ACS Azure Case Reference Guide

Managing Microsoft Azure Incidents
for Premier Customers
How to Use this document

This document provides a number of field notes on specific topics you may encounter
engaging with Azure support with a Premier customer. Its not necessarily intended to
be read start to finish and, instead, is structured into small sections with a few
sentences on a specific topic or scenario you may be looking for. It is suggested to
leverage the table of contents or document search to locate what youre looking for.
Microsoft Azure Incident Management

MICROSOFT CONFIDENTIAL
Author/Reviewers (Name, Alias):
Ryan Berry ryberry

Ben Brown v-bbrown
Claudia Runkel crunkel
Bill Prather v-billpr
Version:
1.8
Revision Date:
5/5/2014
Release Status (Draft, Final,

Archive):
Final
Type (Internal, External):
Microsoft Internal
Next Revision Date:

Release Notes:
Produced by Americas Cloud Services Support COE

Contents
INTRODUCTION........................................................................................................................... 5
Audience...................................................................................................................................... 5
Background.................................................................................................................................. 5
Azure Support Detail................................................................................................................... 6
Support Options Overview........................................................................................................... 6
Support Options Detail................................................................................................................. 7
Basic Support............................................................................................................................ 7
Developer Support.................................................................................................................... 7
Standard Support...................................................................................................................... 7
Professional Direct Support....................................................................................................... 8
Azure Support via Premier w/o Premier for Azure.....................................................................8
Premier Support for Azure......................................................................................................... 8
Microsoft Azure Incident Detail.................................................................................................. 11
Creation, Routing, Initial Response, and Premier Priority...........................................................11
Case Creation......................................................................................................................... 11
Initial Response....................................................................................................................... 11
Preview Product Support......................................................................................................... 12
Case Routing (Billing and Azure VM/IaaS Incidents)................................................................12
Granting Azure Support to 3rd Party Vendors..........................................................................13
Design Change Requests (DCR).............................................................................................. 13
Handling/Responding to Security Notices (Abuse)..................................................................13
Post Incident Review (RCA) Requests for Azure Outages........................................................14
Customer Billing/Subscription Incidents..................................................................................... 14
Premier Billing Incidents......................................................................................................... 14
Case Decrement Policy........................................................................................................... 15
Required Customer Data when Opening Premier Incidents........................................................16
Required Customer Data when Requesting an SLA Credit......................................................17
Where to Find Azure Subscription Details When Opening an Incident.......................................17
Microsoft Azure Support Flow..................................................................................................... 18
Customers have a number of entry points to support and incidents can take a number of paths
to support. The diagram above outlines these entry points, tools, and paths incidents can take.
................................................................................................................................................... 20
Azure Support............................................................................................................................ 20
Microsoft Azure Technical Support (WATS):.............................................................................21

Microsoft Azure Subscription Management (WASMS):.............................................................21
WASU (Microsoft Azure Support AKA Operations).................................................................21
Dev/Product Group (PG) Engineering...................................................................................... 21
LiveSite (AKA WALS or Microsoft Azure Live Site)...................................................................21
Global Foundation Services (GFS)........................................................................................... 22
Engaging Engineering and Operations....................................................................................... 22
Engineering and Operations TFS Database Access....................................................................22
Using your New TFS Database Access:................................................................................... 24
Case Escalations to WATS or WASMS......................................................................................... 25

INTRODUCTION
The purpose of this document is to provide guidance and details you can provide to
customers on opening and managing Microsoft Azure incidents. This document is
intended to be used internally by the various Cloud Support Delivery & Premier
resources working with a customer making active use of Microsoft Azure and in need of
opening an incident either via any Premier channel (including Premier Support for
Microsoft Azure or PSfA).
Audience
This document is targeted at Microsoft FTEs in the following roles:
Service Delivery Executives (SDE)
Technical Account Managers (TAM)
Application Development Managers (ADM)
Support Practice Managers (SPM)
Background
Functionally, customers can leverage any Premier channel for opening incidents for
Microsoft Azure such as the phone or Microsoft Premier Online (MPO). For customers
with Microsoft Azure subscriptions, this is an out-of-context experience for them and
some customers are caught off guard when an attempt is made to open an incident
through the Microsoft Azure portal and are told they do not have a valid support
agreement. This document will provide details on what the customers see, detail that
is needed to provide efficient case routing as well as information on case routing and
handling for Premier customers.

