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Configuring Call Home Settings

Sara Levy
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The call home feature sends non sensitive data from your VAST Cluster to our central support server to enable us to provide proactive analysis and fast response on critical issues. 

The data we collect is sent by HTTPS to a VAST Data AWS S3 bucket that we maintain for this purpose.  For details, see the VAST Data Security Guidelines.

Call home includes the following data collections:

  • Logs which are collected into compressed bundles at a configurable interval (callhome bundles).

  • Metrics data objects that are converted into CSV files and uploaded for analysis.

  • Heartbeats, a small set of metrics collected from the cluster and used to monitor cluster health.

Call home bundles are sent over HTTPS via port 443. There is an option (below) to use a proxy server. If you need to configure firewall rules in order to enable outbound traffic on port 443, see How to allow Vast CallHome through a firewall .

Follow these steps to:

  • Complete your call home settings. This is the only way we can ever know that the data we collect from your VAST Cluster is yours! 

  • Run our test to make sure that your VMS can send callhome bundles. If needed, set up firewall rules to allow the VMS to send callhome bundles.

Filling Out the Call Home Settings in the VAST Web UI

  1. From the left navigation menu, select Settings and then Call home.

  2. Complete the settings General Setup fields:

    Field

    Description

    General Setup

    Customer

    Your customer name. 

    Site

    The name of the site where the cluster is installed.

    Location

    The location of the site.

    Max upload concurrency

    The maximum number of parts of a file to upload simultaneously to the AWS S3 bucket.

    Valid: Positive integer, 1 or more

    Default: 5

    Intervals Setup

    Log Frequency

    The frequency with which system state data is sent to the support server. Disabling the setting stops system state data being sent.

    Bundle Frequency

    The frequency with which debug data is sent to the support server. Disabling the setting stops debug data being sent.

    Enabled

    Switch this to the ON position.

    Proxy Setup

    Enter proxy server details if you would like the data to be sent through your own proxy server.

    Misc

    Verify SSL

    Enables SSL verification. Disable if, for example, you are sending the call home data through a proxy server that does not have an SSL certificate recognized by VAST Cluster. VAST Cluster recognizes SSL certificates from a large range of widely recognized certificate authorities (CAs). VAST Cluster may not recognize an SSL certificate signed by your own in-house CA.

    Prod mode

    Sets the production support server as the destination for call home bundles. It's essential to enable this setting.

    Support Channel

    Enables VAST Data Support to run remote bundle collection commands on the cluster.

    Obfuscated

    Obfuscates data in call home bundles, metrics and heartbeats. The following types of information are replaced with a non-reversible hash: file and directory names, IP addresses, host names, user names, MAC addresses.

    Compress method

    Sets the compression method used to compress call home bundles:

    • zstd (default)

    • gzip

  3. Click Save. 

  4. Click Test Call Home. A test call home bundle is sent.

  5. Check the test bundle is sent successfully:

    • Go to the Activities page (open the menu again and select Activities). Find a task named send_interactive_callhome. When the task is done, its status should change to Completed and its log should record Callhome bundle sent.

    • Contact Support and check that the test callhome message was received in our #support slack channel.

    If the callhome bundle is not sent successfully, you may need to set up firewall rules to allow the callhome bundle to be sent.

 

Filling Out the Call Home Settings via CLI

To fill out your call home settings via CLI, use the following commands.

Tip

For full CLI command syntax, including arguments, enter the command at the CLI prompt in the <command> <subcommand> format provided in the table, followed by ?.

To do this task...

...Use this command

Display call home settings

callhomeconfig list

callhomeconfig show

Modify call home settings

callhomeconfig modify

Send a call home test

callhomeconfig send
 
 

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