Recently I have experience some interesting first-level support from our Cisco VAR.  They are not too familiar with the Nexus 7000 and insisted on us sending them a SHOW TECH from the switch.  If you are not familiar with a Nexus 7000, let me tell you – the show tech from this box can be over 100 Megs!  So, when they asked for that I was like – are you sure?  really really sure? I just have to say – thank you DropBox and public folders!  I used DropBox place the file and then send the support the public link.  Not sure that most e-mail systems would appreciate that large of a file!

So, if the Show Tech Support is so big, how do you get the information that support needs?  Well, instead of running a complete show tech, you run it for the sections you need!

Here is a list of what you can append to a Show Tech-Support command: (show tech-support option)

N7K1-CoreSwitch1# sh tech-support ?
<CR>
>               Redirect it to a file
>>              Redirect it to a file in append mode
aaa             Display aaa information
aclmgr          ACL commands
adjmgr          Display Adjmgr information
arp             Display ARP information
ascii-cfg       Show ascii-cfg information for technical support personnel
assoc_mgr       Gather detailed information for assoc_mgr troubleshooting
bgp             Display BGP status and configuration
bootvar         Gather detailed information for bootvar troubleshooting
brief           Display the switch summary
callhome        Callhome troubleshooting information
cdp             Gather information for CDP trouble shooting
cert-enroll     Display certificates information
cfs             Gather detailed information for cfs troubleshooting
cli             Gather information for parser troubleshooting
clis            Gather information for CLI Server troubleshooting
commands        Show commands executed as part of show tech-support commands
details         Gather detailed information for troubleshooting
dhcp            Gather detailed information for dhcp troubleshooting
eem             Show EEM tech-support information
eigrp           Display EIGRP status and configuration
eltm            Eltm debug info
ethpm           Gather detailed information for ETHPM troubleshooting
forwarding      Forwarding debug information
ha              Gather detailed information for HA troubleshooting
hsrp            Show hsrp tech-support information
icmpv6          Display Icmpv6 information
im              Gather detailed information for IM troubleshooting
include-time    Gather tech-support and capture time taken to execute each
command
interface-vlan  Gather detailed information for interface-vlan
troubleshooting
internal        Gather internal info for troubleshooting
ip              Display IP information
ipqos           IP QoS Manager
ipv4            Display IP information
ipv6            Display IPV6 information
l2fm            L2fm debug info
l2pt            Gather information for l2pt troubleshooting
l3vm            Display VRF information
lacp            Gather detailed information for LACP component
license         Display licensing information
logging         Show information on logging for technical support staff
m2fib           Gather detailed information for M2FIB troubleshooting
m2rib           Gather detailed information for M2RIB troubleshooting
mfwd            Display MCASTFWD status and configuration
module          Gather info related to a module
monitor         Gather detailed information for monitor troubleshooting
multicast       Display V4 Multicast information
netflow         Show NetFlow tech-support information
netstack        Gather information for NETSTACK troubleshooting
npacl           Display npacl information
pixm            Gather detailed information for PIXM troubleshooting
pixmc           PIXMC Information
pktmgr          Display Packet Manager information
port-channel    Gather detailed information for port channel troubleshooting
port-profile    Gather information for troubleshooting port-profiles
port-security   Port security related command

Ok, color code again:

Red – Router Output
Blue – Commands
Green – Notes

Traditionally when we have done show tech-support, we have always done terminal length to 0, set the capture buffer on our terminal application, and then executed the command – like this:

First we set the length to 0
FryGuyR1#terminal length 0
Then we configure our terminal to capture the data

Using SecureCRT to receive an ASCII file

Then we issue the show tech command:
FryGuyR1#show tech-support

After a few minutes we are done.  We can then take that file and then send it to TAC or some other VAR support.  The 3845ISR I just did a show-tech on was about 400kb, so it is no problem to e-mail that one to someone.

Well, that is fine until you get to a beast like the Nexus 7000.  As I mentioned earlier, the SHOW TECH from that beast is HUGE!  One of our production devices has a show tech of about 150 megs!

So, what are we do to if we need to do a SHOW TECH on the Nexus?  Well one thing cool about NX-OS is that you can redirect the output by appending >> or creating a file with > to the show tech.  You can redirect the output to Bootflahs, slot0, or volatile memory.  Once there, you can retrieve it vie FTP/TFTP and such.

N7K1# show tech-support >> ?
bootflash:  Destination filesystem path
slot0:      Destination filesystem path
volatile:   Destination filesystem path

N7K1#show tech-support >> bootflash:TechBlog.txt

So, once you have all that information – just look at the bootlfash:

N7K1# dir
144030405 Jan 23 16:49:17 2011  TechBlog.txt
44192    Nov 23 1:22:00 2010  Backuprunningconfig.txt

Usage for bootflash://
658034688 bytes used
1151864832 bytes free
1809899520 bytes total
N7K1-CoreSwitch1#

Now for another neat trick – the NX-OS has gzip installed, so we can gzip the file and make it even smaller before transferring it to our computer.

N7K1# gzip bootflash:TechBlog.txt
N7K1# dir
10590611 Jan 23 16:49:17 2011  TechBlog.txt.gz
44192    Nov 21 12:22:19 2010  runningconfig.txt

Usage for bootflash://
524464128 bytes used
1285435392 bytes free
1809899520 bytes total
N7K1#

There, we went from 144 meg file to a 10 meg zip.  From there, you should be able to e-mail the file to support for assistance.

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