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Why the event log is being spammed by "km.keyserver.notavailable" alerts?

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ontap-9
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Applies to

  • ONTAP 9
  • CipherTrust Manager (CTM)
  • Key Management Interoperability Protocol (KMIP)

Answer

  • The following alerts are intermittently seen in the event logs:

Thu Jan 19 15:28:34 +0000 [Node-01: mgwd: km.keyserver.notavailable:alert]: The external key management server "xx.xx.xx.xx:5696" is not available for Vserver "SVM1", status: "not-responding".

  • And 15 minutes later the key server is available again:

Thu Jan 19 15:43:37 +0000 [Node-01: mgwd: km.keyserver.available:notice]: The external key management server "vserver: SVM1, keyServer: xx.xx.xx.xx:5696" is now available for Vserver "SVM1".

  • ONTAP periodically (every 15 mins) sends a KMIP Discover Version request to the key server to check if the server is alive and responding.
  • ONTAP node expects the response from the server within 5 secs otherwise the KMIP Discover Version request times out triggering an alert.
  • The issue and its intermittent nature are pointing to external causes like network congestion or KMIP server being slow to respond.
  • The periodic KMIP Discover Version request's timeout is set to 5 seconds and cannot be modified.

NOTE:

  • The timeout for other KMIP operations that happen as a result of a command or a REST API call run by user (like volume create) can be modified using:

security key-manager external modify-server -key-server <> -timeout <>

  • The default timeout for such KMIP operations is set to 25 secs.

Additional Information

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