Communicator e3000 MPE/iX Release 7.5 (Software Release C.75.00) (30216-90336)

Chapter 5
Technical Articles
Predictive Support Changes in MPE/iX 7.5
105
Predictive Support Changes in MPE/iX 7.5
By Gary Robillard – Commercial Systems R&D
Product Overview
The HP Predictive Support software (referred to as Predictive in the rest of this article) provides proactive
hardware support and helps increase the uptime of your systems by monitoring system memory and disk/tape
drives.
When Predictive detects a potential problem, it sends a message to the HP Response Center. The Response
Center portion of the system screens the data and forwards problems requiring further analysis to a Response
Center Engineer. If action is needed at your site, the Response Center Engineer and a Customer Engineer will
work with you to resolve the problem.
This proactive hardware support is provided as part of your HP Hardware and Software Support Services
Agreement.
Predictive Accesses STM Diagnostics in MPE/iX 7.5
Predictive uses the diagnostics platform to access memory and disk-related information. Starting with
MPE/iX Release 6.5 and later, the diagnostics platform changed from sysdiag to Support Tools Manager
(STM).
Predictive for MPE/iX 7.5 includes the following changes:
1. The Predictive version is B.75.01. Predictive runs on 9x8, 9x9, 99x, A400, A500 and N4000 systems.
(including the new PA8700 A and N class systems)
2. Autoraid disk devices (such as the model 12H, XP256, XP512, etc.) are not covered by Predictive on
MPE/iX.
3. The Predictive Support MONitor (PSMON) changes from PSMON.PRED.SYS to PSMOND.PRED.SYS. The
Predictive code from the HP-UX version of Predictive was leveraged to create the new version of
Predictive. When HP-UX Predictive was ported from sysdiag to STM, PSMON was changed to PSMOND. This
was carried forward into MPE/iX 7.5. The new PSMOND monitor utilizes both the posix and MPE/iX
environments.
The PSMOND monitor uses network sockets to communicate with the STM diagnostic monitor diagmond.
This requires the addition of an entry in the SERVICES.NET.SYS file for psmond. The installation job for
Predictive attempts to add a psmond entry as socket number 1788, as follows:
psmond 1788/tcp # Predictive to STM diags
If there is already a psmond entry, the installation job does not attempt to add another one. If there is
another service using socket number 1788, the installation job adds 10 to the service number (1798) and
checks if that service exists. The installation job tries incrementing the service number by 10 up to 50
times (service numbers 1788,1798,1808 through 2278). If the install job is unable to find an unused
number, an install error 201 occurs, and the operator needs to manually add a psmond entry to
SERVICES.NET.SYS before the installation can continue.
4. The Predictive SCSI disk scanner (SCSISCNP.PRED.SYS) has been changed to improve the accuracy of
disk failure detection. The SCSISCAN scanner on the STM version of Predictive is able to look at the logs
residing on both HP and OEM manufactured (Seagate, Quantum, IBM, etc.) disks. This enables more
accurate problem detection. Both the standard SCSI log pages and Growing Defect List are looked at.