Information for New Customers
Article Information |
---|
This article applies to the following ZCS versions.
Information For New Support CustomersDetails On Response Times and What's SupportedPlease review the Support Overview and Support Program, specifically the "Exclusions" and "Reasonable Use Policy" sections. You can also find a link to the Support Plan document when you log in to your Zimbra Support Portal account (Network Edition Customers). As of 12 August 2008, it includes the following statement: Requests that are excluded from support include but are not limited to: performing initial installs of customer systems, performing migrations, performing upgrades of customer systems, performing configuration changes to add or remove servers or services, and testing a customer’s system. Zimbra Professional Services may be available to assist with these projects. New Network Edition CustomersYour sales contact should already have made a support record for your company and added one or more user accounts for our primary support tool, the Support Portal. Please Contact Sales if you are unsure whether you and/or your company have been set up for access to the Support Portal. Additional user accounts can be associated with your support record if necessary by submitting a case to support with the following information:
Understanding The Support Process For Urgent IssuesIn order to receive the most efficient and timely response, please follow this procedure.
How To Communicate Support Need ClearlyOver the years, open source luminary Eric Raymond has assembled a guide to getting help with technical issues online. Bear in mind that the guide has been written for those seeking free help, so the overall guide taken at face value is most applicable for posting to the Zimbra Forums. There is, however, plenty of useful guidance for those submitting support cases. The complete guide is available online as How To Ask Questions The Smart Way. Here are a few examples:
Simon Tatham, author of the PuTTY software, wrote a similar guide for How to Report Bugs Effectively. Support ToolsCase ManagementSubscribe To RSS FeedsRecently we completed an internal RFE for our sites to have unrestricted (anonymous) access for RSS feeds. The new RSS feeds are:
Clicking on an article from the RSS feed will direct the user to the login page with an "Authorization Required" message. Email CommunicationWhen you send emails to support@zimbra.com, it will create a case for us and show in our new case tool. What is important to note though, is our tools first check to see if the subject line of the email has SF: Case ########: in it. If so, it redirects that email to update an existing case. If those values aren't in the subject line, it creates a new case. So, if you wanted to update an existing case - let's say case number 00000001 - you would have your subject line as "SF: Case 00000001: some text of the topic" . New Cases Created By Email Are Always Sev-4If you send your initial support request via email to support@zimbra.com it will automatically be set at a "Severity Level 4", which is the lowest priority. If you need your case set to a higher severity level, please create your case via the support portal page where you can set the severity level. At this time, you can not change a case severity level once it's made via the support portal case management tools. Always Include support@zimbra.com In Case Email ThreadsIf emails for your case do not include the support@zimbra.com address, there's a good chance the support member your working with will not be updated about your response correctly. Sales Force Case CommentsSales Force [zimbra support portal case management tool] has the option to do "Case Comments". Please use this only when necessary - for example, your email isn't working. Currently, case comments from sales force don't work appropriately with our other tools because it doesn't create a email subject to match the "SF: Case ########:" pattern and it also doesn't change the status of the case to reflect "customer replied". The email subject line is important because most of us here at support use the Zimbra's email conversation view and also "tagging" of our case threads. The case comments from Sales Force doesn't work against this. And of course, the case not being updated as "customer replied" causes issues as it most likely leaves it in the state of "Awaiting Customer Response". BugzillaZimbra uses the Bugzilla bug database system. This is a critical tool for Zimbra development, and allows anyone with an account to interact directly with Zimbra developers and product managers. It has been suggested that customers who ignore Bugzilla do so at their own peril. That may sound a little over the top, but you will find that Bugzilla provides fascinating insight and connection to the development process. If you'd prefer not to work directly with Bugzilla, Zimbra Support will communicate relevant case information to the developers. On the other hand, if you'd like to get hands-on with the bug database, here are some basics to get you started. Create a Bugzilla AccountThis is open to anyone. It's not tied to your Network Edition support id. Recommended Saved SearchesOnce you've created your account and logged in, create a search to list any bugs whose progress you are following (i.e. you have added your email address to the CC: field).
