Re: VMware Technical Support Experiences

vmrulz · ‎01-29-2008

How many people feel like they get their money's worth out of VMware's support packages? We are a Platinum customer and are quite frankly unimpressed with VMware's technical support staff and their ability to solve problems. They are by in large poor at following through and managing cases. We currently have at least 2 open cases that seem to be going nowhere. Out of the blue we were notified that the support tech had closed one of the cases and had emailed us notifying us of this.. even though the case remains unsolved.

I don't think this is isolated to VMware as we see it with other vendors as well. We are happy that through the collective and active knowledge found within this community we can solve many of our problems without that dreaded call to tech support. That we do not tend to get with other vendors.

You would think that a company who just reported huge financial gains for 2007 would be focusing on improving their product support... and maybe they are, I hope!

Frustrated.

christianZ · ‎01-29-2008

For now we are more impressed with our storage support (Equallogic by us) as by Vmware support - but that's just my experience until now.

Though I wouldn't give up the Vmware support.

mcowger · ‎01-29-2008

I've been reasonably impressed. Do i think its worth the cost - I'm not sure. But would I run VMWare without it? No.

--Matt

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us

mcowger · ‎01-29-2008

I've been reasonably impressed. Do i think its worth the cost - I'm not sure. But would I run VMWare without it? No.

--Matt

--Matt VCDX #52 blog.cowger.us

kbassham · ‎01-29-2008

i've had similar experiences... not impressed, not worth the money.

ejward · ‎01-29-2008

For now we are more impressed with our storage support (Equallogic by us) as by Vmware support - but that's just my experience until now.
Though I wouldn't give up the Vmware support.

Have you had to call Equallogic since Dell bought them?

ejward · ‎01-29-2008

I'm a Platinum customer. Platinum support gives you 30 minute response time. My last support call about a month ago was a severity 1. It was because i couldn't install software. Not because anything was down. The website says that if you can't install ANY product, it's a severity 1. I really didn't expect anyone to get back to me in 30 minutes or even a couple hours. 7 hours later I still hadn't been contacted. I finally had to send them an email before I was contacted. In the past 2 years, i've only had to log maybe 4 calls. Three of them were severity 1. With one of them, everything on a host was down and we couldn't bring them up on another host. It took about 3 hours and me calling every hour to get a status before I finally got an engineer. So, my experience hasn't been good.

On the last call where I couldn't install the software (VC 2.5), at one point I had an error on the screen that just had the OK button. My call was passed to 3 different engineers over the course of 3 or 4 days. All of them had to "Go back and do some research". It was the last tech that said 'Just click on OK and see what happens". The install went through. All thoes other engineers didn't know it was just in informational message that comes up every time? The hadn't installed it themselves? The message said something about making sure the SQL client servervice was running on the SQL server or something like that. When I got the survey, I rated the call as bad. I got a call from a supervisor the next morning (I was impressed with this). I guess the survey's you fill out only apply to the last tech you spoke to. That wasn't fair because the last tech fixd the problem in 10 seconds. It was all the other people that dropped the ball on this one.

Ok ..... I've ranted enough.

ctfoster · ‎01-29-2008

I thought this was the best place for technical support !

ejward · ‎01-29-2008

I thought this was the best place for technical support !

Ya' know, you're right. Since I started reading here on a regular basis, I hven't needed to call support as much. Vmware should be paying US for keeping this going!!

dmorgan · ‎01-29-2008

I have not had to use our Platinum service as of yet, knock on wood, however VMWares forums have mainly been the reason why I have not had to call. 90% of the time I can find the answer I need right off the bat, otherwise I can post and have responses within a short period of time. Where VMWare is smart about it, is that they have provided this excellent utility for us to solve/answer our own problems. That being said, I would hope that their technical support is decent, considering the price one pays for premium support. So long as the forums are around, I will most always turn here first for any of my technical issues.

If you found this or any other post helpful please consider the use of the Helpfull/Correct buttons to award points

christianZ · ‎01-30-2008

Have you had to call Equallogic since Dell bought them?

Yes I have.

Cloneranger · ‎01-30-2008

I have never called VMWare myself,

But the guys I work with called them up a few months ago whilst I was away on holiday,

They were impressed by all accounts,

The guy they spoke with in the end was a real linux guru, the issue was a tough one and he went deep into esx, he was apparently remoted into our site for hours, and he did help them out so our experience was positive.

They may have just lucked out though, every support team has one guy in a hundred that actually knows his stuff, and actually wants to help you, having only used VMWare support once as a company and then only because I wasnt here, I cant judge VMWare tech support as an entity,

We dont have platinum though, I think gold, so I think they paid a one-off charge for being out of hours, which was worth it, of course.

vmrulz · ‎01-30-2008

Thanks for the replies. I suspected as much that many of you are frustrated. Again, I don't think this is isolated to VMware as a vendor but I think we all have high expecations from them because they have such great products. I suspect too that like many corporations they are trying to do more with less (in this case less staff) and as all us grunts know, you can only stretch your staff so far before things start dropping through the cracks.

dwight · ‎01-30-2008

Just like you, my experience with VMware support has been rather hit and miss and often times they take quite a while to get back with us.

At least the people at VMware's technical support are generally compentent. I.E. they speak and understand english well, have good troubleshooting skills and can escalate issues to more senior people who really know their stuff if it's not a simple issue.

This is certainly a lot better than the person in a 3rd world call center that doesn't speak understandable english who basically is acting as a voice interface to the online knowledgebase that many companies call tech support.

RHCE, VCP

Symantec Corporation

RHCE, VCP Blog: http://computing.dwighthubbard.info

ejward · ‎01-30-2008

Have you had to call Equallogic since Dell bought them?

Yes I have.

Do you know if you were still speaking to Equallogic or was it Dell? I'm just hoping that Dell doesn't mess things up.

ejward · ‎01-30-2008

Just like you, my experience with VMware support has been rather hit and miss and often times they take quite a while to get back with us.
At least the people at VMware's technical support are generally compentent. I.E. they speak and understand english well, have good troubleshooting skills and can escalate issues to more senior people who really know their stuff if it's not a simple issue.

I have to agree with you there. The worst i got was a Scottish accent one time.

One thing I find is that there seems to be no consistency with their techs. Some are willing to do a WebX and see for themselves. Some want you to read everything to them. Some insist that you do EVERYTHING from the command line !!! Even to see if a file exists. Once, I told them I was using the command line as they were saying "type cd \etc\......". I was really using WinSCP. Shhhh, don't tell anyone.

christianZ · ‎01-31-2008

It seems there are still the same SEs, thus far I can assert.

ejward · ‎01-31-2008

It seems there are still the same SEs, thus far I can assert.

I guess that's a good thing. And the fact that Dell isn't allowed to sell any of the features (Replication, snapshots, etc) as seperate add-ons is a good thing too. But, I guess I'm getting off-topic now. Sorry.

taberj · ‎01-31-2008

I just posted this - one of MANY sour experiences since the EMC aquisition - they are growing too fast and as a result - the support has ABSOLUTELY gone to the crapper 12 months ago - it's next to impossible to get decent support - unless you get an Austrailian on the line and I'm from the US....

Read... Up yours Devon..... from ()

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/124109