
Product: Version of the modules involved. Example: NMIS 9.4.0, opCharts 4.2.3.
Priority: Consult the following image to determine the priority of the case:
Priority 1
Problem Definition: To describe the request, query, problem, error, failure, or bug, please provide screenshots that illustrate the problem in detail. Also, include the necessary steps to reproduce the error. If the problem involves a specific node or model, provide at least three examples of the inadequate behavior you are experiencing. For example:
A critical issue has been identified in the NMIS tool, where the file that stores monitors and service configurations ('/nmis9/conf/Services.nmis') has been lost, leaving the file empty. This situation compromises the ability of NMIS and opCharts to correctly monitor services and requires immediate action to investigate and correct the underlying cause of the problem. This significantly affects the functionality of NMIS, as without this information, the monitors and service configurations cannot be correctly stored or used by the system. This can lead to a lack of proper service monitoring and a possible interruption in the system's ability to detect and respond to critical events. A screenshot confirming the current state of the file is attached. We appreciate your prompt attention to this matter. Before this event, the monitoring personnel were in the usual task of deleting/creating new monitors through the GUI; each action they tried to perform, such as deleting or creating new monitors, showed a message that the page was not responding. By pressing "Wait", the action completed after a few seconds, as shown below. We have restored the service using a nightly backup copy of the file, but unfortunately, the recent changes made today have been lost. It is not critical to recover these configured monitors as they can be recreated. However, it is vital to identify why the file is being emptied and ensure that this problem does not recur, especially since this is not the first time it has happened. It is important to note that the configurations in opCharts and the assignment of monitors to nodes remain even before the file is emptied.
Theory and triage/troubleshooting to support theory: Please provide details on the actions you have taken so far. For network or equipment diagnostics (such as SNMP queries, ping, MTR), run the corresponding commands. Also, if you have executed Linux or tool-specific commands, include these details in your report. This will help us better understand the situation and provide you with more effective support.
Restore the backed-up file from the previous night.
Reviewed doco/previous cases - Yes/No: Mention if any documentation from the Wiki or external procedures was reviewed (provide links or details).
No.
Recreated the issue? Similar results Yes/No: Mention if the behavior has been recreated and what the results were.
Yes, we have recreated what we assume generated the error (normal operation), but the error has not reappeared; we assume there is something additional causing it, and it is important for us to identify it.
View/Track Tickets:
Clients can log in to the portal and view/manage the tickets generated using the portal or via email.
We are confident that these changes will improve our ability to provide you with more efficient and effective support.
Importance of Ticket Format:
It is vital that the ticket format is respected as described above. This speeds up the attention provided by the support staff, allowing for quicker and more effective resolution of reported issues. We appreciate your cooperation in maintaining the structure and necessary details in each support request.
NMIS Support Zip
The NMIS support zip contains valuable information that will enable our support engineers to develop a solid vector on the problem. Attaching this support zip to a new case will reduce time to resolution. While running the tool it will recognize some common problems and prompt the user for action.
Gather a NMIS support zip as described here: https://community.opmantek.com/x/sgdm
Examples NMIS support tool use cases:
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### Typical case [root@opmantek ~]# /usr/local/nmis8/admin/support.pl action=collect ### When log files are too big for the default zip size, try this option. [root@opmantek ~]# /usr/local/nmis8/admin/support.pl action=collect maxzipsize=31457280 ### If the problem is related to a specific node, focus the support tool on it. [root@opmantek ~]# /usr/local/nmis8/admin/support.pl action=collect node=r1 ### If the problem is related to several nodes, we can focus the support tool on them. Separate the node names by commas as below. [root@opmantek ~]# /usr/local/nmis8/admin/support.pl action=collect node=r1,r2,r3 ### If the analysing the problem requires detailed data for all nodes we may run the command as follows. [root@opmantek ~]# /usr/local/nmis8/admin/support.pl action=collect node=* |
OMK Cases
For cases related to OMK products, a NMIS and an OMK support zip are required.
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### Typical case [root@opmantek ~]# /usr/local/omk/bin/support.pl action=collect ### When log files are too big for the default zip size, try this option. [root@opmantek ~]# /usr/local/omk/bin/support.pl action=collect maxzipsize=31457280 |
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References:
NMIS Device Troubleshooting Process
Troubleshooting device connectivity with NMIS
General Troubleshooting Checklist