A request from our core developers at DevCentral to our customers [long]

Thanks for all the help.

You guys have always had the most intuitive and descript answers. If someone does not appreciate that, then that is their issue.

thanx for help!

It seems that tech support isn't trained in iRules. Everytime I call in with an iRule question they act as if i'm speaking to them in a foreign language. They always have me come here for answers.

 

 

As an example, I got this email from an engineer in tech support today....

 

I think, to be completely honest, that you are going to get a little bit better assistance on this rule with the developer that assisted you on Devcentral. I noticed the developers note about adding logging, which is a very good idea to find out what is happening in the rule decision process.

I used devcentral a couple of times, and I am not so happy. For it seems that nobody can help me with the conversion of V4 irules towards V9 irules, so that I can have the same functionality. I posted three times now on devcentral and only the first post was answered, but the solution didn't work. After that no replies anymore. I posted a second time, only one reply (what version are you running?) and nothing more. So I tried a third post, but no reply at all. At this moment I am very desperate.

 

 

Just to let you now

Hi Hille,

 

 

I think the general idea of Devcentral is that F5 developers, employees and most importantly, users, are able to provide tips and suggestions for writing iRules. F5 does not provide guaranteed support through the Devcentral forums though.

 

 

Until recently, the only means to get supported iRule writing and support was through our consulting group.

 

 

There is a new offering for iRule support beyond what the F5 Consulting group was previously offering that might be helpful for you to look into if you aren't able to get the response you need via Devcentral:

 

 

iRules On-Demand Service Overview

 

Click here

 

 

iRules On-Demand Service Request form

 

Click here

 

 

If you have any questions on this new offering, please contact our consulting group via consultingsales@f5.com.

 

 

Thanks,

 

Aaron

I think devcentral is a good start. But working with F5 is in general quite frustrating.

 

 

The biggest problem is the lack of documentation. The Wiki is a good start. But I'm filled with urges to fill it with annotations such as "It seems like it really works this way, contrary to what's here" or "There appears to be another option/keyword that does XXX".

 

 

This is, of course, for the things that have non-stub entries in the first place.

 

 

A wiki is good if it can be a community effort. But only a small part of the iRule community (the F5 employees working on iRules support) have access to the actual documentation, which appears to be the source code.

 

 

The second problem with devcentral is that it's limited to iRules and iControl, etc. There are no forums for general F5 issues. If you have questions about general things like OneConnect or profiles, you're SOL. (I had a problem last Fall with proxy servers and persistence. It took me about a month to get support to tell me to turn on OneConnect. I'm a bit gun-shy about calling support now. I got the impression that they're primarily trained on break-fixing failing hardware.)

 

 

And yes, I've said all of this to both my salesman and my sales support engineer.

 

 

The F5 is a good, powerful product. If only it were better documented and supported.

 

 

I aggree with the last post f5 support is not very good

 

heck I don't even get called back they just close the ticket

 

without updating it and thier manageers are not much better they do not return calls ethier. This company wants people to use thier 9 strain of code but are not very responsive when the customer needs to convert form 4.x to 9.x we the customers did not ask for them to change all the syntax in the Irules. And migratring has been extermly tough and there is no accountablitiy

 

assocaited with this fourm and no way to track basically your prety much on your own for conversions and hope that 1 you get a response on this fourm and two its correct when you try to implement. I wish there was a place to complian to the upper management like vps the support contracts for this product are not cheap by any means however try getting help when you need it

 

I actually had a manager tell me after 4 hours on the phone with his tech that he would not escalate the issue thats not right especally when I found the issue not the tech the tech even tough it was frist line of support should have in my opion know to check what I found first and wasted 4 hours of my time oh well hope this dose not exclue me from getting help on this forum.

 

 

Thanks

I understand the frustration with support. It is difficult sometimes. My recommendations for you to get immediate support.

 

 

1) Learn the product. Know what it can and can't do. The documentation is good enough to point you beyond the simpleton configurations and into some of the more complicated scenarios. If you have lab gear, I'd recommend spending as much time as possible working through various what-if scenarios. Knowing the product will help to:

 

 

2) Provide thorough explanations of the problem. Also provide detailed topological drawings, sniffer captures, qkview reports, gui Captures UP FRONT in the case. The more immediate all the information is provided, the more immediate your case can get focused attention.

 

 

3) Use the websupport site to open cases, and assign your cases appropriately. Don't cry wolf, if it is a general question, don't assign it as a site at risk. Not only are you being kind to your fellow F5 customers, you are also not wasting the time of the senior techs reviewing level 1 cases.

 

 

4) Copy your Account rep and Sales Engineer on the inital case response and at any time you feel the case is being mishandled. Contact support early in the work day for each support center and ask for escalation/reassignment if necessary.

 

 

5) Take a trip to Seattle and meet the support staff if you get the chance. They are nice people who are overwhelmed with a relatively new and very advanced product line. Face time with your vendors is a great chance to air your concerns and for you to get some perspective on the issues they face in growing the support of their products.

 

 

6) For iRules specifically, I can't tell you how valuable the devcentral team has been to my development. Are they available at my beck-and-call? Of course not, they respond when they can. After all, this is done on their personal time (most of them anyway). The forums are filled with so many examples of how to solve problems that a good search and reading session will yield far greater results than posting a question that has been asked fifty times, in which someone on the forum has to do the searching or regurgitation for the individual asking, taking time that might otherwise have been better spent contemplating a new issue that someone is having. F5 offers professional support to those you do not want to spend the time/resources/effort to learn the product.