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Remote support is an important and integral part of Dell Technologies Customer Support. Every PowerMax system has two integrated Management Module Control Stations (MMCS) that continuously monitor the PowerMax environment. The MMCS modules can communicate with the Customer Support Center through a network connection to the Secure Remote Support Gateway.
Through the MMCS, the system actively monitors all I/O operations for errors and faults. By tracking these errors during normal operation, PowerMaxOS can recognize patterns of error activity and predict a potential hard failure before it occurs. This proactive error tracking capability can often prevent component failures by fencing off, or removing from service, a suspect component before a failure occurs.
To provide remote support capabilities, the system is configured to call home and alert Dell Support of a potential failure. An authorized Dell Support Engineer can run system diagnostics remotely for further troubleshooting and resolution. Configuring Dell products to allow inbound connectivity also enables Dell Support to proactively connect to the systems to gather needed diagnostic data or to attend to identified issues. The current connect-in support program for the system uses the latest digital key exchange technology for strong authentication, layered application security, and a centralized support infrastructure that places calls through an encrypted tunnel between Customer Support and the MMCS located inside the system.
Before anyone from Customer Support can initiate a connection to a system at the customer site, that person must be individually authenticated and determined to be an appropriate member of the Customer Support team. Field-based personnel who might be known to the customer must still be properly associated with the specific customer’s account.
An essential part of the design of the connectivity support program is that the connection must originate from one of several specifically designed Remote Support Networks at Dell Technologies. Within each of those Support Centers, the necessary networking and security infrastructure has been built to enable both the call-home and call-device functions.