Reference Guide for Engaging with Red Hat Support

Updated

Support Reference Guides

About Red Hat Support


Red Hat Support works in a collaborative way, often referred to as a Swarming Model. This enables the most appropriate engineers from different teams to collaborate on a case, no matter where they may be worldwide, so that we can resolve your problem more efficiently.

In order to enable this worldwide collaboration, Support Cases are mainly conducted in English. However, we have local language support in many regions.

Depending on the severity of the issue and the support level purchased, we use a 24x7 process with transitions between teams located across the world. For these cases, English is the only supported language.

Download the brochure "Reference Guide for Engaging with Red Hat Support" (also attached below).

What are the recommendations for a better support experience?

Use all the fields in a case properly

  • Title: Summarize the issue in one sentence
  • Product: Select the exact product and version that is presenting the issue
  • Severity: Correctly select the priority of the issue according to Red Hat Support Severity Level Definitions.
    • Selecting a higher severity when the problem does not meet the requirements may lead to a severity renegotiation, which will slow down the support process.
  • Description: describe the problem:
    • Explain what happened
    • What was observed (screen, console, etc)
    • Explain the environment (connectivity, storage, etc)
    • Explain any recent changes (for example software upgrade, hardware changes, storage maintenance, etc)
    • What is your estimate of the date and time the event occurred?
    • How frequently is this issue occurring?
    • Has encountered a similar issue on this system or others in the past?
    • Explain how this problem is affecting your business (for example: main web server, mail server, or just a secondary lab system, etc)

Provide as much information as possible

Keep the case lifecycle going!

  • It is important not only to upload the files, but to answer additional questions from our engineers
    • This helps to narrow down the issues or symptoms
  • If the case is 24x7, please ensure you have supplied equivalent 24x7 contact details for your team (phone, email, etc)
    • Clearly state these in the ticket and add your contact details to your Red Hat Portal user details.
    • If a 24x7 case is not updated by your 24x7 team, the 24x7 flag may be dropped, and the case returned to your home timezone hours.
    • There will be engineers around the world working on the 24x7 ticket, please ensure that updates are in English to avoid delays in solving the issue due to translation efforts.

Take Proactive Steps Before a Problem Is Seen

  • Red Hat maintains a knowledge base with updated information about known issues.
    • Follow topics relevant to your systems using the document type and product filters at https://access.redhat.com/solutions
    • These documents can provide useful insights for day to day systems administration.
  • Using the resolution from your issue, a document will be created or updated to help others solve the same issue faster in the future.

General recommendations

  • Be aware of the security rules for your organization
  • If the issue is urgent, it is recommended to call support after opening the case.
  • In the interest of clarity and focus Red Hat requests that customers focus on a single issue to resolve per support case. If you are experiencing multiple issues then Red Hat requests that you open up one case per issue so that we can assign the right resources for each issue to each individual case.
  • If possible, do not reboot the server or restart the service before contacting Red Hat support
    • This is because sometimes, it is necessary to capture information while the problem is happening.
  • Ensure that kdump is configured on all of your systems
    • Instances of crashed kernels can rarely be resolved without this information
    • Test your kdump configuration before you have a problem.
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