I would like to achieve shorter downtime this year when dealing with my server issues, considering to buy support for several of my servers in Ubuntu Advantage service, I know I may contact Canonical sales with my question using contact information on official website, but I am asking this community, because I would prefer to read about experience from real customers first.
The official website information says:
24/7 support
The Support and Technical Services team provides around-the-clock coverage for Ubuntu deployments all over the world. Telephone support gives you access to engineers with first-hand experience of your issues, while the online portal lets you track the progress of cases in real time.
Best source I have found: http://www.ubuntu.com/legal/ubuntu-advantage/service-description, actually describes some scope of support and helps a little, but still is not explanatory enough to answer my questions.
Those of you who actually are customers of Canonical and have Ubuntu Advantage 24/7 support first hand experience, can you please explain how their support works?
- What exactly is the scope of the 24/7 support, what am I paying for?
- Is the support team going to help me with my server related problem over the phone real time or how long is the usual response time?
- Does it include support for applications like LAMP Stack, Bind9, Postfix, and other commonly used server applications?
- Does it include support for stuff like hardware issues, RAID troubleshooting, performance and configuration issues?
- Yes or No answer, so it is not very opinion based: Were you satisfied with support, did the support team help you solve your problems?
- Do you get a phone number in Europe for European customers or Skype, so my phone bill is less than the support fee?
- Any other observations and factual information and fist hand experience is welcome.
This question is broad, I know, but I do not want to ask every piece of this question separately, because these questions and possible answers belong together. I checked for duplicate questions already asked on this topic, similar questions do not ask the same thing I am asking here.
The best information I have been able to find about the program is this. It seems to spell out in detail the level of service as well as the response times you can expect for varying levels of severity. Certified hardware is of course better supported.
Hopefully someone with personal experience can provide you with a better answer.