How does AutoSupport work?

The AutoSupport feature triggers the automatic sending of notification messages to IBM® Service and Support. AutoSupport also has the ability to send notification messages to one or more customer-specified e-mail addresses which can alert recipients to potential problems with the N series storage system. As necessary, IBM Service and Support will contact customers based on the contact information in the customer’s record for resolution of potential system problems.

Note: After an occurrence of an event, an AutoSupport notification is sent to IBM Service and Support via HTTPS by a direct connection to the predefined location specified in Data ONTAP.

AutoSupport is enabled by default with Data ONTAP 7.1.1 or higher when you configure your N series storage system for the first time.

IBM strongly encourages customers to enable AutoSupport. AutoSupport enables the IBM System Storage® N series machines to send diagnostic information back to IBM when error conditions are encountered within the machines. AutoSupport can be enabled via the command line interface via the following command:

options autosupport.enable on

AutoSupport can also be enabled via the FilerView web browser user interface by selecting Filer → Configure AutoSupport in the left-hand navigation frame, and then selecting Yes from the drop-down list box next to “AutoSupport Enabled.”

On later versions of Data ONTAP, AutoSupport is enabled by default when you configure your N series storage system for the first time. After a grace period of 24 hours, AutoSupport messages start being generated.

Note: You can disable AutoSupport at any time using the autosupport.enable option, but you are strongly advised to leave it enabled.