How do I capture a packet trace of NFS operations on a EMC Isilon filer?

Environment

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux
• EMC Isilon filer

Issue

• How do I capture a packet trace of NFS operations on a EMC Isilon filer?

Resolution

• The below procedure has been known to work on many EMC Isilon filers, and is given here for reference. It may be incomplete or inaccurate depending on your EMC Isilon software version. Please contact EMC support and/or see Content from support.emc.com is not included.EMC's support website for official recommendations.

Two possible ways:

1. From the web interface, got to Cluster Management --> Diagnostic and select Packet Capture. In this page you can select the interface, the amount of bytes to capture and filter by client, port, protocol or node.

2. From the CLI, use the commands isi_netlogger. This has a syntax similar to tcpdump. A example command is:

# isi_netlogger -c -i em0 -t 5 -k 864 -s 320 -- host 10.10.10.1

This will capture the traffic on the em0 interface, the first 320 bytes (default), making a 5minutes interval (-t 5) file and keeping 864 files (-k 864).
isi_netlogger is cluster aware so it can be run on a single node.

For full documentation of both procedures, please see the EMC documentation or contact EMC support.

This solution is part of Red Hat’s fast-track publication program, providing a huge library of solutions that Red Hat engineers have created while supporting our customers. To give you the knowledge you need the instant it becomes available, these articles may be presented in a raw and unedited form.