Azure Support Detail

Support Options Overview
Customers have a number of support options available to them for Microsoft Azure,
only one of which is the Premier Offering. . This is described in detail in the TAM/ADM
Azure onboarding training deck (located here) and will be summarized in this
document. Customers have 5 paid support plans illustrated in figure-1 below should a
need arise specific to their Microsoft Azure deployment not included as an entitlement
or component of their Microsoft Azure subscription.
This is a potentially different experience for Microsoft Azure customers used to having
support included in O365 which is a software as a solution service (SaaS) where we
own the end to end stack of the customers service. For O365, if an incident arises, its
likely a result of an update, patch or operational or administrative request for a
subscription. In contrast, Microsoft Azure customers share responsibility for their
workloads deployed into our datacenters and are responsible for managing their
environment. In the case of VMs deployed into a Microsoft Azure Infrastructure as a
service subscription (IaaS), customers are also responsible for deploying OS patches
and updates. Assisting a customer with a reactive incident involves a significant
amount of troubleshooting effort to identify and triage the specific cause and is thus
not included as a component piece of the subscription. For comparison, our support
models are very competitive and can be compared with Google and Amazon in the
links provided.
Figure 1 Offerings Overview

Support Options Detail

Basic Support
Customers without a paid level of support are able to surface technical issues
via the support forums
No support SLA for technical incidents
Billing/Subscription incidents can be submitted, free of charge, via the Azure

portal for Azure subscribers; no paid support plan is necessary.
Developer Support
Target customers:
Customers/Developers experimenting with Microsoft Azure and
needing a path to open incidents
Non-production environments
$29 a month and can be purchased and associated with a specific

Microsoft Azure subscription on the portal
Customers would need to purchase this support for each subscription
8 hour initial response time
No phone based support
Standard Support
Target customer: SMB customer with a reactive support approach
$300 a month provides unlimited break/fix and up to 3-call backs via the
phone each month
Customers can designate case severity with a 2,4,8 hour response time for
SEV A,B,C cases respectively
Can be added/attached to an Azure EA details in this FAQ
Customers must initiate case creation on the Azure portal and can specify if
they wish to be phoned back
When EA-attached (12-month commitment), provides coverage for ALL Azure

subscriptions created under EA (none outside of the EA MSDN accounts for
instance)
Does not provide support for hybrid applications running both in the cloud
and on-premises
When added directly to a specific subscription, only covers that specific

subscription
Customers can upgrade this level of support to Premier by contacting their

Azure seller and working with services sales. (remaining contract term will be
forgiven)

Professional Direct Support
Target customer: Medium business and enterprise customer with proactive

support approach
$1000 a month and provides unlimited break/fix and the ability for customers
to request, via a special 800 number, case escalations and advisory support.
Details on this program are in the onboarding deck the Pro-Direct team walks
through with customers
Customers still must initiate case creation on the Azure portal
Escalation resources are pooled rather than designated
Escalation resources are available business hours M-F
Customers can designate case severity with a 1,2,4 hour response time for
SEV A,B,C cases respectively (Same as Premier)
Does not provide support for hybrid applications running both in the cloud
and on-premises
Unmanaged critsit experience
Can be added/attached to an Azure EA details in this FAQ
When EA-attached (12-month commitment), provides coverage for ALL Azure

subscriptions created under EA (none outside of the EA MSDN accounts for
instance)
When added directly to a specific subscription, only covers that specific

subscription
Customers can upgrade this level of support to Premier by contacting their

Azure seller and working with services sales. (remaining contract term will be
forgiven)
Customers can attend monthly 1:many style workshops held once monthly on
technical topics
Customers can request a Microsoft Azure Optimization report be ran against

their deployments providing insight on the health/hygiene of their solution
much like a lightweight Risk-Assessment as a Service (RaaS) details in this
FAQ
Azure Support via Premier w/o Premier for Azure
Target customers: enterprise customer with a proactive support approach

and low Azure volume
Customers are able to obtain support for Microsoft Azure using PRS hours
Customers are entitled to all proactive services for Microsoft Azure using SA
hours
Premier Support for Azure
Target customer: enterprise with proactive approach and high Azure volume
Add-on schedule requiring an exhibit/FNCS available on k360.
While it can be stand-alone it requires a Premier for Enterprise or Premier for

