Dell Compellent: Network requirements to enable Dell SupportAssist Enterprise and Secure Console with Storage Center

Dell SupportAssist (previously known as Phone Home) provides Dell Support with system state information to triage and troubleshoot issues, with minimal user effort.
Historical information availability allows for far more detailed trends and technical analysis.
This archival information allows Dell Support staff to analyze events leading up to an issue to help performing root cause analysis.

Storage Center SupportAssist includes:

• Weekly scheduled collection of Storage Center diagnostic logs and creation of hardware and software configuration tables
• SupportAssist detects faults and hardware failures and immediately alerts Dell Technical Support
• Software and firmware updates can be downloaded to the Storage Center without the need for outside tools

Detailed performance metrics directly from Dell Storage Manager
For the Dell SupportAssist features to communicate to the necessary web services located at Dell facilities, outbound TCP port 443 must be allowed from each Storage Center controller’s management IP address (eth0), the virtual management IP address, and the IP address of the Dell Storage Manager Data Collector server.

Secure Console allows users to configure their Storage Center to establish a secure SSH tunnel to the Dell Support infrastructure.
Once the user creates this secure connection, Dell Support staff can connect to the Storage Center controllers and view system information in real time.
The user controls this connection, and Dell Support staff cannot initiate it.

SCOS versions prior to 6.6 use a static endpoint public IP address for Secure Console to connect to using outbound TCP port 22 (TCP port 8443 is not used).
The Hardware Serial Number (HSN) determines the IP address used by each Storage Center controller.
This static limitation was modified in SCOS version 6.6 and later versions by implementing a more dynamic approach to acquiring the SSH tunnel endpoint address.

For the Secure Console features of SCOS 6.6 and later versions to communicate to the necessary web services located onsite at Dell Support facilities, outbound TCP port 8443 must be allowed from each Storage Center controller management IP address (eth0) and the virtual management IP address.
The communication over TCP port 8443 is SSL-based and exists to negotiate SSH server endpoint assignment.

Once the negotiation is complete, each controller then communicates over outbound TCP port 22 to its assigned SSH server in order to create the SSH tunnel.
An SSH tunnel is established from each Storage Center controller to its assigned SSH endpoint until the Time to Live (TTL) value has expired.
The user configures the TTL value of each Secure Console session at the time of enabling Secure Console on the Storage Center.

Both Dell SupportAssist and Secure Console support proxy configurations.

An HTTP proxy can be configured so that all Dell SupportAssist data transmissions (outbound TCP port 443) are sent to the configured HTTP proxy.

When an HTTP proxy is configured for Dell SupportAssist, all Secure Console requests over TCP port 8443 (for SSH server reservation requests) will also be transmitted through the configured SupportAssist HTTP proxy.

If a Secure Console SOCKS proxy is configured, all outbound traffic over TCP port 22 will be sent to the SOCKS proxy.

Dell SupportAssist and Secure Console Firewall Rules for SCOS 6.6 and later:

Figure 1. Dell SupportAssist and Secure Console Firewall Rules

As of the July 3, 2026, the Secure Console servers will be temporarily shut down due to being relocated. Once the relocation has completed the ssh and reservation servers must be changed for the IP addresses detailed in Table 1.

             Table 1. IP Addresses to be Updated

For more information see these Dell articles:

• Dell Storage SC - How to send SupportAssist and enable Secure Console
• SC Series Technical White Papers, and Videos