Questions on Cisco ACE troubleshooting

new_networker 302 posts since

Aug 28, 2008

hi,

Please assist on the below.

- How can an ACE administrator establish to the application team that the hit on VIP has
been successfully forwarded to the client. Is a hit count enough a proof for that.

- Can dropped conn count go up because of any application failure/misconfiguration

- Where can I find the detailed breakdown to interpret the show capture output.

- How long does the ACE wait if the application does not respond to the hit on VIP.

- How can I simuate http get / head method against a web service. telnet IP <port #> only
confirms the service active state and not correct functioning of the web service. That's
because in my case, SHOW PROBE is showing as failed yet I am able to telnet the service.
Probe is set for 30 seconds.

- Could you please give a breakdown of the SHOW CONN display

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Questions on Cisco ACE troubleshooting

- What 'show' comamnds should an ACE administrator master, to facilitate speedy

troubleshooting.

Syed Iftekhar Ahmed 1,042 posts since

Jul 20, 2005 1. Re: Questions on Cisco ACE troubleshooting Oct 28, 2008 12:34 AM

How can an ACE administrator establish to the application team that the hit on VIP has been
successfully forwarded to the client. Is a hit count enough a proof for that.

Hit count only tells you the VIP hits. In order to see successful conns use "show conn"
commad and
check if both side of connections are "ESTAB"lished." "Show service-policy <policy>
detail" gives you detail about which server farm was selected
hit count and droppped conns for a server farm. Similarly "show server-farm
<severfarm> detail" will give you current & failed connections on per rserver basis.

- Can dropped conn count go up because of any application failure/misconfiguration

The "dropped conns" counter for VIP is incremented whenever a connection hitting that
VIP gets dropped/rejected.
There could be many reasons for that, for example
* if all the rservers in the serverfarm associated to VIP goes down.
* if a request in the connection request use some URL which doesnt match any class-map
including class-default.
* if the server which is picked up by the LB to load-balance the connection won't respond
to the request.

sh np [1|2] me-stat "-s lb" will give you stats about different dropped conns.

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Questions on Cisco ACE troubleshooting

- Where can I find the detailed breakdown to interpret the show capture output.

Instead of displaying it locally use "copy capture <capture name> disk0:syed.cap" and use
wireshark to see these packets

- How long does the ACE wait if the application does not respond to the hit on VIP.

The time (in seconds) that ACE waits for SYN ACK is a value of "Open timeout".Open
tiemout is configured under probe definition using "open <sec>" command.

- How can I simuate http get / head method against a web service. telnet IP <port #> only
confirms the service active state and not correct functioning of the web service. That's
because in my case, SHOW PROBE is showing as failed yet I am able to telnet the service.
Probe is set for 30 seconds.

We used to have this functionality in CSS but from ACE you cannot do that.
But show probe detial command give you the reason of the las probe failure for example

"Last disconnect err: Host Unreachable, no route to destination"

or
"Last disconnect err: Connection reset by server"
or
""Last disconnect err:Server open timeout (No Sync Ack)" etc...

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Questions on Cisco ACE troubleshooting

- Could you please give a breakdown of the SHOW CONN display

conn id-> Id of he connection. you can use (sh np 1 me-stats "-c <conn-id>##) to get more
details about connection
np --> Ace has two processors np1 & np2. This column tells which processor is handling this
connection
dir--> Dierection of the connection
For "In" direction "source" represent "clientIP:port" & "Dest" represent VIP-IP:port"
For "out" direction "source" represent "Rserver IP:port" & "Dest" represent Client-IP:port"
"stat" --> connection status

- What 'show' comamnds should an ACE administrator master, to facilitate speedy

troubleshooting.
from top of my head

show conn
Show probe dtail
sh serverfarm detail
sh service-policy detail
sh sticky database

sh resource usage all

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Questions on Cisco ACE troubleshooting

sh stats http
sh stats loadbalance
sh stats conn
sh stats probe

sh conn
sh np 1 me-stats "-c 10## <-- 10 is the connection number derived from "sh conn"
sh np 1 me-stats "-s lb"

sh ft peer status
sh ft group status
sh ft stats

sh xlate
sh access-list <acl>
sh arp

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Questions on Cisco ACE troubleshooting

Syed Iftekhar Ahmed

new_networker 302 posts since

Aug 28, 2008 2. Re: Questions on Cisco ACE troubleshooting Oct 28, 2008 4:25 AM

Hope Cisco can document this and make an ACE troubleshooting guide out of it.

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