Support

1. INTRODUCTION

Welcome to our CoreStack Technical Support guide, where customer satisfaction is our primary objective! This Technical Support guide is backed by a team of trained and experienced support engineers that are there to assist you. With Operations in the USA and India, we provide our customers with 24×7 support for your critical issues.

2. SEVERITY LEVELS

To make sure your request is prioritized correctly, we have established service request severity levels and a definition of each level. When you contact us, you will be asked to assign your request a severity level.

• Severity 1 (S1): CoreStack is “down” or there is a critical impact to your operations. We will commit to work around the clock to resolve the situation. Expect all necessary resources and support from your team as well.
• Severity 2 (S2): CoreStack performance is severely degraded, or you are unable to perform certain key functions which significantly affect your operations. We will commit to work continuously during normal business hours to resolve the situation. Expect all necessary resources and support from your team as well.
• Severity 3 (S3): Functional issues that impact specific operation or users while most other operations remain functional. We will commit to work during normal business hours to restore service to satisfactory levels.
• Severity 4 (S4): You require information or assistance with CoreStack product capabilities. There is little or no impact on your normal operations.

3. SUPPORT FRAMEWORK

3.1 SUBMIT A REQUEST / REPORT AN ISSUE

To submit a service request, you can send an email to [email protected]. This creates a ticket in our ITSM tool. The ticket will be triaged based on the severity and assigned to the respective L2 engineers to work on them.

3.1.1 INFORMATION IN REQUESTS

Specifying the following info will help expedite your request:

• Subject or Title to state the problem clearly
• Severity Level of the issue (see definitions above)
• Describe the issue with details on why the severity is assigned
• Which page, what actions were being performed when you face the issue.
• Error message or code if any. Screenshot is preferred

3.2 STATUS OF YOUR REQUEST

Our technical support team will provide you with an update and the ETA for resolution. However, you can always provide more information or request updates by replying to the email received from support.

3.3 RESOLUTION FRAMEWORK

Our resolution framework is described in the picture below. All requests will be triaged by the Level-1 Support team and they would try to resolve them based on Known Issues Database. Based on the severity of the ticket, the request will be escalated to Level-2 and Level-3 within the escalation window.

The Escalation Manager will be in loop for all escalations to L2/L3 and will facilitate the swift recovery of the system. Recovery will be the first priority which will ensure that the critical operations if any blocked are resumed. The team will then work on the root cause analysis and permanent resolution to ensure that the issue does not occur again.

Continuous updates shall be provided to the requester of the ticket. The requester can also contact the escalation manager if required to get further details on the resolution status.

3.4 RESPONSE TIMES (SLA)

Given below are the typical response times for various severity levels. Please refer your SoW / contract for the actual service levels agreed for the specific engagement. Response time will differ based on the support plan purchased.

3.5 ESCALATION

As part of our internal resolution framework, there will be timely escalations to the Escalation Manager. However, at any point, if you are not satisfied with the progress on resolving your service request, especially for S1 and S2 requests, you can reach out to the Escalation Managers directly.

Email: [email protected]
USA: +1 425 324 1575
India: +91 89391 17535

3.6 SUPPORT WINDOW

CoreStack support team is available 24×7 to help with any critical issues and requests. The support window for a specific engagement might differ and will be mentioned in the SoW / contract.

• Level-1 Support team: Available anytime and typical response times are 30 mins or less.
• Level-2 Support team: Team of Cloud Ops Engineers available during business hours (9am to 7pm IST) and also a primary and secondary support engineer is available on-call during non-business hours to help with critical issues (S1, S2).
• Level-3 Support: Available on-demand to support any critical issues (S1, S2).

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Note:

Support window is subject to change based on the agreed support plan. Only Premium Support Plans have 24×7 support included.

4. GOVERNANCE MODEL

4.1 ENGAGEMENT PHASES

The managed services engagement for cloud resources goes thru the following phases:

1. Project kick-off
   1. Define stakeholders at both Customer side and CoreStack team
   2. Identify the SPOC at either side
   3. Assign the primary and secondary owner from L2 team for the customer
   4. Review the scope of engagement and set expectations
2. Transition
   1. Customer to provide necessary access to the cloud accounts and resources
   2. Assessment of the existing infrastructure landscape – define baseline
   3. Handover any existing documents and automation assets
   4. Identify business critical workloads and resources
3. Engagement Plan
   1. Prepare implementation plan and recommendations for Cloud Operations Automation, Cost Optimisation and Compliance to standards and best practices
   2. Define the detailed task plan, milestones and timeline
   3. Agree on the acceptance criteria with the customer
4. Implementation Phase
   1. Implement the tasks identified as part of the engagement plan
   2. Review progress with customer and incorporate any feedback
5. Continuous Governance
   1. Perform periodic daily/weekly/monthly activities – automated where possible
   2. Provide reports on the infrastructure health, utilisation and cost summary
   3. Monthly infrastructure governance report and review

4.2 GOVERNANCE STRUCTURE

CoreStack team has the following roles and responsibilities relevant to each customer engagement

1. Account Manager
   1. CoreStack will assign a shared Account Manager as the SPOC
   2. Responsible for the overall delivery of support and services.
   3. Handle escalations and ensure timely recovery and resolution.
   4. Account Manager will be responsible for providing the governance report and conducting reviews with the Customer SPOC.
   5. Manage and plan new opportunities
2. Level-1 Support Team
   1. Responsible for the initial response and triaging of the requests to the right technical support engineer.
   2. Directly resolve requests/issues that have occurred in the past, for which the solution is available in the Knowledgebase.
   3. Ensure timely updates to the requester from customer side
   4. Ensure timely escalation of the ticket to the next levels (as per resolution framework)
3. Level-2 Support Team
   1. A team of Cloud Ops Engineers are available to provide technical support.
   2. Responsible for incident management, service requests, back-up & recovery, monitoring & remediation.
   3. Customer wise primary and secondary owner is assigned from the L2 Support team.
   4. They have complete understanding of the cloud accounts and infrastructure for the specific customer.
   5. They would also own the periodic maintenance and reporting for the customer.
4. Level-3 Support Team
   1. Comprises of Technical Architects and Senior Engineers
   2. Available on-demand to support with any critical requests/issues
   3. Can also provide necessary technology consulting and approach where required

5. HELP DOCUMENTATION

CoreStack documentation with details of all features and capabilities is available here: https://docs.corestack.io

• Getting Started
• Setting up your CoreStack account
• Set up an organizational hierarchy

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Note:

The same documentation is made available within the HELP section of the Cloud Management Portal.