Introduction
Our focus
Aspen Mesh Support is focused on ensuring customer success by providing unrivaled technical support through exceptional customer service, responsiveness, dependability, teamwork, and a dedication to technical excellence.
Our commitment
We constantly strive to improve our service and create closer customer relationships. With our worldwide customer support organization, you can always expect consistent, professional, high-quality support, which means:
- We expect our support engineers to conduct themselves professionally at all times.
- We are committed to providing the best customer experience possible.
- You will be treated with respect and given every consideration possible.
- You have the right to request manager escalation for unresolved or “production down” issues.
Scope of support
Aspen Mesh Support is designed to remotely assist you with specific technical issues. While we can answer specific installation or upgrade questions, our support is not designed to walk you through the installation or upgrade process. If you need comprehensive installation assistance, contact us for guidance on solutions that may meet your needs. Technical support is limited to customers with active support contracts.
Support hours
All support plans include support during our standard support hours, which are from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. mountain time, Monday through Friday, excluding F5 holidays.
Our premium support plan also includes 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a week (24/7) support for severity 1 service requests.
Support plans
Our support plans
We offer standard and premium support plans. Use this table to help you decide which one is right for you.
| Feature | Standard | Premium |
|---|---|---|
|
Customer success management is complimentary and includes the following:
|
||
| Unlimited email support during standard support hours with local language accommodation when possible | ||
| Online documentation, knowledge base, and best practices | ||
| Basic how-to and troubleshooting assistance | ||
| Case management (single point of ownership) | ||
| Software downloads and upgrades (Aspen Mesh product only) | ||
| Quarterly discussion with product management (Aspen Mesh product only) | ||
| 24/7 support for severity 1 service requests | ||
| Early education and knowledge sharing | ||
| Early access to technical information as part of planning | ||
| Priority case management and escalation |
Renew or upgrade your support plan
→ Contact your assigned account representative or email Aspen Mesh Sales.
Manage service requests
About service-request severity levels
We assign service requests a severity level from 1 (urgent) to 4 (low), and you determine the initial severity level based on the impact on your business at the time you open a service request. We might change the severity level after initial contact and assessment of the issue if you’re in agreement.
Note: If you don’t specify a severity level, we assign a severity level of 4.
Service-request severity levels
This table defines each severity level and its targeted initial response time (the period between you opening a service request and a support engineer first attempting to contact you for troubleshooting).
SEVERITY 1 (URGENT)
SITE DOWN
| Initial response: 1 business hour (30 minutes with 24/7 support)* | Critical Business Impact |
Production: Software conditions are preventing the execution of high-level commerce or critical business activities, including remote access to critical applications. The production use of the product on a primary business service, major application, or mission-critical system is stopped or so severely impacted that you can’t reasonably continue work.
Customer resources must be made available in severity 1 situations and reasonably cooperate to help resolve the issue. Severity 1 issues could have the following characteristics: system hangs or crash situation, or critical functionality not available.
* Understanding that unforeseen events could delay attempts, we expect to respond to most severity 1 issues within this time frame.
SEVERITY 2 (HIGH)
SITE AT RISK
| Initial response: 2 business hours | Significant Business Impact |
Production: Software conditions are significantly impairing business activities, including remote access to critical applications. Important product features are unavailable with no acceptable workaround. Your implementation or production use of the product in a primary business service, major application, or mission-critical system is functioning with limited capabilities or is unstable with periodic interruptions. The software may be operating but is severely restricted. Severity 2 issues could have the following characteristics: product error or failure forcing a restart or recovery, or severely degraded performance.
Lab: The issue is completely or partially blocking the lab such that some test cases are blocked.
SEVERITY 3 (MEDIUM)
PERFORMANCE DEGRADED
| Initial response: 4 business hours | Minimal Business Impact |
Production: Software conditions are degraded, and this could further impact your traffic or business-critical applications. Product features are unavailable, but a workaround exists, and the majority of software functions are still usable. There is minor function or feature failure that you can’t easily circumvent or avoid. Severity 3 issues could have the following characteristics: error message with workaround, minimal performance degradation, incorrect product behavior with minor impact, or questions on product functionality or configuration during implementation.
Lab: The issue is likely to block the lab within the next two weeks based on the existing test plan.
SEVERITY 4 (LOW)
GENERAL ASSISTANCE
| Initial response: 1 business day | Nominal Business Impact |
Production: General questions and troubleshooting of noncritical product features. Requests for product functionality or solutions that are not currently part of the solution. A minor problem or question that does not affect the software function (for example, a request for information on how to use a particular feature, a general question, or requests for documentation or enhancements). Severity 4 problems could have the following characteristics: general requests for advice on product usage, clarification on product documentation or release notes, or a product enhancement request.
Lab: The issue is not going to block the lab within the next two weeks based on the existing test plan.
Before you open a service request
Before opening a service request, please do the following:
- Check the product documentation and release notes on the Aspen Mesh Documentation website.
- Search the Aspen Mesh knowledge-base articles.
- Check the product documentation and release notes on the Istio website.
Open a service request
For severity 1 service requests in North America:
→ Call 206-272-6500, 888-882-7535 (toll-free), or 855-834-0367 (toll-free).
For severity 1 service requests outside North America:
→ Call +800 11 ASK 4 F5 (800 11275 435).
For all other service requests:
→ Email Aspen Mesh Support.
