This section explains Proactive Case Management service offered as part of Proactive Support. Proactive Case Management enables zero-touch support experience on enabled NSX Advanced Load Balancer deployments by detecting faults and automatically creating support cases.

Feature Highlights

  • Zero-Touch automatic support case creation.

  • Ability to define custom faults via the Alerts framework to create support cases.

  • Deduplication to avoid creating multiple support cases for the same issue.

Data Collection and Retention Policy

Data Collection:

No data is collected by and for this service. Support case data is directly sent to VMware's customer connect support portal.

Data Retention

Does not apply to this service.

Note:

  • This service does not store or exchange any customer data.

  • This service has no access to customer infrastructure including NSX, vCenter, etc.

  • This service does not read or write any configurations on the registered NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controllers.

How to enable this service

This is an 'opt-in' service and is disabled by default.

The steps to opt-in to this service and enable automatic support case creation are as follows:

  1. Navigate to Administration > Cloud Services.

  2. Click EDIT.

  3. Select Enable Proactive Support.

  4. Select Enable automatic cases on system failure or Enable automatic cases on SE failure.

  5. Click SAVE.

Service Details

With Proactive Case Management, the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller creates a support case automatically whenever a critical event occurs in the system. Appropriate debug logs such as core archives and Tech Support bundles are automatically uploaded as well.

By default, creating support cases for the following critical events are available to be enabled through opt-ins.

  1. NSX Advanced Load Balancer Service Engine Failure, and

  2. NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller Service Failure.

Once an opt-in is enabled, the Controller monitors for the respective Events or Alerts and creates a support case when a critical failure is detected.

Once either of the opt-in options are selected, the system enables the alert configuration which monitors the Audit Compliance Event.

Note:

Creating support cases for other critical events can be enabled by defining appropriate custom Alerts.

You can view the Proactive Case Management configuration as follows:

  1. Navigating to Operations > Alerts > Alert Config.

  2. Edit System-Process-Crash-Proactive-Support Alert Config object.

Events of Interest

The following events are generated on the NSX Advanced Load Balancer Controller when a support case is created:

  • ALBSERVICES_SUPPORT_CASE_CREATED

Impact of Unavailability

During the period that this service is down, support case creation is not created automatically even if critical events are triggered. However, support cases for these critical events can be logged by customers by getting access to VMware technical support through the customerconnect.vmware.com portal.