VMware Technical Support Guide February 2010 ® Thank you for using VMware products and services. Technical support is a vital part of the total VMware customer experience. We want you to get the most from our products long after the initial sale and installation. We are dedicated to ensur ing that every issue is resolved to your satisfaction. To enable you to maximize the return on your investment, we offer a suite of support offerings designed to meet your business needs.
Contents Building an Effective Support Relationship…………..…………………………………………………………………………………………….5 Roles and Responsibilities .................................................................................................................... 1 Customer Roles and Responsibilities .................................................................................... 1 Support Administrator...........................................................................................................
Can VMware engage other vendors if required? ................................................................................ 23 What can I do if I don’t feel progress is being made with an escalation? ............................................ 24 How do I de-escalate a support request? ........................................................................................... 24 Support Request Closure .......................................................................................................
VMware Technical Support Guide Introduction Building an Effective Support Relationship The effectiveness of any support interaction depends upon the technical knowledge, problem solving skills and communication skills of both your administrators and our Technical Support Engineers (TSE). In addition, a good understanding by both par ties of their roles and responsibilities is crucial to effective communication.
VMware Technical Support Guide Technical Support Engineer Your support requests are assigned to a TSE. The TSE is your main contact for providing technical support and guidance.
VMware Technical Support Guide Best Practices Based on our experience in supporting enterprise-class customers with virtualization infrastructures, we would like to share with you some recommendations and best practices for a highly effective support relationship. Educate Your Administrators We have found that customers who invest in VMware education courses for their administrators are much more effective in defining the symptoms of problems and in working with us to resolve the underlying issues.
VMware Technical Support Guide Keep your Profile Up-to-Date We encourage you to create and maintain your profile information. You should register immediately after product purchase. This minimizes some of the overhead in processing your support request and allows us to respond to your support requests quickly and effectively. Register your Products Product registration is key to associating your support agreement with the correct product.
VMware Technical Support Guide 3. If you are a New Customer, go to step 4 below. Otherwise, select the Register a Product link and proceed to step 8. 4. If you are a new customer, select Register Now.
VMware Technical Support Guide 5. Fill out all required fields.
VMware Technical Support Guide 6. Once your profile has been created, click the “Account” link to get back to the Account Home page.
VMware Technical Support Guide 7. Then click “Register a Product” to register your product.
VMware Technical Support Guide 8. Type your serial number or license activation code exactly as it is written. Note: In all cases "0" is the digit zero and not the letter "O".
VMware Technical Support Guide 9. Once the form is complete, select Continue. You can now create a support request. For detailed information on how to create a support request, please click here. Serial Number or Licensing Activation Code Errors If you receive an error message when trying to register your serial number or license, please contact our Licensing department or contact VMware at U.S.
VMware Technical Support Guide Collecting Information These guidelines describe the information VMware needs diagnose issues and quickly log your support request. Please gather the pertinent information before you contact VMware Support. Configurations System, storage and/or network configuration diagrams and files are very helpful when troubleshooting issues with a VMware product.
VMware Technical Support Guide Customers can also sign up to receive alerts on patches and maintenance releases as they become available. Documentation All customers have unlimited access to Web-based technical documentation for all VMware products at http://www.vmware.com/support/pubs/. This information includes product documentation and release notes for all currently released VMware products.
VMware Technical Support Guide All or a substantial portion of your mission critical data is at a significant risk of loss or corruption. You have had a substantial loss of service. Your business operations have been severely disrupted. Severity 1 support requires you to have dedicated resources available to work on the issue on an ongoing basis during your contractual hours.
VMware Technical Support Guide 1) Go to www.vmware.com/support and select "Create Support Request.
VMware Technical Support Guide 2) Before you submit a support request, you will have the option to search the knowledge base, which may offer an immediate answer to your question or issue. 3) If you do not find the answer you are looking for, continue on to file a support request by selecting "log in and submit a Support Request immediately.
