Support types

IBM offers high-quality support plans for the different enterprise product bundles. The support options are categorized into IBM Enterprise and Preferred Care. For more information, see IBM Enterprise Support and Preferred Care Opens in a new tab .

IBM Software Support Policy

IBM Cloud Pak foundational services uses a continuous delivery model to provide new functions and enhancements more frequently, along with security updates and defect fixes through update packages. These update packages correspond to a modification-level update of a versioned release. Foundational services follow the IBM Continuous Delivery Support Lifecycle Policy Opens in a new tab .

IBM Cloud Pak foundational services release types

Foundational services releases a new version regularly. There are three main release cycles to meet the requirements of Continuous Delivery (CD), Long Term Service Release (LTSR), and Extended Update Support (EUS) customers. These release cycles differ in the type of content that is delivered and the frequency of the releases. For more information, see Release types.

IBM Cloud Pak® and Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform

The following documents provide information about compatibility with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform:

IBM Support processes and procedures

The following sections provide more details about IBM Support processes and procedures.

• General guidelines and limitations Opens in a new tab

• Questions managed by support Opens in a new tab

Open a support case

Important: Before you contact IBM Support, check these troubleshooting and known issues sections.

Collecting support information for foundational services

Before you open a support case, use MustGather diagnostics to gather information from the cluster. The collected data facilitates more effective resolution by the support team.

For various options to gather information about your IBM Cloud Pak and foundational services deployments in your cluster, see Collecting IBM Cloud Pak foundational services information for problem determination .
For more information about the MustGather diagnostics, see Collecting support information about the cluster .

Opening a support case with IBM Support

IBM Cloud Pak foundational services operators are included with the IBM Cloud Pak bundle to provide consistency and to simplify the deployment and lifecycle management. If you need support for a foundational services operator, open a case for the IBM Cloud Pak operator that uses the foundational services operator. For more information about your specific IBM Cloud Pak, select your IBM Cloud Pak tile on the IBM Cloud Pak Hub page Opens in a new tab .

Go to the IBM Support site .
From the menu bar on the header, click Open a case.
Log in with your IBMid and password.
Enter a meaningful Case Title that summarizes your problem.
Select IBM as the Product Manufacturer.
Select your IBM Cloud Pak as the Product for which you need assistance from the support team.
Note: Select the IBM Cloud Pak product that you are using for all the bundled operators including foundational services, IBM Automation Foundation, and Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform.
Select the appropriate Severity of the problem.
Note: The case severity is based on the business impact of the problem. If you set the case severity as 1, you must be available 24x7 to work with IBM Support on this issue.
Select the Account that has the entitlement for the installed IBM Cloud Pak product.
Provide a detailed Case Description of your problem. A detailed description can help support understand your problem more accurately and thus provide quicker solutions or answers. The following information is crucial:
- IBM Cloud Pak product version
- Installation platform (VMware, Azure, AWS, IBM Cloud)
- Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform version
- Steps to reproduce the issue
Collect information about your cluster. For more information about how to gather the required information, see Collecting support information about the cluster .
Upload the tar.gz file with the results of the diagnostic scan that you ran in the previous step in one of the following ways:
- Upload a file during the case creation
- Send large files to Enhanced Customer Data Repository (ECuRep)
Select the language preferences.
Click Submit a case.

Note: Open a case for each problem that you need assistance with. Do not add new issues to an existing case for which you are already engaged with the support team. When you clearly define an issue, the Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) can quickly address the issue and reduce confusion for the support team when they review the documents and files that are collected for the case.