Managing call home notifications

The system supports sending notifications to support personnel through cloud service or through a local email server. You can use either the management GUI or the command-line interface to change current setting call home notifications.

During system setup, you can configure call home notifications to improve the response time for issues on the system. Call home notifications send diagnostic data to support personnel who can quickly determine solutions for these problems which can disrupt operations on the system. If you want to update current call home notification settings, select Settings > Support > Call Home. You can also use the chcloudcallhome command to update call home with cloud services or use the mkemailserver command to set up call home with email notifications. Call home can also be integrated with other support-related services like remote assistance and IBM Storage Insights.

The system supports two methods to transmit notifications to the support center:
Call home with cloud services
Call home with cloud services sends notifications directly to a centralized file repository that contains troubleshooting information that is gathered from customers. 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 customers to create problem reports manually. Call home with cloud services also eliminates email filters dropping notifications to and from support which can delay resolution of problems on the system. Call home with cloud services use Representational State Transfer (RESTful) APIs, which are a standard for transmitting data through web services. For new system installations, call home with cloud services is configured as the default method to transmit notifications to support. When you update the system software, call home with cloud services is also set up automatically.You need to ensure that network settings are configured to allow connections to the support center. This method only send notifications to the predefined support center.
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.
The system also supports both these transmission methods configured at the same time. If both cloud services and email notifications are configured, call home with cloud services is the primary transmission method to the support center and email notifications are used as a backup if the system cannot connect through cloud services to the support center. For each transmission method, statuses are displayed to indicate the connection health between the system and the support center. If call home with cloud services is configured, the following connection statuses are displayed:
Active
Indicates that the connection is active between the system and the support center. A timestamp displays with the last successful connection between the system and the support center.
Error
Indicates that the system cannot connect to the support center through call home with cloud services. A timestamp displays when the failed connection attempt occurred. Select Monitoring > Events to determine the cause of the problem. Use the lscloudcallhome command to display the status of the connection. If the connection parameter displays error_sequence_number, which indicates the error number that can be used to help determine the cause of the problem. One common issue that causes connection errors between the system and support center is firewall filters that exclude connections to the support center.
For call home with email notification, statuses indicate the availability of the configured email servers. If call home with email notifications is configured, the following statuses are displayed for email servers:
Active
Indicates that the system can connect to the email server, which is actively sending notifications to defined email users.
Failed
Indicates that the system cannot connect to the configured email server. This message is also displayed when repeated connection attempts fail after a Failed Temporary status. If you receive this message, verify that the email server or servers that you are using are available. Select Monitoring > Events to display the error log for the system. You can also use the lsemailserver command to view additional information about the email server.
Failed Temporary
Indicates that the last connection attempt to the email server failed, but the problem was temporary and additional connection attempts will be repeated.
Untried
Indicates that the email server is configured but is not being used to send notifications.

The system also supports internal notifications through Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) notifications and syslog messages; however, these notifications cannot be used to contact support with the call home function. These notifications can be used to send notifications to internal users as an alternative to email notifications.