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.

Cloud Services Severity Definitions


Severity Definition
Critical (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 (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 (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 (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 Severity 1
(Critical) 		Severity 2
(Major) 		Severity 3
(Minor) 		Severity 4
(Cosmetic)
Premier Support Within 30 minutes
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 2 business hours
10 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Premier Support for Finance Within 30 minutes
Plus "Fast Pass"
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 2 business hours
10 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Premier Support for Healthcare Within 30 minutes
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 2 business hours
10 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Premier Support for Telco Within 30 minutes
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 2 business hours
10 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Premier Support for Federal Within 30 minutes
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 2 business hours
10 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Production Support Within 30 minutes
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 12 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Basic Support 4 Business hours Mon-Fri 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 12 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Cloud Services Production Support Within 30 minutes
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 12 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Cloud Services Basic Support Within 1 hour
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 12 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Mission Critical Within 30 minutes
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 2 business hours
10 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
Business Critical Within 30 minutes
24 hours/day 7 days/week		 4 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 8 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week		 12 business hours
10 hours/day 5 days/week
vFabric Developer (Standard Support) 12 business hours 12 business hours 12 business hours 12 business hours
vFabric Developer (Premium Support) 4 business hours 4 business hours 4 business hours 4 business hours
Per Incident Support (VMware ESXi) 4 business hours 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours
Per Incident Support (All others) 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours 24 hours
SDK Support (Standard Support) 2 business days 2 business days 2 business days 2 business days
SDK Support (Premium Support) 1 business day 1 business day 1 business day 1 business day

VMware Business Hours


Business Hours for all Cloud Services & 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.