Data Domain: An overview of what a Data Domain Autosupport or ASUP is and what information or data it contains

What information is in a Data Domain Autosupport?
The Autosupport feature generates a report called an ASUP report, also seen as just autosupport by the system.
It shows system identification information, consolidated output from several Data Domain system commands and recent entries from various log files.
The Autosupport is configured to send home to Dell Technologies daily on a user configurable schedule or whenever the file system is started.
Alerts are sent immediately when an event is triggered and contain only that specific event information (which is not scheduled).

No user data or passwords are transmitted within the ASUP file or alerts.

How is the ASUP sent to Dell Technologies?
There are now only two methods to transmit the file back to Dell Technologies:

1. Email by customer Email server (traditional), Dell may see this as "M&A"
   1. This is not an encrypted file, plain text email to Dell Technologies by the customer mail server.
   2. The DD notification method is set in DDOS as "email"
      1. support notification method show
2. SCG/SRS connect home by customer SCG/SRS gateway. Dell may see this as "ConnectEMC"
   1. The entire transmission from customer SRS to Dell is secured using HTTPS 'by reply' only.
   2. The connection from the DD to customer SRS uses REST over the connectemc tool.
   3. The DD notification method is set in DDOS as "connectemc"
      1. support notification method show

The options available to send home are dependent on whether the customer has SCG/SRS, which version of SCG/SRS and which DDOS code version is operating on the Data Domain.

Where do the ASUPs go when they reach Dell Technologies?
The ASUP files are stored by Dell Technologies on an internal only basis, customer-specific information variables are correlated to the DD serial number within this internal system/installed base rather than from that information being transmitted within the content of the ASUP itself.
The ASUP s can be used to track historical trends or current status for service requests resolution or make accurate sizing calculations, thus allowing assessments to be made without disturbing the end user.

For more detailed information, support may request a Support bundle, sometimes called a SUB, this is a larger and more detailed file for deeper analysis, it must be manually collected and uploaded to EMC, it will not be sent by the Data Domain like an ASUP or an alert.
The content of a SUB is not discussed here.

What information is contained within the ASUP?
This ASUP content varies based on DDOS version, so includes, but is not limited to:

• General Information:
  • Model type, system serial number, installed hardware, MAC addresses, WWPNs, alerts
• Software information:
  • DDOS version, uptime, number of reboots, licenses.
• Hardware information:
  • Fans, PSUs, disk, IPMI/BMC, Memory, CPU, NVRAM, SAS storage topology
• Customer bespoke information:
  • Active clients, hostname, IPs, routes, users (not passwords), DNS/NTP, so on
• FilesystemCleaning Config/stats
• Filesystem statistics
• FilesysCompression:
  • Statistics that relate to deduplication and compression achievements of ingested data.
• Server usage
• Network statistics
• FC statistics
• A subset of some OS system logs:
  • Kernel and hardware information