Reference Guide

Introduction
Dell SupportAssist for Servers is an application that enables automated support from Dell by proactively
identifying hardware issues in Dell devices. By default, SupportAssist collects system information
periodically from each monitored device and sends the data securely to Dell. Typically, system
information is collected as follows:
• Periodically — At regular intervals, depending on the configured collection frequency. By default,
SupportAssist is configured to collect system information from Dell PowerEdge servers once a month.
• On case creation — When a support case is created for an issue that has been identified by
SupportAssist.
NOTE: When an issue is detected on devices with a Basic Support entitlement, SupportAssist
does not create a support case. However, system information is collected and sent to Dell.
• On demand — If requested by the Dell Technical Support agent to manually initiate the collection of
system information from a device.
NOTE: If required, you can disable the periodic collection of system information for a specific
device type or for all device types. For more information, see “Configuring data collection settings”
in the Dell SupportAssist Version 1.3 for Servers User’s Guide.
NOTE: If the security policy of your company restricts sending certain identity information outside
of the company network, you can disable the collection of such data from monitored devices. For
more information, see “Configuring data collection settings” in the Dell SupportAssist Version 1.3 for
Servers User’s Guide.
The collected system information is saved in a secured database on the system on which SupportAssist is
installed. You can view the collected system information through the configuration viewer available in
SupportAssist.
This document provides the list of attributes that may be available in the data collected by SupportAssist
from devices that are running a Linux operating system.
Data categories
The following are the top-level categories of data that you can view:
• Summary
• System
• Storage
• Software
• Logs
NOTE: If a device that you have added in SupportAssist by using the operating system IP address or
the host name does not have Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) installed, System and
Storage items will not be available in periodic collections from that device.
NOTE: If you have disabled the collection of identity information from devices, the identity
information is replaced by tokenized values in the collected data. The tokenized values are
represented as TOKENn—for example, TOKEN0, TOKEN1, or TOKEN2.
5