Uploading logs to VAST Support Bucket

Summary

Sometimes you need to send data to VAST for troubleshooting. This data may be in the form of ad-hoc files or traces we've requested, or it may be in the form of a generated support bundle that you create using the VMS.

Uploading Logs

If you know the ticket number that the files are uploaded to, please include it in the file name in the format Case-<Ticket Number>, for example, if your original file is tcpdumps.tgz and your ticket number is 12345, rename it to be Case-12345-tcpdumps.tgz

There are many ways that can be used for getting files to VAST. We'll discuss a few here:

s3cmd (more common, Python-based)
AWS CLI (this ships with our C-nodes by default)
'mc' (newer, faster, Go lang-based)
VMS itself for support dumps
Powershell

ℹ️ Note
MC is preferred over s3cmd if you are attempting to upload files which are larger than 1GB, as it effectively leverages multiPartUploads in parallel.
S3cmd, while it supports multiPartUploads, does so in a serial fashion, which is less desirable.
AWS CLI works just fine as well.
And of course if you generated the support dump via the VMS, you can push directly to VAST from the VMS.
PowerShell if you want to upload the support bundle directly from window terminal

Authentication

In all cases, you'll need an AWS S3 access key to write to the VAST support bucket.
Don't worry, the key you will use allows for write-only access. No one outside of VAST can see what you've uploaded to the VAST support bucket - s3://vast-support

The AWS S3 access key and secret are:

aws_access_key_id = AKIARTN2ZMSY4TBYMPNM
aws_secret_access_key = xzmAX+lFZSqH1/w03WuANqgj1YUhxWZ+iaXMMTAM

Proxies

If you do not have direct access to the internet from the host where you run your command-line tools, you may need to specify proxy settings. On Linux systems, that would be the following:

export http_proxy="http://PROXY_SERVER:PORT"
export https_proxy="https://PROXY_SERVER:PORT"

Methods

Using the VMS

If you've just created a support bundle, the most convenient way to upload the bundle is to look at the list of bundles in the VMS in the support panel and then click the little up arrow icon. That will ask you for your AWS key and secret as well as the target S3 bucket. Go ahead and specify the key and secret above and the vast-support for the bucket. For example:

https://support.vastdata.com/servlet/rtaImage?eid=ka0V40000000yLx&feoid=00NV40000002avR&refid=0EMV4000000S65i

After specifying the information, click upload, and the VMS will start working on the upload. It may take a while. You can monitor this by looking at the activities page. The file will be placed in s3://vast-support/<PSNT>/. The PSNT of the cluster can be found in the VMS UI by clicking on the "i" about icon in the bottom left, and it will be the center section titled "Cluster". Alternatively, you can find the PSNT information in vcli by running cluster show --tech-details.

Note: the VMS bundle upload feature gets information from the VAST callhome configuration panel - including proxy information - in order to execute the upload.

Using s3cmd

Install s3cmd

yum install -y s3cmd

Use the access key shown above and put it into a file such as vast-upload.s3cfg, for example:

[default]
access_key =AKIARTN2ZMSY4TBYMPNM
secret_key = xzmAX+lFZSqH1/w03WuANqgj1YUhxWZ+iaXMMTAM

Upload like so, substituting your organization for <company-name>

s3cmd -c vast-upload.s3cfg put /path/to/file/upload.file.tgz s3://vast-support/<company-name>/ZD-XXXXX-upload.file.tgz

Using minio client (mc) for large files

Install On OSX

brew install minio/stable/mc

Install On Linux

wget https://dl.minio.io/client/mc/release/linux-amd64/mc
chmod +x mc

mc config host add vast https://s3.amazonaws.com $access_key $secret_key

In order to upload a file

mc cp /path/to/big.file.tar vast/vast-support/<company-name>/upload.file.tgz

Using AWS CLI

Note: the AWS CLI is installed by default with the VAST C-nodes in /usr/bin/aws.

To use the AWS CLI, install it on your platform, then set the environment variables for your S3 credentials.

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=AKIARTN2ZMSY4TBYMPNM
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=xzmAX+lFZSqH1/w03WuANqgj1YUhxWZ+iaXMMTAM

Then run the AWS CLI using that credential file to upload the file, following the same conventions as discussed earlier.

aws s3 cp /path/to/file/upload.file.tgz s3://vast-support/<company-name>/upload.file.tgz

ℹ️ Note
If we have large files to upload we can do that upload inside the screen (screen -S upload_trace) so if the session disconnected we will not stop the uploading

Using Windows AWS CLI

Installing the AWS CLI for Windows

To use the AWS CLI on Windows, install it on Windows, Open Powershell, and set the S3 credentials

$env:AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID="AKIARTN2ZMSY4TBYMPNM"
$env:AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY="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"