Cloud Service Support Policies
These support policies apply to your use of VMware's cloud and hosted service offerings. These policies may be updated from time to time.
Cloud Service Updates
Cloud service updates may address security fixes, critical patches, general maintenance functionality, and documentation and shall be made available at VMware’s discretion. VMware is under no obligation to develop any future functionality or enhancements. If an update for a cloud service offering is made available to you pursuant to these cloud service support policies, it shall automatically replace the previous version of the applicable cloud service.
Where practical, VMware will schedule such cloud service updates during non-business hours and will provide you with notice.
First Line Support & Authorized Technical Contacts
Your authorized technical contacts must be knowledgeable about the VMware cloud service offering and your technical environment in order to work with VMware to analyze and resolve Support Requests. They are responsible for engaging VMware technical support and monitoring the resolution of all Support Requests and escalated support issues.
You are required to establish and maintain processes as necessary to manage first line support for users of the cloud service offering within your organization. If after reasonable efforts you are unable to diagnose or resolve the error(s), your authorized technical contact(s) may contact VMware for technical support via phone or web and assign the correct severity as defined below.
Response times
VMware is committed to rapid response of all Support Requests. All Severities can be logged with VMware on a 24 hours per day, 7 days per week, 365 days per year basis via phone or web. All Support Requests can be tracked online by the authorized technical contact who opened the Support Request.
Severity Level response times do not vary if you file your Support Request via phone or web. VMware does not guarantee resolution times, and a resolution may consist of a fix, workaround, service availability or other solution VMware deems reasonable. VMware will use reasonable efforts to meet the target response times stated in the table below. VMware will provide continuous efforts (24x7x365) to resolve Severity 1 SaaS service availability issues until a workaround or resolution can be provided or until the incident can be downgraded to a lower severity.
Target Response Times for Cloud Offerings:
| SaaS Basic Target Response Times |
SaaS Production Target Response Times |
|
|---|---|---|
| Critical (SaaS Severity 1) | 1 hour or less: 24x7 | 30 minutes or less: 24x7 |
| Major (SaaS Severity 2) | 4 business hours | 4 business hours |
| Minor (SaaS Severity 3) | 8 business hours | 8 business hours |
| Cosmetic (SaaS Severity 4) | 12 business hours | 12 business hours |
Severity Definitions
| Severity | Definition |
|---|---|
| Critical (SaaS Severity 1) | Critical production issue that severely impacts your use of the service. The situation halts your business operations and no procedural workaround exists.
Severity 1 issues require the customer to have dedicated resources available to work on the issue on an ongoing basis with VMware. |
| Major (SaaS Severity 2) | Major functionality is impacted or significant performance degradation is experienced. The situation is causing a high impact to portions of your business operations and no reasonable workaround exists.
|
| Minor (SaaS Severity 3) | There is a partial, non-critical loss of use of the service with a medium-to-low impact on your business, but your business continues to function. Short-term workaround is available, but not scalable. |
| Cosmetic (SaaS Severity 4) | Inquiry regarding a routine technical issue; information requested on application capabilities, navigation, installation or configuration; bug affecting a small number of users. Acceptable workaround available. |
Upgrade/Downgrade of Severity Level
If, during the Support Request process, the issue either warrants assignment of a higher severity level than currently assigned or no longer warrants the severity level currently assigned based on its current impact on the production operation of the cloud service offering, then the severity level will be upgraded or downgraded accordingly to the severity level that most appropriately reflects its current impact.
Utility Tools
If you decide to implement utility tools available for some cloud service offerings, you are responsible for the successful installation and implementation of these utility tools within your environment as specified in the specific cloud service offering’s configuration and installation documentation. Support Requests can be filed to ask questions regarding the configuration, installation, or usage of the utility tools. Version control is based on major, minor version definitions and these utility tools are made available in the VMware Download Center.