Learning about AutoSupport

About AutoSupport

The autosupport daemon monitors the storage system's operations and sends automatic messages to technical support to alert it to potential system problems. If necessary, technical support contacts you at the e-mail address that you specify to help resolve a potential system problem.

The following list outlines facts you should know about AutoSupport:

The autosupport daemon is enabled by default on the storage system.
AutoSupport messages are generated
- When events occur on the storage system that require corrective action from the system administrator or technical support
- When the storage system reboots
- When you initiate a test message using the autosupport.doit option
- Once a week, early Sunday morning, at approximately midnight
  There are two AutoSupport messages generated at this time. One, the weekly AutoSupport message, provides the same system information as regular AutoSupport messages. The other, the performance AutoSupport message, provides technical support with comprehensive performance information about your storage system for the preceding week. The performance message can be quite large, so by default, it is sent only to technical support.
The system can send AutoSupport messages by SMTP, HTTP, or HTTPS (the Secure Sockets Layer Internet transport protocol). HTTPS is the default.
If an AutoSupport message cannot be sent successfully, an SNMP trap is generated.
Note
For more information about AutoSupport, see the NOW site at http://now.netapp.com/autosupport/.

AutoSupport is enabled by default

AutoSupport is enabled by default when you configure your storage system for the first time. After a grace period of 24 hours, AutoSupport messages start being generated. You can disable AutoSupport at any time using the autosupport.enable option, but you are strongly advised to leave it enabled. Enabling AutoSupport can significantly speed problem determination and resolution should a problem occur on your storage system.

AutoSupport transport protocols

AutoSupport supports the following type of transport protocols for delivering AutoSupport messages to technical support:

HTTPS
HTTP
SMTP

The default transport protocol is HTTPS. Because SMTP can introduce limitations on message length and line length, you are strongly advised to use HTTPS or HTTP for your AutoSupport transport protocol.

AutoSupport messages using HTTP/HTTPS

HTTP uses port 80; HTTPS uses port 443. If the network connection does not allow HTTPS or HTTP, you must configure AutoSupport for SMTP.

To use HTTP or HTTPS to send AutoSupport messages, you may need to configure an HTTP or HTTPS proxy.

AutoSupport daemon requires an external mail host if you use SMTP

The storage system does not function as a mail host--it requires an external mail host at your site to send mail. The mail host is a host that runs a mail server that listens on the SMTP port (25).

Examples of mail servers include the following:

A UNIX host running an SMTP server such as the sendmail program
A Windows NT server running the Microsoft Exchange server

The storage system uses the mail host's mail server to send periodic e-mail messages automatically to technical support about the system's status. You can configure AutoSupport to use one or more mail hosts.

Note
Make sure that mailhosts in the AutoSupport email delivery pathway are configured to send and receive the 8-bit Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) encoding.