Partners Service Description (SD)
Provides unlimited break-fix incident support for anything running in Azure
Provides additional break-fix coverage for supported Microsoft operating

systems and server applications running on VMs in Microsoft Azure that are
listed on this KB
Customers would use PRS hours for hybrid application components running
on-premises while the Microsoft Azure components would be covered free of
charge
When sold as an add-on to an existing Premier agreement already containing

PRS hours, the Premier for Azure agreement can have the number of included
PRS hours reduced if the customer agrees to use existing PRS hours for issues
falling outside of Azure. If the customer chooses to do this, the PSfA
agreement MUST have 1 PRS hour. Otherwise, the unlimited break-fix
entitlement will not function as the schedule needs to have a PRS line item to
allow break-fix incidents to be opened.
Customers can attend monthly 1:many style workshops held once monthly on
technical topics
Customers can request a Microsoft Azure Optimization report be ran against

their deployments providing insight on the health/hygiene of their solution
much like a lightweight Risk-Assessment as a Service (RaaS) details in this
FAQ
Customers with PSfA agreements can add an optional Rapid Response (RR)
add-on entitling them to a 15 minute initial response time for severity A/1
cases only
Add-on is fixed price ($150k US) per 2-applications supported
The definition of an application is posted to this FAQ
Rapid Response requires a minimum 300 TAM/ADM hour Premier for Azure
agreement to properly manage customer critical applications supported in
Microsoft Azure and to coordinate monthly meetings with the RR team to
ensure they have up-to-date details on the customers environment.
Target customer: Premier customer with strategic mission and

business critical environment
Inquiries on supporting IaaS (infrastructure workloads) or to validate the

application count for a customer scenario, contact the RR lead harid
Details on the contracts a customer needs to sign are depicted in the

workflow in figure 2
ISVs and Partners

ISV customers and partners can have pass-through Azure support for their customers
via a sub-contracting exhibit in conjunction with a PSfA agreement. These customers
do NOT receive unlimited break-fix support for pass-through (THROUGH model) cases
and must leverage PRS hours. They can however use their unlimited break-fix benefit
for incidents they open themselves or for workloads their company runs in Microsoft
Azure (TO model). (FAQ).
For partners with solutions running in Microsoft Azure, the definition of through
support can be difficult to articulate or interpret; especially to a partner with a
subscription based software solution (SaaS) hosted in Microsoft Azure used by many
customers.
The current guidance we provided to the field is:
If we can identify a particular end customer will be impacted by the issue, then it
is THROUGH
If you cannot tie the impact with a particular end customer, it is TO
Figure 2 Contracting Requirements

10
Microsoft Azure Incident Detail

Creation, Routing, Initial Response, and Premier Priority
Case Creation
Customers with Premier should open incidents via the Premier 800# or Microsoft
Premier Online (MPO) to ensure their TAM/ADM/SDE has visibility into the incident and
can be involved for any escalation needs. Additionally, customers attempting to open
a technical incident via the Microsoft Azure portal (www.windowsazure.com) will be
told their Microsoft Azure subscription is not permitted to open technical incidents.
Today, there is no connection between the customers Premier agreement and any of
their Microsoft Azure subscriptions as depicted in the image below:
Initial Response
Premier advisory and reactive cases for Microsoft Azure are routed to teams managing
cases for non-Premier levels of support. Microsoft Azure does not have specialized
queues for support as is the case with many other Microsoft products. Initial response
policies are documented on OneStop here.
The initial response times (IRT) for Microsoft Azure Incidents are as follows:
o
Sev-A: 1 Hour
Rapid Response (RR Optional Premier Add-on) IRT: 15 minutes
Customers will engage with their dedicated Rapid Response support

team if the incident is associated with one of the 2 applications they
had previously on-boarded

11
Sev-B: 2 Hours
Customers MUST separate their Rapid Response (RR) access ID when

opening an incident associated with any of their RR on-boarded
applications
RR customers Sev-B incidents are not routed to the rapid response team
Sev-C: 4 hours
RR customers Sev-C incidents are not routed to the rapid response team
Preview Product Support

Microsoft Azure Support will provide support for preview services to customers with
paid support. Support is provided 24x7 in English only, covering all severities. Support
will be available at the date of the preview release. Launching preview support takes
place in phases as teams sign-off on the requirements and establish processes. We are
targeting lighting up the first batch of preview service support at the end of FY14.
Case Routing (Billing and Azure VM/IaaS Incidents)

