Netreo Support Services Information
  • 10 Jan 2023
  • 7 Minutes to read
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Netreo Support Services Information

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Article Summary

Definition of Services

The following services are provided to customers as part of the Netreo General Support Services package (Alternative Support Service packages are available that provide additional services and escalated response times).

  • 24-hour email, web and phone service for reporting support issues, with 4-hour response times for “Critical” support issues.
  • Full logging and tracking of customers’ support history.
  • Full software maintenance for Netreo virtual appliances.
  • Replacement coverage for Netreo hardware appliances.
  • Full Netreo software upgrade and migration services.

For more information, see Appendix 1: Explanations of Services at the end of this document.

Coverage Times

Customers can contact support staff to report issues 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. Response times to support issues are subject to issue severity. “Critical” issues (see Issue Severity below) will be responded to within 4 hours of being reported.

Initiation of Support Services

Netreo offers multiple channels for reporting issues.

Use of any of these channels will result in the creation of a support ticket that can easily be viewed by the customer to track the current status and history of any issue. Phone calls are answered by live support representatives who will initiate support actions and direct customer issues to an appropriate Netreo support engineer.

Critical (severity 1) issues should always be initiated via telephone to insure prompt resolution.

Issue Management Process

All customer support issues are logged and tracked in Netreo’s trouble ticket system. Once a trouble ticket has been initiated, Netreo support staff will follow this procedure to resolve the issue.

Issue Management Process

  1. Prioritize the issue.
    Issues are prioritized using “severity levels” numbered 1 through 5, with 1 being the most severe and 5 being the least severe (see below). Issue severity determines ticket priority and response time targets. Severity levels are defined in the table below.
  2. Identify the nature of the issue and attempt to reproduce it.
  3. Categorize the type of the issue.
    Typical categories include the following.
    1. Misconfiguration of Netreo.
    2. Misconfiguration of a managed resource.
    3. Connectivity and/or authentication issue.
    4. Hardware issue.
    5. Software bug.
    6. Unsupported feature.
    7. Add/Move/Change (AMC) requests.
  4. Identify the most appropriate solution.
    These solutions typically consist of:
    1. Provide instruction or documentation on how to resolve the issue via configuration changes.
    2. Provide assistance to the customer in making configuration changes.
    3. Provide a software-based fix.
    4. Suggest relevant changes to the customer’s network environment.
    5. Log a “feature request” for a future enhancement to the product or service.
    6. Create a separate project, tasks and assignments if review of AMC request ticket determines solution to be beyond the scope of the current support process.
  5. Schedule a maintenance call with customer (if appropriate) and implement resolution.

Issue Severity

Issue severity is based on the nature of the issue and the impact that issue has on the customer. Support ticket severity levels are detailed below.

New support tickets default to level 3 and are adjusted by a Netreo support engineer after initial review. Actions taken by Netreo support staff during the course of managing a support ticket (as well as external circumstances) may result in the severity level of that ticket changing.

Severity 1

  • Production issue that severely impacts customer use of Netreo services.
  • Issue halts Customer business operations and no procedural workaround exists.
  • Netreo is down or unavailable.
  • Data is corrupted or lost and must be restored from backup.

Severity 1 issues are considered “Critical,” and may require customer to provide dedicated resources available to work with Netreo on an ongoing basis until the issue resolved. If customer does not provide such dedicated resources, Netreo shall not be liable for any related delays in issue resolution.

Severity 2

  • Major functionality is impacted or significant performance degradation is experienced.
  • Issue is having a major impact on portions of customer business operations and no reasonable workaround exists.
  • Services are operational, but exhibit highly degraded performance to the point of major impact on usage.
  • Important features of the service are unavailable with no acceptable workaround; however, operations can continue in a restricted fashion.

Severity 3

  • There is a partial, non-critical loss of use of the services with a medium-to-low impact on customer business—but customer business continues to function. Short-term workaround is available, but not scalable.

Severity 4

  • Inquiry regarding a routine technical issue: information requested on application capabilities, navigation, best practice, installation or configuration
  • Bug affecting a small number of users. Acceptable workarounds available.

Severity 5

  • Inquiry regarding a mundane or insignificant technical issue: cosmetic issues or bugs affecting a very small number of users or causing no significant impact on operations. Acceptable (possibly long-term) workarounds available and in place.

Upgrading/Downgrading Severity Level

In the event that the nature of an issue changes, or that the impact an issue has on a customer changes, the severity level of a support ticket may be increased or decreased accordingly. This may affect the expected response times by Netreo support staff.

