Electronic Service Agent

Electronic Service Agent™ provides an automatic hardware problem-reporting function that helps predict and prevent hardware errors by early detection of potential problems, downloads fixes, and automatically submits problems to IBM^® when appropriate.

Electronic Service Agent™ also provides an automatic software problem-reporting function. Supplemental system service information is sent to IBM and made available to IBM support centers to aid in problem resolution. The same service information is available to be viewed with prior registration of an IBM ID.

Electronic Service Agent is integrated into the operating system.

Electronic Service Agent must be activated on each system and logical partition (LPAR).

If you have other iSeries™ systems and i5/OS™ LPARs in your network running other releases of the operating system, Electronic Service Agent is available for installation on all releases of the operating system. For information about Electronic Service Agent for prior releases of the operating system, see the Online Publications Web site.

Electronic Service Agent has the following newly-added functions in IBM i5/OS V5R4:

Problem reporting retry:

Retry capability for problem reporting is now controlled using the Electronic Service Agent attributes.

The retry attributes are used for service requests that are placed automatically by Service Agent.

The retry attributes are:

Retry

This attribute determines whether and how service requests that are placed automatically by Service Agent are to be retried if an attempt fails.

Frequency

The frequency at which service requests are retried.

Number of times to retry

The number of times to try the service requests again.

Notify users

Determines whether Service Agent users are to receive a message when a retry occurs.

You can set the retry attributes using GO SERVICE, Option 1, Change Service Agent attributes.

Display problem reporting information and status

To view the status of Service Agent’s problem-reporting activity, use GO SERVICE, Option 4, Display problem reporting information.

Software problem reporting

The Service Agent reports software problems detected by the i5/OS Service Monitor, which is a service function that is used to monitor the system for specific conditions. In addition to reporting the problems, the Service Agent automatically sends the primary problem documentation to IBM. Secondary documentation can be manually sent to IBM using the SERVICE menu command.

• Pre-activation checklist
  Use this checklist to help plan for Electronic Service Agent activation and to verify that you have completed all the preparation tasks.
• Activate Electronic Service Agent
  Learn how to activate Electronic Service Agent.
• Use Electronic Service Agent
  Learn about Electronic Service Agent operations and expected Electronic Service Agent activity on your system.
• Troubleshoot Electronic Service Agent
  Learn about general problem determination information for Electronic Service Agent including how to generate the documentation or traces.