I'm still at a loss for this issue.  Beginning last Wednesday, the Exchange administrator failed the cluster over to another node and all subsequent autosupport tests started working perfectly.  I assumed that the other node was the problem, so we again made it the active node on Friday to do more tests.  Surprisingly, all autosupport tests and my weekly log email have worked fine (as well as a test today).  I don't know if the act of failing the cluster to the other node fixed something, but it's back to working again.  It seems this issue only pops up once a month, lasts 3-4 days, then disappears again.
 
Very odd.  I'll definitely get a packet trace when it happens again though.
 
 
Daniel

From: Kenneth Heal [mailto:kheal@hotmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 1:37 PM
To: Daniel Keisling; toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: RE: Autosupport failing to mailhost

Hi Daniel

Very good point.  I have done a bit more digging and find this article on the NOW site:
https://now.netapp.com/Knowledgebase/solutionarea.asp?id=kb13968

So it does indeed look like that this autosupport.support.transport setting only applies to mail for netapp and that addresses in your autosupport.to should indeed always be sent via smtp.  I think this must have changed sometime around 7.0.

Looking at the error you see, Autosupport cannot connect to host rtpmail01.americas.ppdi.local (Network comm problem) for message: USER_TRIGGERED (TEST) it does sound like some device is blocking a connection between the filer and exchange server.

At this stage I would make a packet trace on the filer as follows:
pktt start all -d / -i rtpmail01.americas.ppdi.local
options autosupport.doit TEST
Wait for the error message then
pktt stop all

I don't know how well you know TCP; If you send me the trace I would be happy to look at it; what you will be interested in seeing is
a) whether any attempt at all is made to connect to the exchange server
b) if so is it to port 80 (http), port 443 (https) or smtp (25)
c) If you see a bunch of SYN's with no replies or a reply of a RST ACK then there is most likely a firewall blocking the path.

SMTP is plain text so if there is a SMTP connection which goes wrong somewhere you are quite likely to see an error telling you what's wrong which you could then share with your Exchange admin.

Hope this helps -- let us know your findings,
cheers,

Kenneth

Subject: RE: Autosupport failing to mailhost
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 13:07:52 -0600
From: daniel.keisling@austin.ppdi.com
To: kheal@hotmail.com; toasters@mathworks.com

Does the autosupport.support.transport option only use smtp or https when delivering to NetApp?  In this case (https), it works fine.  NetApp is receiving my autosupports. 
 
What's not working is local mail to me.  I tried this on another filer at another site (except for the mailhost (another Exchange 2003 server), all the autosupport settings are the same) and the email to my local account came immediately, as well as a notification from NetApp.  The log even said:
 
Feb 12 14:11:57 EST [wilstore2a: asup.smtp.sent:notice]: Cluster Notification mail sent: Cluster Notification from wilstore2a (USER_TRIGGERED (testing_from_wilstore)) INFO
 
This was definitely sent via smtp, yet the autosupport.support.transport is set to https.

Daniel

From: owner-toasters@mathworks.com [mailto:owner-toasters@mathworks.com] On Behalf Of Kenneth Heal
Sent: Tuesday, February 12, 2008 12:33 PM
To: Daniel Keisling; toasters@mathworks.com
Subject: RE: Autosupport failing to mailhost

Hi Daniel

I see a line which says
autosupport.support.transport https

Which means the filer will use https to send autosupports, and not smtp.

Can you try
options autosupport.support.transport smtp

And see if the mails go through?

cheers
Kenneth

Kenneth Heal
Databasement BV
The Netherlands

Subject: Autosupport failing to mailhost
Date: Tue, 12 Feb 2008 10:22:51 -0600
From: daniel.keisling@austin.ppdi.com
To: toasters@mathworks.com

Hello,
 
From what seems out of the blue, Autosupport emails are no longer able to be sent to my mailhost (Exchange 2003 on the same subnet):
 
"Autosupport cannot connect to host rtpmail01.americas.ppdi.local (Network comm problem) for message: USER_TRIGGERED (TEST)"
 
This message will be thrown until the message is eventually dropped.  My Exchange administrator does not see any connections coming from the filer to send this email.  I can ping the mailhost with no problem:
 
rtpstore2b> ping rtpmail01.americas.ppdi.local
rtpmail01.americas.ppdi.local is alive
My routing table:
 
Destination      Gateway            Flags     Refs     Use  Interface
default          172.20.63.254      UGS         4   222239  e0a
127              localhost          UGS         0    22236  lo
localhost        localhost          UH          3      145  lo
172.20.62/23     link#4             UC          0        0  e0a
rtpmail01.americ 0:8:2:28:ee:86     UHL         0       11  e0a
rtpexchbe01.amer 0:8:2:28:ee:86     UHL         0        0  e0a
rtpstore2b       0:a0:98:9:66:53    UHL         0    18112  lo
My autosupport options:
 
rtpstore2b> options autosupport
autosupport.cifs.verbose     off
autosupport.content          complete
autosupport.doit             DONT
autosupport.enable           on
autosupport.from             rtpstore2b at rtp.ppdi.com
autosupport.local.nht_data.enable off
autosupport.local.performance_data.enable off
autosupport.mailhost         rtpmail01.americas.ppdi.local
autosupport.minimal.subject.id hostname
autosupport.nht_data.enable  on
autosupport.noteto
autosupport.performance_data.enable on
autosupport.retry.count      15         (value might be overwritten in takeover)
autosupport.retry.interval   4m         (value might be overwritten in takeover)
autosupport.support.enable   on
autosupport.support.proxy
autosupport.support.to       autosupport at netapp.com
autosupport.support.transport https
autosupport.support.url      support.netapp.com/asupprod/post/1.0/postAsup
autosupport.throttle         on
autosupport.to               storage at wilm.ppdi.com
(I've replaced the @'s with 'at')
 
I have no problems with my SSH session, so I don't know how this could be a network cable/connection problem.  Are there any debugging steps I can do?  Has anyone seen this before?  It has definitely worked in the past.  This is DOT 7.2.2 on a FAS3040.
 
TIA,
 
Daniel




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