Issue Resolution

A resolution may consist of a fix, workaround, configuration change, or any other solution Netreo deems reasonable. Netreo will use reasonable efforts to meet the target response times stated in the table below.

Critical Issue Support

Critical (severity level 1), business-affecting issues will be responded to within 2 hours, and will be actively managed until resolved or until they can be downgraded to a lower level of severity.

General Issue Support

Non-Critical (severity level 2 or higher) requests will typically be responded to within 4 hours when submitted during regular Netreo business hours. Depending on the complexity of the issue, full resolution is targeted (though not guaranteed) as being complete within 4 to 7 days. As per the Issue Management Process, Netreo will generally suggest a resolution within this timeframe and then work with the customer to schedule a maintenance window during which to make the changes.

Target Response Times

The times set forth in the table below are target response times to tickets logged via the web portal or by phone (for critical issues, by phone only). These times should not be misinterpreted as resolution times. Note that Netreo does not and can not guarantee time to resolution.

Severity 1

  • 4 hours or less (24x7x365)

Netreo will provide continuous efforts to resolve a severity level 1 issue until a workaround or resolution can be provided, or until the incident can be downgraded to a lower severity level.

Severity 2

  • 4 hours or less (24x7x365).

If a workaround is not available, reasonable efforts will be made to resolve or mitigate the issue or to allow the severity level to be reduced.

Severity 3

  • By the end of the next business day.

Severity 4

  • Within 2 business days.

Severity 5

  • Based on resource availability.

Ticket Status

Trouble tickets are updated to reflect their current status in the Issue Management Process workflow. Customers can view the status of their tickets using the Customer Support Web Portal (support.netreo.com). The possible states of a support ticket are detailed below.

New
Ticket has been logged and is awaiting a Netreo engineer to process it.

Attention
Ticket has had recent activity and is awaiting a Netreo engineer to re-engage with it.

In Progress
A Netreo engineer is working on the associated issue.

Awaiting Customer Response
Issue requires information or assistance from the customer.

Answered
A resolution to the issue has been provided to the customer, and the ticket is waiting for customer to validate that resolution is complete.

Resolved
Resolution has been validated by customer as satisfactory. Ticket is closed.

Invalid
Issue has been determined to be invalid. Typically the result of a misunderstanding.

Duplicate
Issue has already been reported by customer and is already being tracked in another ticket.

Software Defects

Critical software defects will be treated as Critical support issues (i.e. they will be responded to within 4 hours and actively managed until resolution). Once identified, fixed and resolved, it generally takes approximately 1 week for the solution to make it through regression testing for general deployment. Frequently, “hotfixes” are made available sooner than this (often immediately). Hotfixes are only suggested in emergency situations, as they are at a much higher risk of having errors and/or side-effects.

The target time frame for resolving general software defects is within 2 weeks (note that this time frame is not guaranteed as some issues are more complex or far-reaching). Regression testing normally takes an additional 2 weeks for general deployment.

Hardware Replacement

Netreo will use commercially reasonable efforts to ship replacement hardware to a customer within 48 hours of Netreo validating a hardware failure.

Changes to Support Services

Netreo reserves the right to modify this services support policy at any time. 30 days notice will be provided to supported customers before policy changes are put into effect. Such notice may be provided by email or by posting the revised terms on the Netreo Knowledge Base (https://kb.netreo.com). Any changes will be binding and effective 30 days after publication of said notice.

Appendix 1: Explanations of Services

Support Requests and Escalation

Support requests are handled by Netreo support and operations staff. All Support Services issues are reviewed by support and operations engineering teams on a daily basis.

Automatic Escalation

Initial support requests for Support Services customers are assigned to Tier 1 and Tier 2 engineering staff based on the assigned priority of the issue. These engineers perform the initial forensics and—in most cases—the final resolution.

Software Upgrades/Migrations

Software updates and upgrades are included at all levels of maintenance and are available from within the Netreo UI. Support Service agreements include software updates and upgrades, as well as support tasks and project management associated with the upgrading process.

These tasks include providing an upgrade plan that includes (but may not be limited to):

  • Performing a system backup.
  • Configuration documentation.
  • Alarm and open incident reviews.
  • Software updating and post-upgrade system validation to ensure that the configuration and processes are intact.

Software upgrade support also includes assistance in migrating Netreo from an existing platform/appliance to a new platform/appliance. (For example, migrating Netreo from one VM to another, or from a hardware appliance to a virtual appliance.) Migration is managed in the same way as a Netreo software upgrade.

When performing an upgrade of Netreo that involves migration services, a “Scope of Work” will be provided and agreed upon prior to scheduling of the service.


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