Dell VxRail: Node Health-check Fails for Test dcism

Summary: Node health-check fails for test dcism. Test 'dcism' is a health-check that runs on each VxRail node to attempt to validate the status of the dcism service.

This article applies to This article does not apply to This article is not tied to any specific product. Not all product versions are identified in this article.

Symptoms

Test 'dcism' is a health-check that runs on each VxRail node as part of the VxRail health-checks or How to run the VxVerify tool. This check attempts to validate the status of the Dell iDRAC Service Module (iSM), watchdog service, which VxRail ESXi nodes use.

Test Result Result code Result Interpretation
Pass 0 Dc-iSM Dell-iSM watchdog is running normally
Warning 1 Dc-iSM Dell-iSM watchdog returns an unknown response.
Failure 2 Dc-iSM Dell-iSM returns a status that the watchdog is not running.
Critical 3 This test has no critical result.


Each test that passes is not listed in the summary report, for ease of reading. An example of the health-check output is shown below:

#========================#======#=========#====================================================================#==============#
|  Hostname / Category   |Status  Dell_KB |  Warnings or Failures, unless tests Passed                         ; Product S.N. |
#========================#======#=========#====================================================================#==============#
| node03                 | Failure 193300 | dcism: iSM is not running                                                  .|

Cause

If the hostd is stopped or restarted, then iSM may not come back into a running state, despite being listed as active.

The commands are:
  • On ESXi 7.0:
/etc/init.d/dcism-netmon-watchdog status
   iSM is active (not running)
  • On VxRail 8.0:
/etc/init.d/dellism status

Resolution

Auto-correction for 'DC iSM not running'

If VxRail Manager or VCF Verify report the 'dcism' test failures, then the corrective actions for restarting iSM, the Platform Service, and iDRAC, are done automatically.

To run the iSM auto-correction, VxVerify can be run on VxRM as described in the article How to run the VxVerify tool.


Manual restart of DC iSM

If you restart iSM agent with:
/etc/init.d/dcism-netmon-watchdog restart
Or
/etc/init.d/dellism restart

After about 2 minutes the iSM should now report as: 

/etc/init.d/dcism-netmon-watchdog status
   iSM is active (running)

In some VxRail 4.x versions, an alternative response format could be received:

iSM is running

Affected Products

VxRail, VxRail Appliance Series

Products

VxRail Appliance Family, VxRail Software
Article Properties
Article Number: 000193300
Article Type: Solution
Last Modified: 03 May 2024
Version:  10
Find answers to your questions from other Dell users
Support Services
Check if your device is covered by Support Services.