System information

VMware Technical Support Guide
T E C H N I C A L S U P P O R T G U I D E – F E B R U R A R Y 2 0 1 0 / 20
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. The support request number will be given to
you over the phone and sent to you within one (1) hour by a computer-generated message
acknowledging receipt of your support request. Please use this support request number when
communicating with VMware about that specific issue.
Initial response times by the TSE will follow the guidelines for your specific Support offering as
described earlier in this document. Response will be by phone or email or a combination of
both depending on license type, support offering (contract or per incident) and product.
Working the Problem
A specific TSE is assigned to your support request and owns your problem until it is mutually
agreed that the support request can be closed. He or she will contact you by email and/or
phone as appropriate during the resolution process. Your responsibility is to have the
appropriate people and resources available to work with the TSE during the service hours
defined in your support agreement. Typically, this would be during business hours, but could
be 24x7 given the severity of the problem.
Occasionally, VMware may reassign a support request from one TSE to another due to
differences in time zones or if different product expertise is required. You will be informed if
there is a need to reassign your support request.
A VMware TSE works with you to try to resolve the issue, taking whatever steps necessary to
first fully diagnose the problem and then to find a solution. This may involve:
Asking you for more information
Asking you to install specific software and/or patches
Asking for specific debug data from your system (and, if necessary, conducting tests to generate
this data)
Trying to reproduce the problem on VMware test machines
Asking for your code, data or software to help reproduce the problem
Verifying software bugs with our engineering staff
Asking you to implement and test workaround suggestions that may avoid the problem
Asking you to involve networking, database or other technology specific administrators to help
troubleshoot
Working with you to involve relevant third party software or hardware vendors (for example, your
operating system and database vendors) if we suspect a problem in their product
You can view the status of your support request and annotate your support request via the
VMware Support Web site. Once you log into the Request Support area, you will see a link at
the bottom of the page that will show you a table of your recent support requests.