When you are logged in, your custom searches will show up in the "Saved Searches:" section at the bottom of Bugzilla pages. You can reconfigure or delete them under the "Saved Searches" tab of your Bugzilla Preferences. When a support case is related to a given bug or RFE ("request for enhancement"), it will be cross linked internally between Bugzilla and our case management system. Once you know the bug number, you can add yourself to the CC: field and Bugzilla will notify you of changes via email. With the saved search that lists bugs you are following, it will be easy for you to manage those as well. My Saved BugsThere is also a default saved search, "My Bugs". This will list any bugs or RFE's that you have created. Bugs And RFE's Related To Your Support CaseWhen you have a case that's related to a bug or RFE, the support staff will add the case number to the bug or RFE, which serves to increase its priority (not the Bugzilla "Priority" field). Note that case numbers are not visible publicly. Here's what you can do in addition:
At this point, the issue in question can be tracked through Bugzilla, and the support case will typically be closed. Use The Advanced Search
Privacy Option For Bug PostingsYou must have a bugzilla account and be logged in to use the privacy option. When creating a bug, you can select an option to only make that information available to you [the poster] and with Zimbra staff. The page will have an option that states: Make bug visible only to reporter and Zimbra If you need this privacy option but also identified an existing bug that is related, you could create your new bug with the privacy choice and just include in the comment the other bug number. Even though your bug might become a duplicate of the other, you'll still be able to post to your private bug - maintaining the privacy option. Support Staff Can Make All Bugzilla Entries PrivateThe Zimbra Support staff has the option to make any existing comment, attachment, or bug private to the internal Zimbra staff. They can do this on behalf of a customer you needs a post they made switched from public to private. Also, for some situations, it might be easier to just send the 'data' to the support team via your support case. The support team can then add to the bug the relevant data with the appropriate privacy options. Also - data sent to our ftp site is private and secured. We generally purge data after 60 days. Zimbra Product Portal Page - The Birdseye View Of BugzillaZimbra's Product Portal Page is like the executive summary of the bugzilla activity and future release information. The most useful part of this site is the ability to drill down on a ZCS version until you'll be able to see the various targeted release dates. For example, clicking on the 6.0 (GunsNRoses) listing under Releases will show the subversions of 6.x. This will show a target date for the release, if one has been made public yet. You then can click on a particular version, 6.0.4 for example. This will now show all bugs and rfe's tied to the 6.0.4 release. Zimbra ForumsThe forums provide a place where the greater Zimbra community (server administrators, users, developers, commentators, etc) can work together on solving problems. There is a wide range of experience among the community, and a long history of issues available for searching. Create A Forums AccountThis is open to anyone. It is not tied to your Network Edition support id. Zimbra WikiThe wiki also centers around the community, providing a site where anyone with an account can contribute documentation, especially how-to guides, non-standard configurations, and topics related to but external to ZCS. Create A Wiki AccountThis is open to anyone. It is not tied to your Network Edition support id. Why is this important?
Yahoo! IMMost of the Zimbra support staff have Yahoo! Instant Messenger accounts, and this can prove useful even when on a telephone call since it speeds up the sharing of copy-and-pasted information. Communication over IM is available at the discretion of support staff. Create A Yahoo! IM AccountThis is open to anyone. It is not tied to your Network Edition support id. Remote Server AccessConditions For Remote AccessIn some cases, a Zimbra TSE may request access to the system in question. Direct access is not generally the preferred method of investigation on cases, and we typically request that the customer please perform the hands-on administration of your system, with which you would be far more familiar than Zimbra; in some cases however, direct access may be considered an option for investigating the situation. Zimbra TSE's will need some way to communicate with someone on your IT staff when they are going to log in to your servers. Zimbra Support helps and facilitates customers with their problems but we are not the "administrators" of customers servers and can't make independent decisions on what to do or not on their servers. We need to have access to immediate forms of communication [phone, IM, etc.] with someone at the company with the authority to make those decisions. Support SSH Keys
In the Zimbra Support Portal, a public key for ssh is available for situations when Zimbra support will log in to a customer server using ssh. You can allow remote connections for a user (typically zimbra or root) by logging in to the server as that user and following these steps. 1. Save the key file on the server as /opt/zimbra/.ssh/zsupport_rsa.key.pub 2. Add the key to the user's authorized_keys file; command #1 outputs the current list of keys; command #2 appends the support key 1% cat ~/.ssh/authorized_keys 2% cat /opt/zimbra/.ssh/zsupport_rsa.key.pub >> ~/.ssh/authorized_keys
3. Verify that public key access is allowed by sshd
4. Confirm, if appropriate, that the user you setup for ssh access will be able to su and/or sudo to gain zimbra and/or root access. 5. You'll then need to communicate to support that the key is setup and provide the necessary information:
The screen command line utility allows multiple users to attach to the same terminal session. To start a new screen session, run screen -m or screen -R. To attach to an existing screen session, run screen -x. Additional documentation for screen is available online. Sun Microsystems offers a java application to allow shared access to a terminal session. More information is available at their site. DimDimThis might interest some customers as well DimDim Web Conferencing . They have an OSS edition - DimDim OSS Edition Installation and Migration PlanningExpectationsSupport doesn't do migration for customers, nor do we do migration planning. We can help if you run into issues during migration. Are there gray areas involved in this? Yes, of course. Some guidelines to follow:
FirstPlease take time to review the Administrators Guide. Noting what features you might want or need for the installation. It would be wise to make notes while your skimming the guide of features your wanting. Depending on the choices you have, it might drastically effect your installation steps. Do you want HSM, Archive & Discovery, Proxies - what type, and so forth.
The BasicsStarting Official Source Guides
Other Resources To ReviewGeneral Ways To Find More Specific Information:
Please Consider Your Backup Issues Before DeployingAssuming you've consulted the other above resources as well. More items to consider:
Be Aware Of DR ProcessesMulti-Server InstallationsAssuming you read or skimmed the above. Starting Official Source Guides
Other Resources To Review
Migration Issues
This will pull all of them regardless of their "status". Quick TipsLicense issues (Dos/Unix New Lines)Sometimes when customers get their license file on a Windows machine and then go about transferring it to the zimbra server they accidentally convert the license file to have windows new line characters that will not work when Zimbra goes to read the file. To see if this happen, to the following on the zimbra server: vi file and then :set list Confirm you're not getting the ^M characters at the end. The ^M is the windows new line character, they'll need to be removed. There is a script or even rpm package you can get, usually called dos2unix, that will do this for you. |