Whenever Collage fails to log into a network switch, an error is logged and the last text from the switch is part of the error message. So if the switch actually indicates why it is not letting Collage in, that text will be in the log. For the most common network switch connection errors, Collage adds info that attempts to give you a better understanding of what exactly went wrong. This includes things like the host name not being valid or the login password not working. For other errors, there is a generic error message that requires you to look in the logs to see the last text from the connection method. However, there are cases where the switch doesn't provide enough information to help determine the cause of a connection problem. If you see Collage having trouble accessing a network switch, and it's not an obvious problem like an invalid host name or incorrect password, try accessing the switch outside of Collage and get it working there first.

Labels: Collage network switch troubleshooting

The cccoreservice command is a command-line utility for managing the collage-core service on one or two Collage control nodes. It went through a pretty major overhaul back in Collage 3.4, so I thought I'd highlight how it now works.

cccoreservice command options	On single control node...	On dual-control nodes...
start	Starts the collage-core service on the control node.	Makes sure the clumanager software is running and then enables the collage-core service, which will be started on either of the control nodes.
stop	Stops the collage-core service on the control node.	Disables the collage-core service in clumanager, which will stop the service from running on any control node.
restart	Stops and then then restarts the collage-core service.	Directs clumanager to restart the collage-core service on the control node on which it is currently running.
status	Prints the status of collage-core services on this control node.	Prints the status of the cluster. If the collage-core service is not running on this control node, then the status option will not provide status of the collage-core service, just the cluster software.
failover	Ignored.	Cause the collage-core service to be migrated to the other control node.

As you might notice, there is some reliance on the underlying clumanager software for dual-control node configurations. To learn more, check out the article, Understanding Control Node Failover.

Labels: Collage control nodes cccoreservice clumanager