Start your year off with an Active IQ Health Check
NetApp Active IQ® Digital Advisor is great at helping you uncover and address risk factors before they become problems. Misconfigurations, security vulnerabilities, anything that might jeopardize system availability, security, or performance receives attention and action. But what’s often overlooked is how Active IQ helps you do the little things to maintain optimal storage health.
The Active IQ Health Check (accessible from the left-side navigation) provides an overview of how well your systems align with NetApp recommendations and helps you prioritize areas for improvement.
The Health Scores section provides visibility into the critical metric in each category:
- AutoSupport® Adoption: the number and percentage of systems with AutoSupport enabled.
- Recommended Software*: the number and percentage of systems running the minimum recommended version of software.
- Recommended Configuration*: the number and percentage of systems meeting all recommended configuration attributes.
- Support & Entitlements: the number and percentage of systems with fully supported hardware.
- Best Practices*: the number and percentage of systems with configurations aligned to best practices.
*This feature is only available for systems with SupportEdge Advisor or SupportEdge Expert. You can login to Active IQ Digital Advisor to view this support tier feature comparison table.
Then there’s the Recommendation Summary, which displays the best next actions needed to address issues, and Technical Cases, which provides you with a detailed view of your technical case history over the last 30 days. You can click on “view all” to vary the time range and see details on each case.
There are separate tabs for your ONTAP®, Cloud Volumes ONTAP, and E-Series systems. From the dashboard, you can click on each of the Health Score cards for additional detail and key recommendations.
AutoSupport Adoption:
AutoSupport is the transport mechanism that sends your system's configuration, status, performance, and events data to NetApp. This data is used by NetApp Technical Support to speed the diagnosis and resolution of issues, and by Active IQ to proactively detect and address potential issues using predictive analytics and AIOps.
AutoSupport must be enabled for Active IQ to derive insights and recommendations specific to your systems.
Clicking on the AutoSupport Adoption card will show you how many systems have AutoSupport turned on and off, have ‘Declined’ AutoSupport, or have stopped sending AutoSupport data in the last 7 days (Loss of Signal). You can also see those with HTTPS and AutoSupport on Demand enabled.
Recommended Software:
Software currency is one of the best ways to maintain storage health. The most current versions of software and firmware fix bugs, increase resiliency, eliminate security vulnerabilities, introduce new features, and improve overall performance.
Here you’ll find the number and percentage of systems that meet various software and firmware currency recommendations. Clicking on each of these cards will provide additional system level detail on the non-compliant systems in each category.
Recommended Configuration:
NetApp has identified four key configuration attributes that are critical for availability and resiliency. Active IQ will check each of your systems for compliance and display the results. Clicking on each of these cards will provide additional system level detail on the non-compliant systems.
Support & Entitlements:
Software updates, parts replacement, remote technical support, and access to Active IQ insights and guidance require an active support contract. Active IQ helps you ensure all your systems are covered. It will identify any support contracts that have expired and those that are nearing expiration within 6 to 12 months. You can also see end of support (EOS) platforms, disks, shelves, and pending EOS expirations.
Best Practices
Storage Health is more than just eliminating risks, it’s also making sure things are running optimally. This is where best practices come in. Active IQ compares your systems to established best practices and identifies any gaps. Clicking on each of these cards will provide additional detail on best next actions for the impacted systems.
Simple, intelligent, storage health
NetApp Active IQ is a digital advisor that makes it easy to achieve optimal storage health. It provides constant visibility into the health of your fleet, lets you know when attention is required, and gives you clear guidance for any actions. Eliminating risk factors and following NetApp best practices leads directly to increased uptime, fewer support cases, and healthier systems.
Active IQ is available to all NetApp customers who have an active support contract (features vary by product and support tier). If you already have a NetApp Support Site (NSS) sign-on, you can login and get started today. Or visit one of the links below to learn more about Active IQ.
Active IQ Digital Advisor web page
Automatic System Health Is Just a Click Away (Video)
What can you do with Active IQ (Video)
Get proactive about storage health with Active IQ (INSIGHT 2021)
Automate Support and Maintenance Using NetApp Active IQ (INSIGHT 2021)
