A Personal Blog
SUS Tip #1
Okay, there may not be more than one of these, but I didn’t pick up on this issue until yesterday. After 5 hours on the phone with Microsoft support.
When specifying paths in your SUS settings (GPO, Registry, etc) you can’t use UNC paths. They have to be HTTP paths. This makes sense when you think about it, since SUS is HTTP-based, but it was a real killer as I’d spent hours in newsgroups, conversations with folks, etc. As soon as we changed the path to http://servername instead of \servername everything woke up. At least it seemed to. 10am this morning (in 1.5 hours) is when the server should start to get hammered by 2500+ clients looking for a fairly large amount of updates.
Thank goodness I staggered them throughout the day.
Anyways, on a positive note, I love Microsoft support. I’ve never had a tech be rude, pass me off, tell me it was my issue, etc. 250$ for 5 hours of support is fantastic. I once had a 20 hour call in with Microsoft and they ended up giving it to me free of charge for “causing me so much grief”.
The only support I enjoy more is Dell’s. HP’s can be incredibly difficult (even when you’re a multimillion dollar customer). Novell’s is also very, very good (we have direct access to engineers and developers). Citrix’s is crap.
Long day yesterday. SUS is up though, and that’s one key to protecting ourselves from that bloody JPEG thing.
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| Print article | This entry was posted by Jeremy Wright on September 30, 2004 at 6:33 am, and is filed under IT Thoughts, Work. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed. |
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about 7 years ago
Best support, IMHO, is Cisco. http://slashdot.org/features/01/06/27/124207.shtml is the best way I can put it. Everyone is measured on customer satisfaction, not call times. You have access to all the same tools and information that TAC does. They have no problems escalating to developers.
Worst tech support is Checkpoint. I can’t even begin to describe how aggrevating it is.
Sean
about 7 years ago
My brother and his girlfriend work for HP support–if only for the horrible support don’t get an HP in general because they’re horrible computers.
about 7 years ago
You like Dell’s support? Though I haven’t dealt with them too much, I always hear the opposite about Dell and their support. Infact, I hear it so often that I think it’s a reson that I don’t recommend Dell to folks….hmm…change of heart for me maybe.
sc
about 7 years ago
Scott,
I LOVE Dell’s enterprise support. Having never actually bought a home computer from them I can’t comment on that aspect. Enterprise support rocks though. Parts there in half an hour. Technician onsite in 2 hours. Phone support while that happens. Only have one problem require a repeat visit. They’ve often left us a server just in case something went wrong…
Awesome support.
Our Dell sales team is even more fantastic. Blows my mind.
So yeah, enjoying Dell. That said, last place I worked? Crap support and even worse sales.
I think it really depends on your relationship and on the team that’s assigned to you.
about 7 years ago
We had a bank customer that was down for 2 days in Nashville because the Dell tech didn’t/couldn’t get the part that he needed. But, they didn’t have a “bunch” of Dells at the time. So, maybe Dell support is based on volume?
sc
about 7 years ago
While at HSC, I had a problem with my laptop where it wouldn’t go into hibernation mode. I called Dell, opened up a ticket. Through a fluke, I ended up with two tickets, two support people. For fun, I followed both. The first told me to reimage, the second had me fiddle with some settings. The settings helped a bit, but not totally. After a few weeks of “click this” (by email), I gave up.
A while later, a spring that held the cdrom in fell out and got lost. They said they’d ship me a new spring once I shipped the old one back. I couldn’t get it into his head that I didn’t have the old one.
We now use Dell as “hands and feet” for remote offices. They’re fairly pathetic, but in Dell’s defence, I think they’re subcontracted. In a month or so I’m going to have them install a router and some remote management gear at 8 sites, we’ll see how well that goes.
Sean
about 7 years ago
Scott, Dell support is based on what tier of support you get:
Next day 5 x 9
Next day 7 x 24
Same day 7 x 24
Same day, 4 hour response, 7 x 24
We get the last one, which adds between 200-1500$/server to our costs. But for us it’s key. And, if the tech isn’t there in 4 hours (which hasn’t happened yet in the last 2+ years … for server stuff) we’d call our sales team and get some butt kicked.
I really should qualify that I’m in a fairly privileged position here: this is only for servers, it is only as a big customer, and it is only because we pay thousands of dollars per month in support.
I know our Desktop crew (laptops and desktops) often have issues with wrong parts, lost parts, poor service, etc. But then we aren’t “paying” for that support, it’s just standard home user type support.
So I guess the difference really is quite easy to see on that end, even inside a large organization. But yeah here at the server end it rocks … I know, I’m so going to get my ass kicked on Monday by the Desktop guys for bragging about this :-D
about 7 years ago
Thanks Jeremy. I think I understand what your getting at. I’m a server guy, and I guess that customer (who didn’t buy their equipment from us) that I was referring to just didn’t have the level of support that you had. Money Talks.
sc