With the transition to NetApp clustered Data ONTAP from 7-mode, a lot of end users are struggling not  only with new commands to learn, but also with troubleshooting a platform that admins are not familiar  with.

The most common mistake I see from admins, specially the newbies, is the lack of research and effort put  into a problem. Often times the problem is easy to fix, but you have to go find the root cause first.

While admins still stumble through the new commands, the first thing they should be doing during a troubleshooting exercise is to look for the logs. This may be obvious to some of us, but not to all. Fortunately cDOT allows for admins to look through the logs from a web UI as long as everything is configured properly, which removes some of the intimidation from new commands.

To access the logs for a node, you first need to:

• setup a cluster management LIF
• configure web protocol engine (HTTP or HTTPS (need certs))
• allow chosen protocol through the firewall, if enabled
• setup Service Processor Infrastructure (spi)
  • you can use vserver services web show to verify if it is enabled
• cluster user account must be enabled for http access
• access to the spi web service must be in place for your role (access-control)

Once everything is configured properly, you can navigate to:

• http://<cluster_mgmt_ip>/spi/<node_name>/etc/log/ – For node’s log files
• http://<cluster_mgmt_ip>/spi/<node_name>/etc/crash/ – For node’s core dump files

Note: If you selected to use HTTPS and configured/imported certificates, the path will start with https instead of http as shown above.

If asked for credentials, use the credentials for the cluster user account.