Note: This section is relevant only if you plan to enable the VxRail remote support feature to connect back to Dell Customer Support centers.

VxRail supports network connectivity to Dell’s Customer Support systems, enabling health monitoring, real-time analytics, event notification, and remote support when necessary. If you plan to enable VxRail to connect to Dell back-end Customer Support centers, you can select from two options. One option is to have VxRail Manager connect to the back-end services sites directly. The other option is to use a centralized instance or pool of Secure Connect Gateways for this purpose.

Figure 35.    Enabling call-home connectivity with Secure Connect Gateway

If you already have Secure Connect Gateway deployed in your data center to support this service—known as ”call-home”—for other Dell products, this same pool of gateway servers can be used for VxRail. If this is the first Dell product that you plan to connect to this service, be sure to first complete the prerequisites:

1. Create and validate a Dell Support account.
2. Configure at least one Site ID, which is used for identity purposes in the Customer Support databases.
3. Register the VxRail product with a Site ID.

If you do not have any Secure Connect Gateways deployed, the product is customer-installable, and can be downloaded from the Dell support site. Each instance of Secure Connect Gateway requires an IP address, and VxRail Manager must be able to reach these gateways in your data center to complete the connection to the back-end customer service centers.

VxRail versions earlier than 7.0.350 connect to a Secure Remote Services virtual appliance in the data center to enable alerts from VxRail to be sent to Dell customer service. Starting with version 7.0.350, Secure Remote Services is no longer needed for this purpose and is replaced by a service internal to VxRail Manager. This internal VxRail service supports connectivity directly to the back-end customer service sites or to Secure Connect Gateways.

If you are deploying VxRail with a version earlier than 7.0.350, you can decide whether to use an existing Secure Remote Services instance in your data center to support call-home or deploy a virtual instance of Secure Remote Services on the VxRail cluster for this purpose. If you choose to deploy the Secure Remote Services virtual appliance on the VxRail cluster, you must connect the virtual appliance to the same network as VxRail Manager.