Table of ContentsView in Frames

Considerations for managing core dump files

A core dump produces a core dump file that contains the contents of system memory, including the system memory for the Performance Acceleration Module (PAM) or Flash Cache family of modules and the system memory for NVRAM. Several considerations exist for managing core dump files.

When a core dump file is created, it is stored in uncompressed format if sufficient space is available. If sufficient space is not available, it is stored in compressed format on a spare disk. If no spare disks are available, the system attempts to store the compressed core dump file across reserved sections of disks. You use the coredump.dump.attempts option to control how many attempts the system makes to create a core dump file. The default value is 2.

Core dump files are not compatible between Data ONTAP releases because where the core starts on disks depends on the release. Because of this incompatibility, Data ONTAP might fail to find a core dump file dumped by another release.

You must not further compress a core dump file if you send it to technical support for analysis. The manual compression makes the file unrecognizable and can delay technical support's response time to your system issues. You can, however, use the coredump segment config and the coredump segment commands to segment the core dump file for easier handling.