Call Home Configuration

Connect to the console of or telnet to the Catalyst 6500 switch and login. During this demonstration, the default Call-Home profile (called CiscoTAC-1) or a defined user profile will be used. A user profile may be created by copying the CiscoTAC-1 default profile. If a new profile is created disable any profile or transport options in the profile that will result in duplicate message being sent to the Smart Call Home back-end. The following is a sample configuration session.

1. In global configuration mode enter the service call-home command to activate the call-home feature and enter the call-home configuration command to enter call-home configuration mode

Cat6500(config)#service call-home
Cat6500(config)#call-home
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#

2. If any Call Home profile will be using the email transport option, then enter the optional call-home sender email and mandatory mail-servers addresses. The sender from address is a standard email address that represents the Catalyst 6500 (such as <hostname>@<your-domain-name>). The sender reply-to address is a standard email address which will be used by Smart Call Home as a destination address for email notifications. The mail-server address is an IP address or domain-name of an SMTP server that Call Home will send email messages to. If more than one mail-server address is configured for redundancy the mail-server priority is used to determine which server is the active primary server. Call Home will send messages to the active server with the lowest priority number.

Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#sender from Cat6500-Hostname@yourCompany.com
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#sender reply-to accountName@yourCompany.com
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#mail-server 192.168.1.1 priority 5
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#mail-server backupServer.yourCompany.com priority 10

3. Enter your contact information. A contact email address is required for Call Home to send messages. Configure the contact-email-addr and optional phone-number and street-address. The first character of the phone number must be ‘+’ and the phone number has a minimum length of 12 characters.

Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#contact-email-addr userID@company.com
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#phone-number +214-555-5555
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#street-address “100 Main Street, HomeTown, TX 12345″

4. Enter the your Cisco customer ID, contract number and site ID. These are optional but enter correct values.

Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#customer-id 123456
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#contract-id 1234567
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#site-id 1234567

5. Enter call-home profile configuration mode by issuing the profile CiscoTAC-1 command and enable this profile with the active command.

Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#profile CiscoTac-1
Cat6500(cfg-call-home-profile)#active

6. Select the destination transport-method (http or email) that will be used to send messages to the Smart Cal Home System. The Smart Call Home HTTP server used HTTPS. If the HTTP transport-method is selected then install the security certificate (step 9) which is required for HTTPS. The security certificate is not required when using the Email transport-method to communicate with a Transport Gateway or the Smart Call Home System.

Cat6500(cfg-call-home-profile)#destination transport-method http

7. If you would like to send Call Home messages to other destinations in your network then configure a user profile with the necessary options. The following are command to activate a user profile called Beta which uses the email transport-method and the long-text message format and which is subscribing to all alert groups. For additional profile configuration options, please refer to the Catalyst 6500 Call Home Configuration Guide.

Cat6500(config)#call-home
Cat6500(cfg-call-home)#profile 6200networks
Cat6500(cfg-call-home-profile)#active
Cat6500(cfg-call-home-profile)#destination transport-method email
Cat6500(cfg-call-home-profile)#destination address email yourAccount@yourCompany.com
Cat6500(cfg-call-home-profile)#destination preferred-msg-format long-text
Cat6500(cfg-call-home-profile)#subscribe-to-alert-group all

8. If Call Home messages will be sent to Smart Call Home using a Transport Gateway, then deactivate the default CiscoTAC-1 profile and configure a user profile similar to the default CiscoTAC-1 profile with the destination email transport-method and the address being the email account used for the Transport Gateway. The following are the commands to deactivate the CiscoTAC-1 profile and to create a sample user profile called 6200network.

profile CiscoTAC-1
no active
profile 6200network
active
destination transport-method email
destination address email account_for_TG@yourCompany.com
subscribe-to-alert-group diagnostic severity minor
subscribe-to-alert-group environment severity minor
subscribe-to-alert-group syslog severity major pattern “.*”
subscribe-to-alert-group configuration periodic monthly 23 15:00
subscribe-to-alert-group inventory periodic monthly 23 15:00

9. If the HTTP transport-method will be used to send messages to Smart Call Home, then a crypto trust-point must be configured and the provided Cisco security certificate installed. You can get the certificate from here: Cisco Certificate.

Cat6500(config)#crypto ca trustpoint cisco
Cat6500(ca-trustpoint)#enroll terminal
Cat6500(ca-trustpoint)#revocation-check none
Cat6500(ca-trustpoint)#crypto ca authenticate cisco

Enter the base 64 encoded CA certificate.
End with a blank line or the word “quit” on a line by itself [paste the certificate here and accept it]

% Do you accept this certificate? [yes/no]: yes
Trustpoint CA certificate accepted.
% Certificate successfully imported

10. Finally, exit configuration mode and save the configuration.

Cat6500(config)#end
Cat6500#write mem

You may use the show call-home detail command to verify your configuration and try pinging the email server or Smart Call Home HTTP server to confirm network connectivity.

Configuration Script

A Call Home Configuration Script may be used to configure Call Home on a Catalyst 6500 device. The script may be downloaded from the Smart Call Home Web Application home page. The script is written for Expect and will execute on a UNIX platform. The script prompts the user for an IP address of a Catalyst 6500 device and establishes a telnet session with the device. It then prompts the user for each Call Home parameter and issues the required configuration commands on the device. If the HTTP transport-method is selected, it also configures a crypto trust-point and installs a security certificate.

Call Home Sample Emails

After completing the Call Home Configuration, you will need to register a device within and access the Smart Call Home Portal Page. This page is located here:

Smart Call Home Portal

A device must be registered before the Smart Call Home system will provide reports, or create service requests for the device. Registration may be initiated manually or automatically when supported call-home messages from a device are received by the Smart Call Home back–end system. If the registration is initiated manually, then the first supported call home message received will complete the registration process. Otherwise, a supported call-home message will be used to start the registration process and an email notification will be sent to the device contact with a security token to be used to complete the registration process. You can manually register a device using the ‘call-home send alert-group inventory profile CiscoTAC-1′ command. Upon issuing this command you will receive an email similar to the following:

Pending Email

If you register a device and any of the profile device information is incorrect or if the device is not associated with your CCO profile you will receive a Device Failure Email message from Cisco. This email will resemble the following:

Device Registration Failed

If your device does not have an active SmartNET contract associated with it and you attempt to register the device you will be given a trail account that provides full access to the Smart Call Home Portal for 90 days. After the 90 day trial period you will need to purchase and active SmartNET contract on the device. This email will resemble the following:

Trial Account

Here is a sample email of a SYSLOG message received by the Cisco back-end servers and the email that the contact person would receive from those servers:

SYSLOG Message