4. The VDURA Support Portal

4.1 What the VDURA Support Portal Is

The VDURA Support Portal is our customer support web portal, where you can engage our team of TSEs for any type of question or problem that may arise with the use of our storage appliance. Raise a request, attach the files an engineer needs, and follow the request until it is resolved. The portal also hosts documents you may need, such as service advisories, release notes, and product documentation.

The portal can be reached at https://support.vdura.com. The portal works in an ordinary web browser, but you need an account to use it (see chapter 5).

Note: In this guide, a request you raise in the portal is a Service Request, or SR, and its reference starts with “SR-”.

4.2 What You Can Do

• Raise a request for a general question, configuration help, a software upgrade or patch, a crash, a performance problem, a data or filesystem issue, a hardware failure or RMA, or DirectFlow client help (see chapter 8).
• Attach a sysstat or other files to a request (see 8.5).
• Track your requests, open any of them, and add comments (see chapter 9).
• Read or download service advisories, release notes, and product documentation (see chapter 10).
• Search for pages and request forms (see chapter 11).
• Manage your account, including your password, language, and time zone (see chapter 12).

4.3 Your Account Name and Customer ID/Account ID

Each unique installation location is assigned a CustomerID, which will be entered into all your storage appliances at that specific location. This ID is also used within our customer relationship database so that we can see all orders, SRs, RMAs, assets, and entitlements associated with your product throughout its lifecycle. This ensures we provide you the correct level of service and support each time you contact us for assistance.

Your Customer ID/Account ID is the ID you will use to register your product in the VDURA PanActive Manager™ GUI or the PanCLI™ command-line interface.

4.4 Getting Access

Access to the Support Portal is provided on a per-contact basis, all of which are linked to your CustomerID. Each contact must provide a phone number and an email address, so we can contact you by phone if needed and keep you updated on your open Service Requests. You can provide contact information to your VDURA Account Executive or Systems Engineer during the sales process. We ask that only official business email addresses be used. In the interim, feel free to contact us using our toll-free phone numbers.

4.5 Audience and Scope of This Guide

This guide is written for VDURA customers who use the Support Portal. It walks through every page and control you will see, from signing in to tracking a request, and it explains how VDURA Customer Support handles your requests. It describes the portal as it appears at the time of writing; VDURA may add request types and documents over time.