Everything with moving parts wears out. It’s inevitable. As technology progresses, there is an expectation that things will take longer and longer to wear out, but there are always freak occurrences. The really important thing isn’t the mean time between failures (MTBF) it’s how quickly your server gets back up and running.
There are many different support options for servers and networking gear. This document will hopefully help you sort through all the abbreviations and acronyms so you know what you’re getting into.
Nothing will be done today. In fact, nothing may be done for a few days. Imagine this:
24 December – Hardware fails, you call tech support, they create a ticket and tell you someone will help you on the next business day.
25 December – statutory holiday – no service
26 December – statutory holiday in some areas – no service
27 December – Saturday – no service
28 December – Sunday – no service
29 December – Monday – the “next” business day - the technician is finally assigned to the ticket
At this point your equipment has been offline for almost a week.
With “onsite” service, they are willing to send a technician to the location of your server in order to fix it. Be warned. This may only be available in specific geographic locations (like major cities). The location that they are willing to send the technician may also be limited to the address that they shipped the device to originally.
The onus is on the user to jump through a bunch of hoops before they are willing to replace anything. For example, you may be required to download and run some diagnostics (like a memory test) before they are willing to send a technician to replace bad memory. These steps can take several days, especially if the problem is intermittent (like random reboots). Until the supplier is 100% satisfied that they know how to fix the problem, they won’t send a technician. The supplier may even ask you to update the firmware on each and every component until it is running the latest firmware. This requires a lot of time on your behalf, and a lot of time on the phone with a technician.
Monday to Friday (five days), from 8am until 6pm (ten hours) you will get support. It’s safe to assume this is only available on business days. The hours that this service is available may change with a specific time zone. If their call center is in New York, and you’re in California, this may not be the best solution for you.
Support is generally available seven days a week, 24 hours a day. There may be some exceptions for statutory holidays.
Support is always available, no exceptions.
The service target is four hours – no matter what your problem is, they plan on having you back up and running within four hours of you calling the tech support line. Some suppliers will even go as low as two hours as a target. Service like this is expensive.
No matter what the problem is, or where the hardware is located, the supplier will parachute in a technician to fix the problem within four hours.