Theory of Operation

Insight Diagnostics operates in two modes, offline and online. Offline mode is only available by booting to the SmartStart CD. The operating system of the server is not running and software information from the server is not available to the diagnostics. Online mode is available while the operating system is running. Software information is available to the diagnostics. Features such as Survey history files, history comparison, and remote testing are available only in online operation.

The Insight Diagnostics Survey feature captures system hardware and software configuration data as sessions. A session is defined as an organized group of data describing the configured state of the system at a specific point in time. The Survey functionality maintains up to 10 distinct sessions stored in surveylog.xml. The original configuration session is stored in surveybase.xml which is created the first time Insight Diagnostics is run.  If this file gets deleted, a new one is created the next time a session capture is triggered.  User options are provided to schedule session captures. Individual sessions can also be captured via command line and saved to user-specified filenames.

The Insight Diagnostics Test feature provides the capability to test functionality of all the major hardware components in the system. The Test feature is designed to be flexible to allow the user to customize test selections by providing different modes and types of testing.

A Quick Test provides a predetermined script where a sample of each hardware component is exercised and requires no user intervention.

A Complete Test provides a predetermined script where each hardware component is fully tested. You can select Interactive or Unattended tests. This will change the devices tested during the Complete Test. There are more tests available in the interactive mode, but these require user intervention.

A Custom Test provides the most flexibility in controlling the testing of a system. The Custom Test mode allows the user to specifically select which devices, tests, and test parameters are run. Users are provided the ability to select tests that do not require any user interaction through the Interactive and Unattended tests modes.