Which feature provides automatic collection of configuration and diagnostic information for support?

AutoSupport is a critical telemetry and proactive support mechanism built directly into NetApp ONTAP systems. It automatically collects comprehensive configuration, status, performance, and diagnostic data from the storage system and securely transmits it to NetApp technical support. This feature enables proactive monitoring, rapid troubleshooting, and automated support case creation when critical events, panics, or hardware failures occur. By continuously sending system health metrics and log files, AutoSupport significantly reduces the time required to diagnose and resolve complex storage issues. Furthermore, the data collected by AutoSupport forms the foundational dataset for NetApp's Active IQ predictive analytics platform, which provides actionable intelligence and remediation advice to storage administrators, ensuring optimal system health and high availability across the storage infrastructure.

B. FlexVol: FlexVol is a logical storage container technology used for data management in ONTAP, not a diagnostic data collection or telemetry tool.

C. CIFS: CIFS (SMB) is a network file-sharing protocol used primarily by Windows clients for data access, completely unrelated to support telemetry.

D. VLAN: VLAN is a standard networking concept used to logically segment broadcast domains at the switch level, not a NetApp support feature.

1. NetApp ONTAP 9 Documentation Center, "System administration > AutoSupport management", Section: "What AutoSupport is".

2. NetApp Technical Report TR-4444: "ONTAP AutoSupport and Active IQ", Page 4, Section 2.1 "AutoSupport Overview".