Case routing will occur based on rules in Radius; Billing incidents (regardless of
customer support tier) are routed to the Azure Services L1/L2 Commerce MSSolve
queue. These incidents will not decrement customer PRS hours regardless of the type
of Premier contract.
Customers running VMs with specific Microsoft software need to initiate an incident
with the Azure technical support team to validate Azure is properly hosting their
intended workload(s). For these incidents, you should use the Microsoft Azure Virtual
Machine product and select the appropriate topic to route:

12
In some instances, theres a product for running a server application on an Azure VM

such as is the case for SQL server. For these customer requests, you simply select
Microsoft Azure VM SQL as the product and it will be properly routed.
If the issue is with an application/component running inside the VM (IIS, etc.), you
would use the routing product for that application/component as if it were on an onpremises case. For example, for problems with IIS on a Microsoft Azure VM, change the
routing product to the proper IIS version and use the support topics:
Important Premier for Azure IaaS Case Handling Note: Incidents routed to
queues not associated with Microsoft Azure will decrement customer PRS hours. In the
scenario depicted above, a Premier for Azure customer would in fact be decremented
hours. Once these incidents are closed, the current guidance is to change the case
routing product to a category under the Microsoft Azure tree to ensure the incident
does not decrement PRS hours.
Granting Azure Support to 3rd Party Vendors

Often times customers engage with partners/vendors to build/deploy/manage assets
deployed into Microsoft Azure and these vendors may need to open an incident for
Microsoft Azure using the customers support agreement. Vendors would need to have
a valid access ID created to be permitted to open a technical incident for the customer
even if they have access to the customers Microsoft Azure subscription portal. There
is no relationship, today, between a customers Microsoft Azure subscription and their
Premier agreement and as such prior arrangements need to be made to permit
vendors, subcontractors, and partners to open technical incidents.
Customers working with a Microsoft partner with their own Premier Support for Partner
agreement can have their partner open Azure incidents to obtain technical assistance if
they desire. This is described in the ISV/Partner section above.
Design Change Requests (DCR)

Customers may request a specific change to Microsoft Azure capability necessary to
accommodate their specific workload or reporting needs. DCRs for Microsoft Azure are
maintained on security protected internal lists that support is able to access and place
entries into. You should direct your customer to open an incident for DCRs (or you can
file one on their behalf).
13
Handling/Responding to Security Notices (Abuse)

Your customer may receive an e-mail from waabuse@microsoft.com if deployments into
their Azure subscription is used in brute force, unexpected or suspicious traffic attack
to another customer. This e-mail will request the customer shutdown the specified
service and, if no action is taken within 24 hours, the customers subscription
referenced in the e-mail will be SUSPENDED potentially impacting other hosted
services.
Action specified in these e-mails need to be taken promptly if customers have
questions/concerns or wish to contest one of these notices; they need to open an
incident with support.
Post Incident Review (RCA) Requests for Azure Outages

Customers impacted by a Service Incident (SI) can request a Post Incident Review (PIR)
highlighting details of the cause of the event as well as information on how future
incidents will be mitigated. This customer-facing document is available (typically)
within 14 days of the resolution of the issue and, today, requires that customers raise
an additional support request. Additional details on PIRs are outlined in this FAQ.
Customer Billing/Subscription Incidents

All Microsoft Azure customers, regardless of support plan, can open billing related
support FREE OF CHARGE incidents directly via the Azure portal as shown in the
screenshot below (figure 3). Requests for SLA credits or Microsoft Azure Service
Incident (SI) post incident reviews (PIRs) will all be classified as billing and will be nondecrement.

14
Figure 3
Premier Billing Incidents

If a customer has Premier, TAMs/ADMs/SDEs will NOT have any visibility to Microsoft
Azure billing incidents opened via the portal as shown above. These incidents will not
appear on customer reports and the Premier TAM/ADM/SDE will have limited ability to
leverage Premier channels for escalation.
Customers: Leverage the Premier 800#/MPO/ or TAM/ADM submitted incident via
MSSolve to open billing incidents for proper reporting and visibly. These incidents will
free of charge to customers regardless of the type of Premier contract they have.
Case Decrement Policy

