Cisco Application-Centric Infrastructure: Understanding Faults and Health Scores | packtpub.com

Summary

This video tutorial delves into ACI's help and fault scores, crucial for diagnosing communication issues between tenants. It explains how to interpret system health percentages, identify and address faults like BGP entity problems or chassis issues, and the importance of object configuration and physical connectivity. The video also demonstrates how removing a bridge domain from an EPG can lower health scores, and how to resolve such issues by reattaching necessary configurations. It concludes with a look at health score policies, emphasizing the impact of fault rates on scores and the need for a thorough understanding of ACI topology for effective troubleshooting.

Takeaways

• 📊 The video discusses help and fault scores in ACI's APIC, which are crucial for understanding issues in communication between tenants.
• 🌐 The global system health in the dashboard represents the physical health of the fabric, calculated from the health score of each node.
• 🔍 If the system health is not 100%, it indicates potential issues on the device, such as missing objects, improper attachments, or physical connectivity problems.
• 📉 The health score can drop due to various faults, including BGP entity issues, chassis problems, and time synchronization issues.
• 🔎 The faults section in APIC provides detailed information about the triggers that caused the health score to decrease.
• 🛠️ Physical issues like power supply problems are highlighted, and the video demonstrates how to identify and resolve them.
• 🔗 Configuration mistakes, such as forgetting to attach an EPG to a bridge domain, can also lower the health score and are shown to be rectifiable.
• 📚 The video explains how to navigate through the APIC interface to troubleshoot health score issues and faults.
• 🔄 The health score is dynamic and updates once faults are remedied, highlighting the importance of monitoring and maintaining it.
• 📋 The script concludes with a look at health score policies, explaining how they determine the impact and score given to different scenarios.

Q & A

What is the significance of help and fault scores in ACI management?

Help and fault scores in ACI (Application Centric Infrastructure) management are crucial indicators that reflect the state of communication between tenants and can help identify issues such as misconfigurations, missing objects, or physical connectivity problems within the fabric.

How are health scores calculated in the ACI fabric?

Health scores in the ACI fabric are calculated by assessing the health of each individual node. The system computes the health score for each node and then aggregates these to provide a total system health percentage.

What could cause a health score to be less than 100% in an ACI system?

A health score less than 100% could be caused by issues such as missing configurations, improperly attached objects, physical connectivity problems, environmental issues like power supply failures, or time synchronization issues among devices.

How can you identify the cause of a fault in the ACI system?

To identify the cause of a fault in the ACI system, you can check the faults section within the ACI platform. It provides detailed information about each fault, including the type of issue, the affected components, and possible resolutions.

What does a BGP entity fault in ACI indicate?

A BGP entity fault in ACI indicates a problem with the Border Gateway Protocol configuration or connectivity, which could be due to issues like misconfigurations, network outages, or disconnections from external sites.

How does removing a configuration from an EPG affect the health score?

Removing a necessary configuration from an Endpoint Group (EPG) can trigger a fault, which in turn lowers the health score. This is because the system detects a configuration issue that affects the intended network behavior.

What is the purpose of the health score policies in ACI?

Health score policies in ACI define how the system evaluates the impact of faults on different objects and据此给出相应的健康分数。These policies help the system to determine the health score based on the severity and type of faults present in the fabric.

How can you resolve a fault that has lowered the health score in ACI?

To resolve a fault that has lowered the health score, you should first identify the specific fault through the faults section. Then, take the recommended actions, such as reconfiguring settings, checking physical connections, or addressing environmental issues.

What is the role of the 'tenants' section in troubleshooting ACI health scores?

The 'tenants' section in ACI is crucial for troubleshooting health scores as it allows administrators to view and manage configurations at the tenant level. Issues like missing configurations or incorrect object attachments can be identified and corrected here.

Why is it important to understand your ACI topology when troubleshooting health scores?

Understanding your ACI topology is important for troubleshooting health scores because it provides the context needed to interpret the health score data accurately. It helps in identifying the relationships and dependencies between different components of the fabric, which is essential for pinpointing the root cause of issues.