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10.4 hardware health monitoring - anybody know what a bias current sensor is?

Hi all,

I think this may fall under "be careful what you wish for" but here goes. I've just upgraded to NPM 10.4 and have found some "interesting" things with the hardware health monitoring:

Bias Current Sensor.jpg

Does anyone know A) what the Te interface Bias Current Sensors are and B) how to stop NPM from looking at them? So far they are showing on my VSS pairs and 3750-X switches.

Regards,

John

  • Hi John,

    Same thing here as yet no luck figuring out what this is actually tell us.

    JonnyG


  • Hi

    I had this same issue with 12 of my Cisco 4510R-E switches. I opened a case (403672) with SW. They sent the case to development and it was determined that there was nothing they could do. It seems there is a problem with the way Cisco set up the alarms.

    This is not good, now my core switches have constant Major alarms on them.

    Rick 

  • Not that it helps, but I was able to get these to go away on my Cisco 4900M's by removing unused 10G GBICs from the device.  In my case, they were only alarming on 10G interfaces that weren't actually connected, but still had a GBIC installed.

  • Sadly they are all active interfaces on our VSS pairs emoticons_sad.png

  • I just did a list resources on the devices and unchecked the Health Monitors check box for the time being to stop the nodes from being in a Warning State.

  • I also don't know what biases are :-) but they are reported by the devices as one of sensor, and that they are in warning state. I've seen some cisco devices without those sensors / without warning state, so the thresholds for those sensors can be probably configured, or dependant on IOS version / equipment.

    You can check it on the device on your own using following command: (IOS 12.2 +)

    show interfaces transceiver threshold violations



  • We have the same thing here since 10.4, all of our 65k's that have active 10gig transceivers are showing this.  This is being caused by GBICs that support DOM, or Digital Optical Monitoring.  The thresholds for DOM are in hardware and can not be modified.  Most of my DOM related metrics, now showing in NPM as power events hardware monitoring, are over amperage on most or all of my 10g GBICs.  I am probably going to call this one into TAC.

    You can view the DOM stats with the following command(will only show DOM supported GBICs) as Yossarin stated...

    sh interfaces transceiver ?

    detail

    properties

    supported-list

    supported-modules

    switch

    threshold

    Here is the general idea on a SUP-720-10G w/ VSS

    sh inter trans detail switch 1 mod 5

    Transceiver monitoring is disabled for all interfaces.

    mA: milliamperes, dBm: decibels (milliwatts), NA or N/A: not applicable.

    ++ : high alarm, +  : high warning, -  : low warning, -- : low alarm.

    A2D readouts (if they differ), are reported in parentheses.

    The threshold values are calibrated.

                                High Alarm  High Warn  Low Warn   Low Alarm

               Temperature         Threshold   Threshold  Threshold  Threshold

    Port       (Celsius)          (Celsius)   (Celsius)  (Celsius)  (Celsius)

    ---------- ------------------  ----------  ---------  ---------  ---------

    Te1/5/4      29.9                74.0        70.0         0.0       -4.0

                                High Alarm  High Warn  Low Warn   Low Alarm

                Voltage            Threshold   Threshold  Threshold  Threshold

    Port        (Volts)            (Volts)     (Volts)    (Volts)    (Volts)

    ----------  ---------------    ----------  ---------  ---------  ---------

    Te1/5/4      N/A                   N/A         N/A         N/A        N/A

                                High Alarm  High Warn  Low Warn   Low Alarm

                Current            Threshold   Threshold  Threshold  Threshold

    Port        (milliamperes)     (mA)        (mA)       (mA)       (mA)

    ----------  -----------------  ----------  ---------  ---------  ---------

    Te1/5/4       8.1         --     N/A        N/A        N/A       N/A

                Optical            High Alarm  High Warn  Low Warn   Low Alarm

                Transmit Power     Threshold   Threshold  Threshold  Threshold

    Port        (dBm)              (dBm)       (dBm)      (dBm)      (dBm)

    ----------  -----------------  ----------  ---------  ---------  ---------

    Te1/5/4      -3.5                 2.9        -1.0        -7.3      -11.3

                Optical            High Alarm  High Warn  Low Warn   Low Alarm

                Receive Power      Threshold   Threshold  Threshold  Threshold

    Port        (dBm)              (dBm)       (dBm)      (dBm)      (dBm)

    ----------  -----------------  ----------  ---------  ---------  ---------

    Te1/5/4      -1.9                 2.9        -1.0        -9.9      -13.9

    Notice how it says "Transceiver monitoring is disabled for all interfaces." yet I am still throwing power errors.  Around here we call that awesome.  If TAC gives me anything useful i'll post it.

  • The more I dig the more annoying this gets. As far as the VSS switch is concerned, the transceivers haven't even bothered the threshold levels that are set:

    #sho inter trans threshold violations switch 2 module 2

    Transceiver monitoring is disabled for all interfaces.

    Rx: Receive, Tx: Transmit.

    DDDD: days, HH: hours, MM: minutes, SS: seconds

                            Time since Last Known

               Time in slot    Threshold Violation     Type(s) of Last Known

    Port       (DDDD:HH:MM:SS)  (DDDD:HH:MM:SS)        Threshold Violation(s)

    ---------- --------------- ----------------------  ----------------------

    Te2/2/1     0482:01:45:28    Not applicable        Not applicable

    Te2/2/2     0482:01:45:28    Not applicable        Not applicable

    Te2/2/3     0482:01:45:27    Not applicable        Not applicable

    Te2/2/7     0482:01:45:27    Not applicable        Not applicable

    Te2/2/8     0482:01:45:26    Not applicable        Not applicable

  • I just got this back from Cisco TAC, and based on it I would suggest maybe someone at Solarwinds contact their Cisco Partner resource.

    Cisco TAC wrote:

    I did research this and didn't find anything wrong on the switch side. All the 'X2-10GB-SR' transceivers are operating under the defined threshold values. While researching this I also found that the “X2-10GB-SR” transceivers only supports optical 'transmit' and 'receive' power levels along with 'Temperature' and shows ‘N/A’ for any other field in ‘show interface x/y transceiver detail’ command output.

    Probably due to that the SolarWinds (Orion) is detecting these error logs and needs to be configured in a way so that it cannot poll the transceivers for 'voltage' and 'current' information.

    I was also able to find some similar cases which points to the same as this is unsupported feature on 'X2-10GB-SR' & Xenpak transceivers.

    If there was any issue on the switch side then the switch would have generated the below logs or similar to this:

    THRESHOLD_VIOLATION: Te1/2: Rx power low alarm; Operating value: -40.0 dBm

    I would suggest to open a case with SolarWinds (Orion) for this and configure it not to poll for 'voltage' and 'current' information.


  • We have the same issue, any update on this?