Steve, I can see how the "proactive" response to a disk failure autosupport would leave you rather unimpressed when the call back is after you have already acted on it yourself! Fact of the matter is, that is indeed the way it is today. Autosupport is filtered by a script and the ones needing attention (eg DISK_FAIL) are forwarded to CSRs for attention. A call is logged and the customer is contacted. Now, the info in the autosupport is not very CS-friendly because the info that we need to locate the customer is not mandatory. So, often it slows down the process of logging the call, finding the contact information, etc.
We are looking at correcting these bottleencks by proposing changes to Engineering that would make contact and customer information mandatory in autosupport. We also have a team engaged right now to scope out automation around autosupport. If, for example, locating a customer record in our database was simple and guaranteed (programatically) then a script could field the DISK_FAIL autosupport, log a call, check the customer's service level, issue the RMA and email you back the call log number and the shipment info. (Know anyone that could help us with this project? :-).
We are also thinking about automating the analysis of a crash - I think we should be able to suggest patches just based on info in autosupport ... at least some percent of the cases. Not sure how successful this will be. But it would be really cool even if we were able to auto-analyze and propose upgrades for 25% of the cases!
This should be possible. Autosupport has a lot of untapped benefits that we can take advantage of. It is not straightforward - but you should see some changes in the future - for the better.
Diptish Datta Director, Product Support Network Appliance
-----Original Message----- From: armijo@cs.unm.edu [mailto:armijo@cs.unm.edu] Sent: Thursday, September 16, 1999 7:23 PM To: jay@cimedia.com Cc: toasters@mathworks.com Subject: Re: tech support waits Importance: High
I opened another case on the same day that was resolved that week. Interestingly, on this second case, NetApp also
opened a case on
my behalf over the same issue in response to an autosupport email my NetApp generated when it crashed.
NetApp is extremely inconsistent about this. Our filers
have probably
crashed a half dozen to a dozen times in the couple of years we've owned them and this is the only time I've seen the autosupport email cause a case to be opened.
I have seen the same thing. I had a filer throw a disk one night, I called in, got a disk sent to me, got it 6 hours later( our support contract says 4 ), and dropped it in place. then the next day i had someone from netapp call me with an open case and explain they wanted to ship me another disk, and had a new case opened for me.
other times i have had a filer reboot on random crashes, and never heard a thing.
on th eother hand, it is nice to be able to get a warm body on the phone 24 hours a day, now if only there was a way to escalate faster...
-steve
-- Cue the music, fade to black, no such thing as no payback. -PWEI
[ armijo@cs.unm.edu ]