Severity Definitions, Response Targets and Business Hours

On Premise Severity Definitions

Severity Definition
Critical (On Premise Severity 1) Production server or other mission critical system(s) are down and no workaround is immediately available.

  • All or a substantial portion of your mission critical data is at a significant risk of loss or corruption.
  • You have had a substantial loss of service.
  • Your business operations have been severely disrupted.

Severity 1 support requires you to have dedicated resources available to work on the issue on an ongoing basis during your contractual hours.
Major (On Premise Severity 2) Major functionality is severely impaired.

  • Operations can continue in a restricted fashion, although long-term productivity might be adversely affected.
  • A major milestone is at risk. Ongoing and incremental installations are affected.
  • A temporary workaround is available.
Minor (On Premise Severity 3) Partial, non-critical loss of functionality of the software.

  • Impaired operations of some components, but allows the user to continue using the software.
  • Initial installation milestones are at minimal risk.
Cosmetic (On Premise Severity 4) General usage questions.

  • Cosmetic issues, including errors in the documentation.

 

SaaS 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.

  • Service is down or unavailable.
  • Data corrupted or lost and must restore from backup.
  • A critical documented feature / function is not available.

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.

  • Service is operational but highly degraded performance to the point of major impact on usage.
  • Important features of the Software as a Service offering are unavailable with no acceptable workaround; however, operations can continue in a restricted fashion.
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.

Support Response Targets 

The severity of the problem and the service levels of the support program that you purchase determine the speed and method of our response targets. Following are the response time targets for providing the initial response.

Offering Critical
(Severity 1) 		Major
(Severity 2) 		Minor
(Severity 3) 		Cosmetic
(Severity 4)
Premier Support 30 minutes or less; 24x7 2 business hours 4 business hours 8 business hours
Production 30 minutes or less; 24x7 4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours
SaaS Production 30 minutes or less; 24x7 4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours
Basic 4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours 12 business hours
SaaS Basic 1 hour or less; 24x7 4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours
Mission Critical 30 minutes or less; 24x7 2 business hours; 10x7 4 business hours; 10x5 8 business hours; 10x5
Business Critical 30 minutes or less; 24x7 4 business hours 8 business hours 12 business hours
vFabric Developer Standard: 12 business hours

Premium: 4 business hours		 Standard: 12 business hours

Premium: 4 business hours		 Standard: 12 business hours

Premium: 4 business hours		 Standard: 12 business hours

Premium: 4 business hours
Per Incident VMware ESXi Per Incident: 4 business hours

All other Per Incident support:
24 hours		 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours
SDK Support Standard: 2 business days

Premium: 1 business day		 Standard: 2 business days

Premium: 1 business day		 Standard: 2 business days

Premium: 1 business day		 Standard: 2 business days

Premium: 1 business day

VMware Business Hours 

Business Hours for all SaaS & On-Premise Support Offerings
Monday - Friday

North America, Latin America
8am-6pm (local time)
Alaska, Hawaii
8am - 6pm (PST/PDT)
Europe
8am - 6pm (GMT/GMT +1)
Middle East, Africa
8am - 6pm (GMT +2)
Asia, Pacific Rim
8am - 6 pm (SGT)
India
8am - 6pm (IST)
Japan
9am - 6pm (JST)
Australia/New Zealand
8am-6pm (local time)

 

Hours of operation vary for Per Incident Support of VMware Hypervisor (ESXi), VMware vSphere Essentials, VMware Workstation Pro, VMware vCenter Converter Standalon, VMware Fusion, Fusion pro and Workstation Player.

 

Hours of operation vary for Complimentary Support of Workstation Pro, Fusion, Fusion Pro and Workstation Player.