Customers w/ Premier for Azure: If the incident begins in a Microsoft Azure queue
(associated with an Azure deployed workload), the incident will not consume PRS
hours. The Microsoft Azure support queue may engage other teams (SQL, platforms,
etc.) for engagement, but the time spent resolving the customers issue will not be
billed.
Note: Time spent on these incidents WILL be reported on customer reports to
provide insight into the value the customer is receiving; but will not
decrement their PRS line-item.
Billing rules are described in additional detail in this FAQ and summarized below:
If Routing Product = Online Systems Product Family or Azure SQL Service or Azure
SQL Developer
AND
2.
If SR Type = Reactive Incident
3.
Then SR is Non-Billable.
Premier Customers w/o Premier for Azure: Customers can open incidents
leveraging their PRS hours technical incidents will decrement hours unless classified
as a platform bug, defect, or outage.
Advisory Incidents: All Premier customer Microsoft Azure advisory cases are billable
regardless of the level of support.
Azure Platform Issues/Outages: If the issue is deemed a Microsoft Azure platform
related incident, it will be treated as a bug and the customer will not be decremented
PRS hours. This is in accordance with the official Premier non-decrement policy.
In these circumstances, The MSSolve case will be marked accordingly and the problem
type set based on the table below which will not decrement the customers contract:
In Policy
In Policy Incident Type
No-Charge, Refund, Non-Dec scenario
MSSolve Problem Type

15
Product Activation/Terminal Server Licenses (Activation)
Technical Issue
Bug or Hotfix for product identified during mainstream

support*
Bug
Malware
Malware
Security Bulletin
Security bulletin
Pre-Sales Tech Support (PRO Only)
Non-technical issue
Genuine Advantage/Product Update including the Automatic

Update/Windows Update/Microsoft Update services
Technical Issue
Doc/Help Error
Non-technical issue
Undocumented Feature
Non-technical issue
Info Request/Wish
Non-technical issue
Workaround provided by the Sustained Engineering team as

a result of an escalation and they determine that the problem
was caused by reasons other than a product or document
defect.
Bug
Required Customer Data when Opening Premier Incidents

Today, critical Microsoft Azure subscription information needed by support to begin
investigating a customer issue is not included automatically when a customer opens a
Premier incident via MPO. There is no connection between Premier tooling and the
customers subscription and, thus, customers need to be sure to provide a
minimum set of information to support when they open an incident to ensure
support can begin working their issue immediately. Customers who do not
provide the information below may experience delays in support engagement as we
attempt to engage with the customer to capture the necessary subscription detail
needed.
At a minimum, customers need to provide details on specific Azure capabilities theyre
opening an incident on and it is suggested to provide the template below to your
customer.
Compute (PaaS, IaaS):

Subscription ID (Found on the Azure Portal)
Deployment ID (Found on the Azure Portal)
16
Application URL (Cloudapp.net URL):

Time of the issue including timezone
Storage
Subscription Id
Storage account name
SQL database
Subscription Id
SQL server name , database name
Service Bus, ACS, Caching
Subscription Id
Storage account name
Required Customer Data when Requesting an SLA Credit

Premier customers need to submit SLA credit requests via the MPO portal or the
Premier phone number. When these customers raise a service request (SR) for
requesting an SLA credit following an outage entitling them to a credit, the following
pieces of information are needed to expedite processing of their claim:
WLID or OrgID of the Azure account:
Subscription ID (GUID):
Deployment ID:
Date(s)/Time of Outage:
(If known) Duration of Time outage
impacted deployment:
Name of Azure service or feature impacted
(e.g. Azure Web Sites, Active Directory,
Compute, etc):
List any previous case numbers used to
troubleshoot issue associated with outage:
Where to Find Azure Subscription Details When Opening an Incident

Customers should be directed to the Microsoft Azure portal (www.windowsazure.com)
to obtain information needed to populate the above case creation template. After
logging in and selecting the specific service they are experiencing issues with, the
customer can open the dashboard tab and reference the arrowed fields to obtain the
information needed to open an incident.
Note: If this information is not provided up-front, the customer will be
contacted by Azure Support to obtain the necessary subscription information
and may cause a delay in the ability to obtain support.

17
Microsoft Azure Support Flow

All Microsoft Azure incidents begin in Azure Support. Azure Support is comprised of 2
teams: Microsoft Azure Technical Support (WATS) and Microsoft Azure Subscription
Management Support (WASMS). These teams handle customer incidents related to the
core technology. For incidents that are outside the core, they route the request to the
specific technical team needed to address the customers issue (e.g., SQL, Developer).
For issues requiring Operations (stuck VM, etc.), they can engage directly with
Operations via a request created outside of MSSolve. Status of these requests for
engagement made to the lighter blue boxes depicted below requires working with the
case engineer. Additional definitions of each of these teams is provided below the
diagram.

