Troubleshooting guide

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Cisco PGW 2200 Softswitch Release 9.8 Operations, Maintenance, and Troubleshooting Guide
OL-0800-14
Chapter 3 Cisco PGW 2200 Softswitch Platform Operations
Daily Tasks
Component ID
The first element of the alarm message identifies the system component that generated the alarm, using
the customer-defined description of the component that is entered during system provisioning. In the
example, these components are LPC-01, IOCM-01, MGC1alink2, and MGC1alink3.
All system components are described in Cisco PGW 2200 Softswitch Release 9.8 Provisioning Guide.
Time Stamp
The second element of the alarm message identifies the time of the alarm by year, month, day, hour,
minute, hundredths of a second, thousandths of a second (milliseconds), and time zone. The time that is
displayed is the system time. In the example, these times would be 2001-02-26 09:16:07.806 EST,
2001-02-26 09:17:00.690 EST, 2001-02-26 09:17:47.224 EST, and 2001-02-26 09:17:47.225 EST.
Alarm Category
The third element of the alarm message identifies the alarm category. It indicates the MML description
of the alarm (event). In the example:
• ALM=\”SCMGC MTP3 COMM FAIL\” indicates an SCMGC-MTP3 communications failure.
• ALM=\”Config Fail\” indicates a configuration failure.
• ALM=\”SC FAIL\” indicates a signal channel failure.
Severity Level
The last element of the alarm message identifies the severity level of the alarm. The four levels are:
• Critical (CR)—A serious problem exists in the network. Critical alarms cause a switchover, where
the active Cisco PGW 2200 Softswitch switches processing to the standby Cisco PGW 2200
Softswitch. Because critical alarms affect service, you should clear them immediately.
Caution Critical alarms cause the system to switchover automatically. While a switchover is in progress, new
calls are dropped and in-progress calls are sustained.
• Major (MJ)—A problem exists that disrupts service. You should clear major alarms immediately.
These alarms differ from critical alarms because they do not cause a switchover from the active
Cisco PGW 2200 Softswitch to the standby Cisco PGW 2200 Softswitch.
• Minor (MN)—Note and then clear minor alarms as soon as possible. Determine how often this alarm
appears, because it might indicate a bigger problem.
• Informational (IN)—This severity level applies to messages that provide information about typical
events and conditions. Informational messages do not require corrective action. Examples are timer
expirations, values that have exceeded preset thresholds, and unexpected responses from endpoints
to signaling messages sent by the Cisco PGW 2200 Softswitch. Only the SNMP Manager retrieves
events of the informational severity level.
An Alarm Example
This section provides an alarm example, SS7 SIG SRVC UNAVAIL.