Benefits of enabling call home

Configure and enable the call home feature as it improves the user experience when IBM Storage Fusion is used.

The call home feature when enabled provides the following benefits:

1. Improves customer service response time
   • Scheduled data uploads:

     If the call home feature is enabled, then the IBM® support representatives can start with the analysis of the issue that is reported without any delay. The IBM support team can use the cluster data from the call home scheduled uploads to do an immediate analysis of the issue. For more information, see Logs in IBM Storage Fusion HCI System.

     However, if the call home feature is not enabled, then the IBM support team first collects debugging data from the IBM Storage Fusion user interface. The whole process takes time to request, collect, and deliver the data, which might cause a delay in resolving the issue on the site.

   • Selected failure events trigger automatic call home uploads:

     If the call home feature is enabled, then the event-based uploads feature automatically collects the relevant component-specific information and uploads it to the IBM ECuRep server. The uploaded data enables the IBM support team to immediately find the root cause of the issue that is reported on the customer site.

2. Proactively detects issues
   • Detects violations against best practices and common misconfiguration.
   • Finds out which specific customer site is affected by the reported issue by using tools like High Impact Programming Error Authorized Program Analysis Report (HIPER APARs).
   • Constantly extends the list of automatically detected issues, best practice violations, and common misconfiguration over time.
   Note: IBM Storage Fusion user interface displays the list of events.
3. Improves customer support experience in areas of consumability and ease of usage
   • Uploads gpfs snaps directly from the IBM Storage Fusion system:

     If the call home feature is enabled, then a customer can easily find out the customer number. The requested debugging data is transferred from the customer site cluster or node to the IBM support team by raising a service ticket. For more information, see Enabling IBM Call Home for IBM Storage Fusion HCI System.

4. Creates service tickets automatically for reported failures
   If the call home feature is enabled, then the system automatically creates Salesforce service tickets for any hardware failures that are reported on customer sites.

   Note: A user can configure the call home settings on the IBM Storage Fusion user interface.