Template based automatic recovery of virtual machine guest operating systems is provided, that is configured to execute recovery operations within a virtual machine in response to generation of dial-home messages. The error recovery operations, in some embodiments, are based on error recovery templates that specify dial-home event specific sequences of diagnostic operations and actions to be taken to attempt to recover from the errors that cause the dial-home events. By enabling the virtual machine to internally recover automatically from at least a subset of dial-home errors, it is possible to greatly reduce the support cost associated with providing support services for maintaining operation of storage systems. Additionally, enabling automatic recovery of particular errors can reduce the amount of time the storage system or particular aspects of the storage system are inoperable, thus increasing the reliability of the storage system.