Support assistance

Edit online

Support assistance enables support personnel to access the system to complete troubleshooting and maintenance tasks. You can configure either local support assistance, where support personnel visit your site to fix problems with the system, or local and remote support assistance. Remote support assistance allows support personnel to access the system remotely from the support center. Both local and remote support assistance uses secure connections to protect data exchange between the support center and system. All actions that are completed with support assistance are recorded for auditing purposes. Local support assistance must be configured before remote support assistance is enabled.

Local support assistance

Use local support assistance if you have restrictions that require onsite support only. Unlike other authentication methods, you can audit all actions that support personnel conduct on the system when local support assistance is configured. Support personnel can log on to your system by using a console or over your intranet. These users can be authenticated only by a challenge-response mechanism. Support personnel obtain the challenge-response access through a virtual private network (VPN) or over a telephone call with another support person or the administrator at the support center.
Note: If you want to enable remote support assistance, you must configure local support assistance.

Remote support assistance

With remote support assistance, support personnel can access the system remotely through a secure connection from the support center. However, before you enable remote support assistance between the system and support, you first need to configure local support assistance. You must ensure that call home is configured and a valid email server is specified. Call home automatically contacts support when critical errors occur on the system. Call home sends a return email that communicates information back to the system such as a Problem Management Report (PMR) number that tracks the problem until it is resolved.

During system initialization, you can optionally set up a service IP address and remote support assistance. If you did not configure a service IP address, go to Settings > Network > Service IPs to configure a service IP for each node on the system. Optionally, you need to configure a remote proxy server if you use a firewall to protect your internal network.

To prevent connection errors, ports 22 and 443 must be configured to support the service IP addresses remote support assistance.

When you enable remote support assistance you can specify either IP address or domain name for support. If you specify a domain name, a DNS server must be configured on your system. To configure a DNS server for the system, select Settings > Network > DNS. You can also use the mkdnsserver command to configure DNS servers. In addition, you can define a shared-token is also generated by the system and sent to the support center. If the system needs support services, support personnel can be authenticated onto the system with a challenge-response mechanism. Use the chsra command to enable remote support assistance on the system. After support personnel obtain the response code, it is entered to gain access to the system. Service personnel have three attempts to enter the correct response code. After three failed attempts, the system generates a new random challenge and support personnel must obtain a new response code.

Support roles

When you enable local support assistance, you can specify the IP address or domain name for the support connections. When support personnel log on to the systems with local support assistance, they are assigned either the Monitor role or the Restricted Administrator role. The Monitor role can view, collect, and monitor logs and errors to determine the solution to problems on the system. The Restricted Administrator role gives support personnel access to administrator tasks to help solve problems on the system. However, this role restricts these users from deleting volumes or pools, unmapping hosts, or creating, deleting, or changing users. Roles limit access of the assigned user to specific tasks on the system. Users with the service role can set the time and date on the system, delete dump files, add and delete nodes, apply service, and shut down the system. They can also view objects and system configuration settings but cannot configure, modify, or manage the system or its resources. They also cannot read user data.

Uploading packages

Service personnel might require specific support information to analyze before they can resolve an issue. You can automatically or manually upload new support packages to the support center to help analyze and resolve errors on the system. You can generate new support packages and upload them to the support center or select specific logs from a particular time.