Call Home

Call Home connects the system to support personnel who can monitor and respond to system events to ensure that your system remains up and running.

If a software or hardware error occurs, Call Home notifies the support center, and automatically opens a service request. Call Home sends service-related information to inform support personnel so they can quickly act to resolve the problem.

Cloud services

Prerequisites

If you are using Call Home with cloud services to send notifications to the IBM Support, you need to ensure that the system can connect to the IBM Support.

Before you configure Call Home with cloud services, ensure that the following prerequisites are configured on the system:
  • Ensure that all the nodes on the system have internet access.
  • Ensure that a valid service IP address is configured on each node on the system.
Call Home with cloud services support the following configurations that have extra network requirements.
Table 1. Supported network configurations for Call Home with cloud services
Supported configuration DNS configuration Connection requirements
Call Home with cloud services with an internal proxy server Required Configure a proxy to allow outbound traffic on port 443 to esupport.ibm.com
Call Home with cloud services with a DNS server Required Configure a firewall to allow outbound traffic on port 443 to esupport.ibm.com.

Call Home with cloud services sends notifications directly to a centralized file repository that contains troubleshooting information that is gathered from your system. Support personnel can access this repository and be assigned issues automatically as problem reports. This method of transmitting notifications from the system to support removes the need for you to create problem reports manually.

As part of Call Home with cloud services configuration, you can define an internal proxy server within your network to manage connections between the system and the IBM Support. If an SSL inspection proxy is in use, you must define the proxy server and add its SSL certificate to enable Call Home to work correctly. For more information, see HTTP proxy server.

To configure Call Home with cloud services, use the Edit settings option on the Settings > Support > Call Home panel in the management GUI.

To configure Call Home with cloud services by using the command line interface, see chcloudcallhome command.

Email notifications

For redundancy, email notifications can also be configured. Call Home with email notifications sends notifications through an email server to support, and local users or services that monitor activity on the system. Call Home with email notifications requires configuration of at least one email server and local user. You can add or delete custom email users and adjust the Error and Inventory toggles for the support center email.

To configure Call Home with email notifications, use the Edit settings option on the Settings > Support > Call Home panel in the management GUI. Make sure that you provide the system location and contact information.

To configure Call Home with email notifications by using the command line interface, see mkemailserver and mkemailuser commands.

Inventory information and heartbeats

Inventory data is a summary of the hardware components and configuration of a system and can be sent by using Call Home with cloud services or Call Home with email notifications. Service personnel can use this information to contact you when relevant software updates are available or when an issue that can affect your configuration is discovered. It is a good practice to enable inventory reporting.

If you are using Call Home with cloud services, the system sends a heartbeat notification to support as part of the Call Home function every 24 hours. Heartbeat notifications contain the same information about the system as inventory notifications, but they are not sent to any local user.

Because inventory information is sent by using the call home email function, you must enable call home email before you can send an inventory information email.

You can adjust the contact information, censor sensitive information, adjust the frequency of inventory emails, and enable or disable the sending of inventory data/heartbeats by using the management GUI. Use the Settings > Support > Call Home panel in the management GUI.

Storage Insights

You can also use Call Home with cloud services to send configuration, capacity, and performance metadata about your IBM Storage Virtualize systems to IBM® Storage Insights for detailed analysis, monitoring, and reporting.

For more information on IBM Storage Insights, see IBM Storage Insights.