Qualifications for 24x7 Customer Support

Environment

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux

Issue

• What qualifies as a 24x7 customer support case?
• What are the requirements for FTS support?
• When does a 24x7 FTS case no longer qualify as such?
• Can a non-FTS case become an FTS case?

Resolution

• 24x7 customer support is available to premium subscribers who are experiencing an outage that requires Red Hat assistance to resolve outside of the customers normal business day for their geo. For example, if a customer from India experiences a production down event during North American business hours, they could enable 24x7 support to begin work on restoring production immediately rather than being required to wait for their business day to begin to receive support. This also allows a case to continue to be worked if production is still down and the engineer assisting on the case is leaving for the day. A new engineer can step in to continue uninterrupted support. As there will be engineers around the world working on the 24x7 ticket, please ensure that updates are in English.
• Requirements for FTS support include a Premium subscription model and an issue that results in significant business impact until resolved. This would include, but is not limited to, a production system that has crashed and will not boot fully into the OS, crashes so often that the system is deemed unusable, services will not start that are necessary for production, and similar type events. This does not include an explanation as to why the error occurred. FTS is designed solely to assist in keeping a customer in production.
• Once productivity is restored, it is good practice to understand the cause of the issue so that it can be prevented in the future. Due to the time it can take to provide this answer, and the fact that it doesn't have an effect on the currently running system at that time, this is when a case will transition back to an engineer in the geo of the customer and continue to be worked during normal business hours.
• A case can become an FTS if it is realized that the initial problem has grown to the point that it meets the criteria listed above, or if it realized that case should have been labeled as FTS from the beginning but was not.

Diagnostic Steps

• Severity 1 (urgent)

  • A problem that severely impacts your use of the software in a production environment (such as a complete loss of production or in which your production systems are not functioning at all). The situation halts your business operations and no procedural workaround exists.

• Severity 2 (high)

  • A problem where the software is functioning but your use in a production environment is severely reduced. The situation is causing a high impact to portions of your business operations and no procedural workaround exists.

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