Chapter 6: Initial Troubleshooting; Gather Information - Avaya 5000 Series Troubleshooting Manual

Chapter 6: Initial troubleshooting

The types of problems that typically occur with networks involve connectivity and performance. A good
practice is to follow the OSI network architecture layers. Confirm that the physical environment, for
example the cables and module connections, is operating without failure before moving to the network
and application layers.
As part of your initial troubleshooting, Avaya recommends that you check the Knowledge and Solution
Engine on the Avaya website for known issues and solutions related to the problem you are
experiencing.

Gather information

Before contacting Avaya Technical Support, you must gather information that can help the
Technical Support personnel. This includes the following information:
• Default and current configuration of the switch. To do this, you can use the show
running-config command.
• System status. Get output from the show tech command. It displays technical
information about system status and information about the hardware, software, and
switch operation. This command displays more information than the similar show sys-
info command.
• Information about past events. To do this, review the log files.
• The software version that is running on the device. To do this, use the show sys-info
or show system verbose commands to display the software version that is running
on all cards.
• A network topology diagram: Get an accurate and detailed topology diagram of
your network that shows the nodes and connections. Your planning and engineering
function should have this diagram.
• Recent changes: Find out about recent changes or upgrades to your system, your
network, or custom applications (for example, has configuration or code been changed?).
Get the date and time of the changes, and the names of the persons who made them.
Get a list of events that occurred prior to the trouble, such as an upgrade, a LAN change,
increased traffic, or installation of new hardware.
• Connectivity information: After connectivity problems occur, get information
about at least five working source and destination IP pairs and five IP pairs with
connectivity issues. To do this, use these commands:
Troubleshooting December 2013 23