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doone128
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No Proactive Findings - Used to have them!

Hi,

For some reason I have no proactive findings within Skyline. It just says 'There is no finding available for this account.'

However, I USED to have proactive findings in there, specifically the L1TF which has not yet been remediated and still shows locally on the ESXi host.

I have contacted support and the initial response was that this was because this kind of information is not supplied with 'Production Level' support. I have advised them that this obviously isn't correct as the information USED to be there but now is just blank.

The environment was recently updated to 6.7u1 so I don't know if that has anything to do with it but I'm pulling my hair out with this as the Skyline appliance is now very limited in what it offers.

Help!

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Aditya2018
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Hello Jason,

Different levels of rules or run on customer environments based on their Support contract.

The findings are shared with customers through Skyline Advisor, the same findings are shared with VMware Technical Support through an internal portal. A few of the finding which needs additional validation like Guest OS patch level are displayed only to VMware Technical Support so that they can be validated before sharing recommendations.

Sincerely, Aditya Gottumukkala Skyline Skyline Moderator VMware Inc

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AjayChananaVMwa
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Hi Doone,

We would request to provide your details so we can have this checked on our end.

Please provide your details in below link.

VMware Skyline Community - Smartsheet.com

Sincerely,
Ajay Chanana
Skyline Support Moderator
MCSE-2003/2008|RHCA|VCP-5/6/VCAP-6
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doone128
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Done - thanks!

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AjayChananaVMwa
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Hi Doone,

We have received your inputs, I will update you on this shortly.

Sincerely,
Ajay Chanana
Skyline Support Moderator
MCSE-2003/2008|RHCA|VCP-5/6/VCAP-6
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AjayChananaVMwa
VMware Employee
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Hi Doone,

vSphere-L1TerminalFault-VMSA which was available in the Advisor before will not be visible from Advisor anymore because of the changes made in the Rule Levels.

However, VMware Support would be able to see all findings, while Advisor will display only segment level 1 & 2 findings for production entitlement.

Any rule level above 1 and 2 requires VMware Technical Support Engineer's intervention, we do not want the customers to make any mistake while implementing the changes in the environment.

You could contact us anytime if you would like to know the details of the findings(Rule level above 1 and 2) which are available for your environment.

Disclaimer: The processes, methods and content utilized and/or provided for the duration of the pilot may not reflect the final implementation of proactive support with Skyline services for Production Support entitled customers. The delivery of the Findings and Recommendations through the Operational Summary Report may not reflect the final implementation of proactive support with Skyline services for Production Support entitled customers.

Sincerely,
Ajay Chanana
Skyline Support Moderator
MCSE-2003/2008|RHCA|VCP-5/6/VCAP-6
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jbgorrie
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I am not clear as to what you mean - what is the point in creating an online self-service portal, if you have to log a case or something with another group to get all the details.

So is the fault displayed and then not the remidiation or the fault itself is not.  If the former, then fine but it better have an easy way to contact somepne, but if the latter, then that is backwards and negates the whole point of the project  - show me issues in my environment.

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HarishV
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Hellojbgorrie

Thank you for your post. 

As a precautionary step from VMware, we are requesting all the Production Support Customers to contact the VMware Technical Support team to get the right guidance as certain findings might require VMware Support's intervention /expertise. This is applicable only for the proactive findings which are not shared. However, the rest of the recommendations which can be implemented without any technical guidance from VMware Support are available in Advisor.

Sincerely Harish Venkatachalam Skyline Support Moderator
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jbgorrie
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I am not sure I fully understand - I get the need to have people contact support for some help on some noted issues.

The question I am still fuzzy on - Does the interface flag/show/provide any notice that one should contact support as above - or is the only way to know if you should talk to support is to talk to support and ask them.  (again my position is the second option seems kinda wasteful)

Thanks,

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HarishV
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Hello,

Thank you for your post.

Unforutanelty we do not have any option as of now other than contacting the Technical support to get the guidance.

The other option is to upgrade to Premier Support Entitlement where you will be able to find all the recommendations in the Advisor and you will get a dedicated Engineer to handle your account where he can clear all the details.

Sincerely Harish Venkatachalam Skyline Support Moderator
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jbgorrie
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Ya, we will not be purchasing uplifted support - unless say we get a great discount.

Having created many cases can you please provide subject or relevant keywords that should be included since I have spent days trying to get to the right person.

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Aditya2018
VMware Employee
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Hello Jason,

Different levels of rules or run on customer environments based on their Support contract.

The findings are shared with customers through Skyline Advisor, the same findings are shared with VMware Technical Support through an internal portal. A few of the finding which needs additional validation like Guest OS patch level are displayed only to VMware Technical Support so that they can be validated before sharing recommendations.

Sincerely, Aditya Gottumukkala Skyline Skyline Moderator VMware Inc
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doone128
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Hi,

Thanks for this, although this news is extremely disappointing. It makes the Skyline appliance pretty much redundant IMO. I installed it to find out about proactive items that can be investigated and re mediated, but now I'm not getting that, what is the point? If vmware are not going to allow certain things to show within the proactive portal, then how will I know that there's something that potentially needs looking at?

Additionally, the L1TF item is still showing an alert within my on-premise environment, along with the KB article to fix it. So what is the issue with displaying it in Skyline if it is showing within people's environments? Bizarre.

Still - thanks for taking the time to reply.

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jbgorrie
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I had a call with a VMware rep on this.  Part of the issue is around messaging and that is on them.  I'll try clarify what I understand (and now accept).

Regardless of support contract all collected data is sent to VMware.

VMware has rules categorized into levels, and if you have production support your data is run against L1 & L2 rules.  This is then displayed in the portal and is the same data that the TS group sees.

IF you have elevated support (mission critical, etc) then they run additional L3 & L4 rules and that is displayed in their portal, and TS sees.  The additional rules are more complex and require additional backend processing so they limit that to those who have "paid" for that level.

So would it be nice to have L3 & L4 rules applied to my data, sure, but I'm not able to pay for it.  I do hope that they move rules from L3/L4 into L1/L2, so that it becomes better.

--

Jason

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