Setting up call home with email notifications

Call home with email notification sends notifications through a local email server to support and local users or services that monitor activity on the system. With email notifications, you can send notifications to support and designate internal distribution of notifications as well, which alerts internal personnel of potential problems. Call home with email notifications require configuration of at least one email server and local users.

However, external notifications to the support center can be dropped if filters on the email server are active. To eliminate this problem, call home with email notifications is not recommended as the only method to transmit notifications to the support center. Call home with email notifications can be configured with cloud services for redundancy and internal management of notifications. If you also want notifications sent to an internal user or server, you must set up email notifications.

Using the management GUI

If you did not configure call home during system setup, you can configure this function in the management GUI. You can also change or update current settings on the Call Home page.

Note: Call home with email notifications can also be configured or updated by selecting Settings > Notifications > Email.

To configure or update call home with email notifications, complete these steps:

In the management GUI, select Settings > Support > Call Home.
On the Call home page, select Send data with Call home email notifications and click Edit.
Note: Email filters can drop notifications and responses to and from the support center which can impact resolution times for problems on your system. This transmission method is not recommended as the only way to send notifications to the support center. Use Call home with email notifications as a backup method when Call home with cloud services is configured.
Under Email Servers, enter a valid IP address and ports for up to 6 email servers in your network. These email servers send notification to the support center and receive and distribute responses from the support center.
Under Call home, verify the email address for the support center and select the type of notifications that you want to be sent to the support center.
Under Email User, enter a valid email address for a business-to-business contact and select the type of notifications that you want them to receive. To comply with privacy regulations, personal contact information for individuals within your organization is not recommended.
Under Additional Settings, enter your preferences for inventory intervals and configuration reporting. Inventory reports can be configured with call home and provide additional information to support personnel. An inventory report summarizes the hardware components and configuration of a system. Support personnel can use this information to contact you when relevant updates are available or when an issue that can affect your configuration is discovered. By default, these reports include configuration data that support personnel can use to automatically generate recommendations that are based on your actual configuration. You can have sensitive data removed from these reports if necessary.
Click Save.

Using the command-line interface

You can use the command-line interface (CLI) to configure call home with email notification to specified recipients and your support center. To configure call home with email notifications, complete the following steps:

Define email servers to send email notifications to the support center by entering the following command:
```
mkemailserver -ip ip_address -port port_number
```
where ip_address specifies the IP address of a remote email server and port_number specifies the port number for the email server. Up to six email servers can be configured to provide redundant access to the external email network.
Define the support contact for email notifications by entering the following command:
```
mkemailuser -usertype support
```
In this command, the support contact address is automatically configured based on your geography and other support information that is related to your account. When you define the support contact for Call Home with email notifications, critical events, inventory reports, and configuration data are automatically configured and sent to the support center with notification. You can update inventory intervals and configuration data settings by using chsystem command.
Define any local entities within your organization that you want to receive notifications by entering the following command:
```
mkemailuser -address user_address
 -error on -usertype local
```
where user_address is a valid email address for a business-to-business contact. To comply with privacy regulations, personal contact information for individuals within your organization is not recommended. When a local user is defined, email notifications that are sent to the support center are also sent to the local user.
If you defined a local user in step 3, ensure that contact information is defined so support personnel can follow-up on email notifications that are received at the support center.
```
chemail -reply reply_user_address -contact contact_name
 -primary primary_telephone_number -location location
```
Other optional values can be defined for with the chemail command. However, before the email server and notifications can be started when local users are defined, you must include following variables: reply_user_address, which is the email address for the user that is defined in step 3, contact_name, primary_telephone_number, and location.
Start the email server and notification by entering the following command:
```
startemail
```