VMware Technical Support Guide 4) Enter your email address and password from your VMware profile. If you do not have a profile, you will need to create one and register your products to activate your support agreements.
VMware Technical Support Guide 5) If you have active contracts, you will be presented with a list of products, support agreement contracts and product versions in a table on t he screen. An example is included below. (The exact products and support levels shown will depend on your purchases, registrations and agreements.) Select one of the products in the right hand "Click for Support" column to access the Online Support form.
VMware Technical Support Guide 6) Fill out the necessary fields, provide a detailed problem description and attach any/all configuration, log and core files (as appropriate). Depending on the product's support entitlement, this form may not include all of these fields.
VMware Technical Support Guide After you fill out the support request form, your request is assigned a support request number. The support request number is confirmed with you on-screen and a computer-generated message acknowledging receipt of your support request will be sent within one hour. Please use this support request number when communicating with VMware about that specific issue. If you do not receive an electronic response from us within one hour, please send an inquiry to Customer Service.
VMware Technical Support Guide Your name Your company name Phone number where you can be reached or your pager number Support request number (if the call is in regards to an existing issue) A brief description of the problem Messages are typically responded to within 30 minutes or less. After you work with the Customer Service Representative to enter the support request, your request is assigned a support request number.
VMware Technical Support Guide View Support Requests -- here you can check the status of any support requests that you have previously submitted. Click on the support request number to see the details of your support request, upload log files, annotate the support request or request a status update. Escalating a Support Request Your VMware support team always works to ensure that the appropriate resources and level of focus are applied to your request to ensure a timely resolution.
VMware Technical Support Guide You are dissatisfied with the responsiveness to or resolution of a support request. We highly recommend that you contact VMware Support by telephone for escalations. This will ensure that your request is directed to the appropriate resources as soon as possible to achieve a successful resolution. NOTE: The severity level of a support request can be increased without an escalation if the business impact of a support request has changed or was not correctly recorded initially.
VMware Technical Support Guide Below is a flow chart of the standard escalation process. How often can I expect updates on an escalation? As the escalation is initiated, the Escalation Engineer will work with you to determine a communication plan that fits your needs. Agreements will be made on communication mode (email, phone call, conference call), frequency, and required attendees for all updates.
VMware Technical Support Guide What can I do if I don’t feel progress is being made with an escalation? If you are concerned with the current state of an escalation or the situation has digressed, please inform your assigned Escalation Engineer, Duty Manager or Regional Escalation Manager immediately. The Escalation Engineer will immediately inform the management team and the Regional and/or Global Escalation Manager will conduct a conference call with the required parties.
VMware Technical Support Guide Support Policies The following sections describe VMware support policies and explain how specific product versions are supported, compatibility between product releases, compatibility with third p arty software versions and support for custom code.
VMware Technical Support Guide machines. If such efforts do not isolate the problem, Microsoft may request that customers replicate the issue on a physical machine to proceed with the investigation. 3. For customers running non-supported products that don't have a Premier Agreement, Microsoft's level of support is more restrictive. Microsoft support specialists may request that customers first replicate the issue on a physical machine. Item #897615 in Microsoft's Knowledge Base describes this policy.
VMware Technical Support Guide SDK Support Policy VMware Customer Support offers support services to customers who experience problems running the VMware vCenter Server Web Service (the service within VMware vCenter Server that responds to VMware vSphere Web Services SDK requests), the CIM SDK CIMOM (the service on VMware ESX that responds to CIM SDK requests), and the methods and properties provided with the Scripting APIs.
VMware Technical Support Guide After-Hours Support If you are on a support program other than VMware Production Support, “after hours” support is available for an additional fee. This “after hours” support is designed to assist with critical production-down issues. The goal is to provide a rapid response when your production system fails with a severity one issue, and a Technical Support Engineer (TSE) to help you get the system back online again.
VMware Technical Support Guide Appendix A: Support Offerings Portfolio Please see the VMware web site for the most current datasheets.
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