Best Practices when working with Datastax Support

Problem

Best Practices when working with DataStax Support

We want to help you resolve your issues as quickly and effectively as possible. Here are some best practices to help you get the most from the DataStax Support Team.

A pdf version of this article is available here .

Describing your issue

Try to be as specific as possible. The more information you provide to the support team, the faster we are able to resolve your issue. Taking the time to gather information relevant to your issue will actually help your case progress quicker.

Providing Details

The details to provide may vary depending on whether the issue is with our DSE products or with Astra.

DSE products related issues

• Which product or service? For example DSE, Opscenter, networking, authentications.
• What is the product version?
• Which Nodes (ID, IP addresses, etc) are involved?
• Were there any changes to database configuration or to driver code?
• Has the workload changed? For example, has there been an increase in traffic or resource usage?

Astra related issues

• What driver and driver version are you using to connect with?
• Which IP or endpoints are you trying to connect to?
• Were there any changes to your application configuration?
• Has the workload changed? For example, has there been an increase in traffic or resource usage?

Timeline

Please clearly state:

• When did the issue begin?
• How long did the issue last?
• Are you still actively impacted by the issue?

Please use the ISO 8601 format for Timestamps and Time ranges. Try to specify in UTC and refrain from using generalized wording such as “Today, Yesterday, 5pm, this morning, etc..” since the support team handling your case could be in a different timezone related to you.

Example

October, 31st, 2022 2:24 pm (and 12.445 seconds) UTC would be:

2022-10-31T14:25:12.445+00 

Is the issue constant, transient or intermittent?

Constant

A constant or non-transient error continues to occur as long as it is not corrected. They will fail again on retry or occur in a steady and predictable pattern, which tends to make them easier to diagnose or reproduce.

Transient

A transient error or issue is a very short, temporary condition that might be resolved or corrected quickly, such as the temporary unavailability of a resource, network issues, or a connection failure.

Intermittent

An intermittent problem is a problem that occurs for only a short period of time. They tend to seem random and can be hard to replicate or reproduce. With intermittent issues, try to identify the time and conditions at the moment it occurs as best as possible.

Providing Support Data

Please upload data, such as error logs or output, as files to the ticket. Don't paste the content into the ticket to prevent the ticket growing too long and become unreadable later. Uploaded files are encrypted and easier to analyze.

Be careful to redact password information, personal identifiable information (PII) such as credit cards, addresses, etc.

Protect your data by uploading it using our secure upload link.

If you are using DSE then you can also provide a diagnostics file generated with Opscenter or by using a script. Refer here for more information. 

Business Impact
Please explain how the issue is affecting your business or operations. This way we can better identify what to prioritize and know where to focus our investigation. It also helps us know who else should be involved in our investigation of your issue.

Example

We are experiencing timeouts which are delaying the transaction processing and are causing a loss of revenue.

Setting the priority

Priority helps us understand the impact this issue is having on your business, and affects how quickly we respond to resolve the issue. Priorities are defined below. For Urgent or High cases, it is very beneficial to describe how it is impacting your business.

Urgent

“Urgent” means a catastrophic problem in Customer’s production systems. Examples include a complete loss of service, production systems that are crashed, or a production system that hangs indefinitely. Customers cannot continue essential operations.

High

“High” means a high-impact problem in a customer’s production system. Essential operations are seriously disrupted, but a workaround exists which allows for continued essential operations.

Normal

“Normal” means a lower impact problem on a production or non-production system that involves a partial or limited loss of non-critical functionality, or some other problem involving no loss in functionality. Customers can continue essential operations. Normal problems also include all problems on non-production systems, such as test and development systems.

Low

“Low” means a general usage question. It also includes recommendations for requests for new products or features, and requests for enhancements or modifications. There is no impact on the quality, performance, or functionality of the product in a production or non-production system.

You can find more information at our support policy as well as at our support onboarding article. 

Escalating your Issue

You can escalate to either a Duty Engineer or a Duty Manager.

Escalate to an Engineer when your ticket's priority has changed or the issue needs to be worked outside of the timezone it was initially logged. 

Escalate to a Manager when you are unhappy with the service that has been offered in some way or need to get more attention on a ticket that is being worked on and the effort has been unsatisfactory.

Please do provide as much information as possible about the reasons for the escalation with enough detail including business impact and/or if any changes have happened since the ticket was opened or last updated.

Multiple Issues

If you are experiencing multiple unrelated issues it may be better to open a new support case for each issue.

If you start experiencing a different issue compared to the original issue in your support ticket, create a new support ticket for that new issue.

Providing Feedback

When a case is resolved, a survey regarding your opinion on how the process went will be sent. We would really appreciate it if you can take a moment to fill it out. We use this information to keep track of how we did and what areas we can improve in when resolving cases.