Dell PowerStore Planning Guide

Support Connectivity enablement precheck

With PowerStore operating system version 4.0 or later versions, Support Connectivity runs a precheck as part of its enablement process. The precheck proactively confirms whether it is ready to be enabled. This precheck feature identifies common misconfigurations. The precheck determines the following:

• The DNS configuration on the appliance can properly resolve required hostnames.
• For Connect directly, the required network ports are open so that the appliance can contact the backend servers.
• For Connect via Secure Connect Gateway, the required network ports are open for the appliance to contact the backend servers.
• The appliance can copy and store valid certificates from the Dell backend servers or Secure Connect Gateway servers to establish an SSL connection.
• The appliance has sufficient available space and is not running an instance of Support Connectivity.
• The appliance has the required credentials that are installed to enable a successful connection.
• When adding an appliance to a cluster with Support Connectivity enabled, the precheck runs on the new appliance to verify that the new appliance can enable Support Connectivity as well.
• When modifying the existing Support Connectivity configuration, a subset of the defined tests are run to verify that the new configuration will be successful.

If the precheck determines that enabling Support Connectivity will fail, it remains disabled. Also, notifications are provided along with actionable steps to take to remedy issues that are discovered during the precheck.

The Support Connectivity precheck is implemented as a profile within the system health checks. The System Checks tab on the Monitoring page in PowerStore Manager has an added label and value pair that show the profile of the last system check results based on the respective profile. Run System Check only triggers the Service Engagement profile. However, other profiles can be triggered by other operations or actions within PowerStore Manager. For example, when a user enables Support Connectivity from PowerStore Manager from the Settings page or through the Initial Configuration Wizard (ICW), the System Checks tab on the Monitoring page shows the results of the system check. The profile reflects Support Connectivity.

When Run System Check is selected, the values for Profile and Last Run change and reflect that a system check is running. Once the results are available, both values are updated to reflect the Service Engagement profile, and the last run value. The Job Details for PowerStore Manager reflect the output of the invoked system check. If there were failures during the check, they are shown in the output of the Job Details.