Gather diagnostics using the Azure portal

In this how-to guide, you'll learn how to gather a remote diagnostics package for an Azure Private 5G Core (AP5GC) site using the Azure portal. The diagnostics package can then be provided to Azure support to assist you with issues.

You should always collect diagnostics as soon as possible after encountering an issue and submit them with your support request. See How to open a support request for Azure Private 5G Core.

Prerequisites

You must already have an AP5GC site deployed to collect diagnostics.

Set up a storage account

You need to set up a storage account to store the diagnostics package.

1. Create a storage account for diagnostics with the following additional configuration:
   1. In the Data protection tab, under Access control, select Enable version-level immutability support. This will allow you to specify a time-based retention policy for the account in the next step.
   2. If you would like the content of your storage account to be automatically deleted after a period of time, configure a default time-based retention policy for your storage account.
   3. Create a container for your diagnostics.
   4. Make a note of the Container blob URL. For example:
      https://storageaccountname.blob.core.windows.net/diagscontainername
      1. Navigate to your Storage account.
      2. Select the ... symbol on the right side of the container blob that you want to use for diagnostics collection.
      3. Select Container properties in the context menu.
      4. Copy the contents of the URL field in the Container properties view.
2. Create a User-assigned identity and assign it to the storage account created above with the Storage Blob Data Contributor role.

   Tip

   You may have already created and associated a user-assigned identity when creating the site.

3. Navigate to the Packet core control plane resource for the site.
4. Select Identity under Settings in the left side menu.
5. Select Add.
6. Select the user-signed managed identity you created and select Add.

Gather diagnostics for a site

1. Sign in to the Azure portal.

2. Navigate to the Packet Core Control Pane overview page of the site you want to gather diagnostics for.

3. Select Diagnostics Collection under the Help section on the left side. This will open a Diagnostics Collection view.

4. Enter the Storage account blob URL that was configured for diagnostics storage and append the file name that you want to give the diagnostics. For example: https://storageaccountname.blob.core.windows.net/diagscontainername/diagsPackageName.zip

   Tip

   The Storage account blob URL should have been noted during creation. If it wasn't:

   1. Navigate to your Storage account.
   2. Select the ... symbol on the right side of the container blob that you want to use for diagnostics collection.
   3. Select Container properties in the context menu.
   4. Copy the contents of the URL field in the Container properties view.

5. Select Diagnostics collection.

6. The AP5GC online service will generate a package at the provided storage account URL. Once the portal reports that this has succeeded, you'll be able to download the diagnostics package ready to share with Azure support.

   1. To download the diagnostics package, navigate to the storage account URL, right-click the file and select Download.
   2. To open a support request and share the diagnostics package with Azure support, see How to open a support request for Azure Private 5G Core.

Troubleshooting

• If diagnostics file collection fails, an activity log will appear in the portal allowing you to troubleshoot via ARM:
  • If an invalid container URL was passed, the request will be rejected and report 400 Bad Request. Repeat the process with the correct container URL.
  • If the asynchronous part of the operation fails, the asynchronous operation resource is set to Failed and reports a failure reason.
• Check that the same user-assigned identity was added to both the site and storage account.
• Check whether the storage container has an immutability policy configured. If so, either remove the policy or ensure that the storage account has version-level immutability support enabled, as described in Set up a storage account. This is required because the diagnostics file is streamed to the storage account container, so the container must support blob updates. For more information, see Time-based retention policies for immutable blob data.
• If this does not resolve the issue, share the correlation ID of the failed request with AP5GC support for investigation. See How to open a support request for Azure Private 5G Core.

Next steps

• Perform packet capture on a packet core instance
• Monitor Azure Private 5G Core with Azure Monitor platform metrics
• Monitor Azure Private 5G Core with packet core dashboards