18

19
Customers have a number of entry points to support and incidents can take a number
of paths to support. The diagram above outlines these entry points, tools, and paths
incidents can take.
Azure Support
Incoming Azure Support incidents created using MSSolve are routed quickly to the right
support area. Azure Support engineers address issues in the Microsoft Azure core.
Other requests related to specific technologies (SQL, developer) are forwarded to other
Azure support teams for those technologies. Azure Support is comprised of 2 teams
outlined below both of these teams can engage with Operations (WASU) and the
assigned support engineer with serve as the liaison between the customer (as well as
the TAM/ADM) and Operations or Engineering (product group).
FAS Escalation alias: (faslead)

20
Microsoft Azure Technical Support (WATS):
Azure technical issues with a paid support plan
Provides technical support on Microsoft Azure core; forwards issues with

Azure technologies outside of core (e.g., SQL, developer) to other Azure support
teams specializing in that technology
Microsoft Azure Subscription Management (WASMS):
Azure subscription support (non-decrement for all customer types)
Subscription/Account management Assists customers directly with subscription

issues.
Handles core/quota issues, bill reconciling, penetration test notifications, etc.
Commerce/Billing Platform: Passes to commerce Engineering team (CPC)
WASU (Microsoft Azure Support AKA Operations)
Handles operations issues (i.e. Azure Storage, Fabric Controller, Host OS failures)
within Microsoft Azure.
Has direct access to VMs to running customer code in order to debug production
issues
Does not engage directly with customers.
Receives Ops issues from support and reports back with results of investigation
or additional info needed from the customer (typically does not engage with
customer)
Receives collaboration requests from CIE for Operations issues.
Sends collaboration requests to CIE for troubleshooting on a customer VM.
Receives RFC issues from CIE and assists in routing to the correct feature team
and helps drive issue to resolution.
Collaborates with Live Site and GFS teams for networking and datacenter related
issues.
Note: Receives requests for engagement from support engineer through internal
tooling TAMs/ADMs do not have permission to see
Dev/Product Group (PG) Engineering
Works with WASU to help investigate operations issues.
Works through WASU on RFCs initiated by CIE team.
Note: Receives requests for engagement from support engineer through internal
tooling TAMs/ADMs do not have permission to see. You must work/coordinate
these issues/requests through the assigned support engineer.

21
LiveSite (AKA WALS or Microsoft Azure Live Site)
Responsible for production instances of products running in Azure Datacenters,

networking, and hardware.
WASU engages LiveSite for networking related issues.
Global Foundation Services (GFS)
Responsible for all (Physical) Microsoft datacenters and networking.
WASU and LiveSite team engage GFS for issues that are outside of Microsoft Azure
(I.E. Routing between datacenters).
Engaging Engineering and Operations

Engaging with Operations or engineering (product team) are handled by the assigned
Microsoft Azure support engineer. The engagement targets (initial response times) for
engagement with Ops or Engineering are defined in the Azure Pan-Cen (Classification,
Escalation and Notification) document located here. This response time is variable and
requests are prioritized based on the tier of support and incident severity of the original
case.
Support engineers open Engineering and Operations requests using Visual Studio; and
the cases are deposited into a Team Foundation Server (TFS) database. Notes and
updates on the incident will not be recorded in MSSolve and updates to these requests
will have to be requested through the engineer.
Please note: These are response targets and may vary depending on case volume or
any active service incidents. These are guidelines to which support attempts to abide
by but there is no formal SLA or guarantee on these response targets at this time.
Requests to Operations and Engineering from Premier customers do receive priority
treatment over other paying levels of Azure support.
If you have an urgent customer issue not being addressed in a timely manner, please
refer to the case escalation detail below for incidents awaiting a response from
Operations or you may request access to the TFS database using the steps in the
Engineering and Operations TFS database access detail below.
Engineering and Operations TFS Database Access

If you have frequent incidents escalated to Engineering and/or Operations and wish to
have the ability to monitor/review these requests, you can obtain access to the Team
Foundation Server (TFS) database housing these requests to verify work is being
performed and to review the current priority of a specific request. Obtaining access is
the first step; additional tools and configuration of said tools is required to connect and
open the database.

