Patent attributes
Described are techniques for obtaining information about a data storage system. Boot code is executed on the data storage system and determines whether a flag is set. If the flag is set, an agent is executed which communicates with a central location at predetermined time intervals. At a first predetermined time interval, a first message is sent to the central location polling for a pending work item. If there are any work items pending for the data storage system, first processing is performed which includes sending a second message to the data storage system indicating whether there are any pending work items for the data storage system and including at least one work item if there are any pending work items. The at least one work item describes second processing to obtain first information about a state of the data storage system.