22
Step 1: Request access to the following RAMWeb Project: WA CTS -14817 Indicate
you are a Premier support delivery resource and in need of access to assist in support
delivery to your customer
Step 2: Once access is granted, you need to have Visual Studio 2013+ installed onto
your machine. You should be able to use Team Explorer; but can also use Visual Studio
Professional or Ultimate to connect. Installation of these products can be done via your
employee MSDN subscription or via Productsweb.
Step 3: Once installed, Visual Studio needs to be configured to connect to the proper
TFS database. The following screen shots highlight how to do this.
First, select the Connect to Team Foundation Server option
Once the connect screen appears, select Servers followed by Add. In the Add
dialog, enter the following
server URL: http://vstfrd.corp.microsoft.com:8080 and
click OK

23
In the final screen, select the Azure Team Project Collection and the RD Team
Project.
Step 4: Once Visual Studio is configured and successfully connects, download the
Work Item Query Template from PremierPortal here (Right-click and save to your PC).
Using your New TFS Database Access:

To query the status of an incident where Operations and/or Engineering is engaged,
simply double-click the file you downloaded from above. Visual Studio should open to a
lookup screen where you can supply the customers case number as show below:

24
You can select an incident (the incident IDs should be documented in MSSolve) to view
details and shown below:
Case Escalations to WATS or WASMS

Windows Azure case escalations can take the same path as a traditional Premier
incident: leveraging the engineers manager or duty manager specified in
http://radius.
In addition, for active assistance with incidents that seem to be stalled, blocked, or
are causing business impact or significant adverse CPE impact, you may escalate
the case if appropriate to WATS or WASMS. Please provide the case number,
summary and customer impact to:
Windows Azure Subscription management (WASMS) or Technical Support

(WATS) incident escalations: faslead see details below on the template and
information to be included when sending an e-mail to this alias
Engagement with Operations is performed by the Support Engineer, not Field

or Customer
For Premier incidents needing post mortem review following the closure of the case
to suggest opportunity for process improvement, submit the case number, summary
and customer impact to the Americas Cloud Services Azure COE
Case Escalations faslead Alias Detail
WHO monitors the FASLead alias?
25
The alias is monitored by members of the GBS Azure support teams - the Windows
Azure Subscription Management Support team (WASMS) and the Windows Azure
Technical Support team (WATS).
WHEN should you use the FASLead alias?
When a customer has already opened a Support Case using the standard Support
procedures, but has so far been unable to get resolution on that support case within
the published SLA timeframe, you can use the FASLead alias to attain escalation
assistance with that case. Note that engaging the FASLead alias before Support
SLAs have been missed should be avoided. To check the SLA of a case, compare
the date the case was created (using the 2 nd through 6th digits of the case number,
which make up the year/month/day of case creation) with the current date and review
against the Azure Support SLA table below:
WHEN should you NOT use the FASLead alias?
If the customer has not yet opened a Support Case using standard Support channels,
do not mail the FASLead alias for assistance. Instead, direct the customer to open a
Support Case by logging in to their Azure portal and choosing the support option. If the
customer is unable to open a support case via their Azure portal, please direct them to
http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/support/options/ and click the Having issues with
26
sign in or signing up for an account link to open the case.

If you open the support case in MSSolve on behalf of the customer, be sure to route it
to the correct support queue so the case gets assigned to an engineer:
WASMS queue = Azure Services Subscription & Billing

WATS queue = Azure Services L1/L2 <locale>
If the customer has opened a support case and that support case is still
within SLA, there is no need to engage FASLead until SLA is missed.
WHAT is the expectation of response from FASLead?
Once you have provided all mandatory information via the below template in an email
to the FASLead alias, our target SLA is to provide a meaningful/actionable response
within 2 business days.
WHAT should you do if the 2 business day FASLead SLA is missed?
Contact mlaing and vinlk for subscription/billing (WASMS) issues, and WATSTL for Azure
technical (WATS) issues. You must include your original email to FASLead alias for
reference.

27
WHAT do you need to include when requesting assistance from the FASLead alias?
You must include the following template in your email, with all fields marked *mandatory
completed:
FASLead escalation template - * marks a mandatory field
CUSTOMER/CASE HISTORY
MSSolve
Case
number*
Mandatory15-digit number
MSSolve
Case
severity
C, B, A, A1
MSSolve
Case
owner*
Name or alias of case owner
Customer
Name
Customer
Email
address
Premier
customer?
yes/no; if yes, include TAMs alias

here
CASE SUMMARY
Issue
description*
Brief description of the issue
Current status
What is the current case status is it waiting on customer,

waiting on Support, waiting on
Ops, does it have a bug open,
etc.
What is needed
from FASLead*
Detailed description of what

exactly is needed from the
28
FASLead teams for this request
BUSINESS IMPACT
Priority/Justificati
on
Explanation for the priority.

(example: the Customer has
already opened # cases and is
not getting any traction and is
ready to leave Azure for good)
Impact
Statement
Provide details on the

customers pain with the issue
they are experiencing (example:
# users affected, existing
workarounds, Business
opportunity for MS (does
customer plan to expand? ->
potential Premier contract
affected, additional seat
acquisitions, etc.)
WHERE can you go if you have a customer that needs Azure assistance that is outside
of the scope of the WASMS and WATS teams?
Windows Azure Presales Team For presales and related questions.
BIOSCAP Online Business Operations (formerly BIOS) team engagement for

issues such as GOC (Online Services) Process Areas; Credit/Discount processing;
Mass Credit/Discount processing; Offer Conversions; Tax Exempt Status Updates;
Credit reversal processing; Refund processing
RADIUS CSS web portal for determining the correct support team to contact for
customer issues.
GetHelp

29

ACS Azure Case Reference Guide

Transféré par

Informations du document

Copyright

Formats disponibles

Partager ce document

Partager ou intégrer le document

Options de partage

Avez-vous trouvé ce document utile ?

Ce contenu est-il inapproprié ?

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

ACS Azure Case Reference Guide

Transféré par

Droits d'auteur :

Formats disponibles

Managing Microsoft Azure Incidents

for Premier Customers

How to Use this document

Microsoft Azure Incident Management

Author/Reviewers (Name, Alias):

Ryan Berry ryberry

Release Status (Draft, Final,

Type (Internal, External):

Next Revision Date:

Produced by Americas Cloud Services Support COE

Microsoft Azure Incident Management

Microsoft Azure Technical Support (WATS):.............................................................................21

Microsoft Azure Incident Management

Service Delivery Executives (SDE)

Technical Account Managers (TAM)

Application Development Managers (ADM)

Support Practice Managers (SPM)

Microsoft Azure Incident Management

Azure Support Detail

Figure 1 Offerings Overview

Microsoft Azure Incident Management

Support Options Detail

No support SLA for technical incidents

Billing/Subscription incidents can be submitted, free of charge, via the Azure

$29 a month and can be purchased and associated with a specific

Customers would need to purchase this support for each subscription

8 hour initial response time

No phone based support

Target customer: SMB customer with a reactive support approach

Can be added/attached to an Azure EA details in this FAQ

When EA-attached (12-month commitment), provides coverage for ALL Azure

When added directly to a specific subscription, only covers that specific

Customers can upgrade this level of support to Premier by contacting their

Microsoft Azure Incident Management

Professional Direct Support

Target customer: Medium business and enterprise customer with proactive

Customers still must initiate case creation on the Azure portal

Escalation resources are pooled rather than designated

Escalation resources are available business hours M-F

Unmanaged critsit experience

Can be added/attached to an Azure EA details in this FAQ

When EA-attached (12-month commitment), provides coverage for ALL Azure

When added directly to a specific subscription, only covers that specific

Customers can upgrade this level of support to Premier by contacting their

Customers can request a Microsoft Azure Optimization report be ran against

Azure Support via Premier w/o Premier for Azure

Target customers: enterprise customer with a proactive support approach

Premier Support for Azure

Add-on schedule requiring an exhibit/FNCS available on k360.

While it can be stand-alone it requires a Premier for Enterprise or Premier for

Provides unlimited break-fix incident support for anything running in Azure

Provides additional break-fix coverage for supported Microsoft operating

When sold as an add-on to an existing Premier agreement already containing

Customers can request a Microsoft Azure Optimization report be ran against

Add-on is fixed price ($150k US) per 2-applications supported

The definition of an application is posted to this FAQ

Target customer: Premier customer with strategic mission and

Inquiries on supporting IaaS (infrastructure workloads) or to validate the

Details on the contracts a customer needs to sign are depicted in the

ISVs and Partners

Figure 2 Contracting Requirements

Microsoft Azure Incident Management

Microsoft Azure Incident Detail

Rapid Response (RR Optional Premier Add-on) IRT: 15 minutes