To ensure that your issue is resolved as efficiently as possible, provide the following information:
- Company name
- Version of Aspen Mesh (if applicable)
- Version of Istio
- Version of Kubernetes
- Environment
- A description of the issue and symptoms (only one issue per request)
- The date and time you noticed the issue
- The changes that were recently made to the environment
- The steps to reproduce the issue
- Log files and all other relevant output
- A description of the business impact
- The severity level with a clear explanation of the business impact
Change the severity level of a service request
→ If the business impact of your reported issue changes, ask the assigned support engineer to change the severity level of the service request.
About escalation
Our goal is to resolve all service requests in a satisfactory and timely manner; however, we realize that some situations may require increased attention and focus.
Escalate a service request
- Ask the assigned support engineer to increase the severity level of your service request.
- If you’re not satisfied with our progress after increasing the severity level, ask to speak with a support manager, who will evaluate the service request and work with the assigned support engineer to create an action plan.
- If you’re not satisfied with the action plan or with our progress after the plan has been implemented, ask to speak with the support director, who will review your service request with the support engineer to determine if different or additional actions are required.
When we close a service request
We close service requests for bugs and enhancement requests after we document them in our tracking systems and notify you.
We close a service request for a technical issue after we contact you to ask if you’re satisfied that the issue has been resolved and you indicate that you are. If we make two attempts to contact you over a period of five business days and receive no response, we close the service request.
About reopening a service request
You can request to reopen a closed service request if the same issue addressed in the original service request occurs again within 14 days. If your service request has been closed more than 14 days, you must open a new service request.
Product lifecycle and support - Aspen Mesh
How we handle bugs
If we determine that the issue you report in your service request is due to a bug, we document the bug in our bug tracking system, make a decision regarding the severity of the bug, provide you with the bug ID, and then close your service request. We don’t guarantee that any specific bug will be fixed in a future release.
Determine whether a bug has been fixed
→ See the product release notes for later versions.
How we handle enhancement requests
We accept ideas for enhancements to the Aspen Mesh product. If you submit an enhancement request, we document the request in our enhancement tracking system and notify you.
We review open enhancement requests on a regular basis and consider them for later releases only. However, we don’t guarantee that any specific enhancement will be implemented. If we do decide to implement an enhancement, we may decide to offer it for an additional charge.
All enhancement requests become the sole and exclusive property of F5 and may be used by F5 in any way without restriction or obligation to you.
Submit an enhancement request
→ Email the Aspen Mesh Product team.
To provide us with context and help us understand the value your requested enhancement would provide, describe the following:
- The product name (Aspen Mesh)
- The enhancement, in as much detail as possible
- The problem you’re trying to solve
- The value that would be provided if the problem were solved
Support policy on third-party products
We validate and support the use of the Aspen Mesh product with the following third-party products, some of which are integrated into the product:
- Cassandra (integrated)
- Helm
- Istio (integrated)
- Jaeger (integrated)
- Kubernetes
- OpenShift
- Prometheus (integrated)
For the supported versions of these third-party products, see the release notes.
If you need support for the use of the Aspen Mesh product with other third-party products (for example, Jenkins), we take a best-effort approach, which means we use reasonable efforts to assist you in resolving your issue, assuming we have the necessary support resources. If we don’t, we ask you to diagnose and resolve the issue with the third party.
Support policy on customizations
We don’t perform or maintain customizations (functionality or configurations that are not included as part of our standard generally available product releases)—such as Proxy-Wasm filter plugins to extend the Istio proxy (Envoy)—unless we develop and deploy them. Our support is limited to helping ensure that the Aspen Mesh product, which enables the addition of customizations, is functioning as designed.
If you need support for customizations that you design and develop, and you don’t find the information you need in the Aspen Mesh knowledge-base articles, we recommend an architecture essential service engagement so we can review the environment and custom code.
Version-number format
We use the following format for Aspen Mesh version numbers:
<istioMajor>.<istioMinor>.<istioPatch>-am<aspenMeshPatch>
Parts of a version number
This table describes the parts of an Aspen Mesh 1.x version number:
| Part | Description |
|---|---|
| <istioMajor> | Istio major version identifier |
| <istioMinor> | Istio minor version identifier |
| <istioPatch> | Istio patch number |
| <aspenMeshPatch> | Aspen Mesh patch number |
Version-number examples
Here are some examples of Aspen Mesh version numbers:
- 1.11.8-am2 (minor version 1.11)
- 1.11.7-am1 (minor version 1.11)
- 1.9.9-am1 (minor version 1.9)
- 1.9.8-am1 (minor version 1.9)
Trial support
To allow you to evaluate the Aspen Mesh product, we provide a 30-day free trial, which begins on the day you create a new account. During the trial period, we provide support.
Lapsed support
If your support contract lapses, you won’t have access to support.
Support status of Aspen Mesh versions
Note: The end dates below are effective for support contracts that begin on or after January 1, 2023. Contracts that began prior to that date are not affected.
|
Version
|
Release date
|
End of software development (EoSD)
|
End of technical support (EoTS)
|
|---|---|---|---|
| 1.14 | November 4, 2022 | November 3, 2023 | May 3, 2024 |
| 1.11 | January 12, 2022 | January 12, 2023 | July 14, 2023 |
| 1.9 | April 7, 2021 | April 7, 2022 | October 7, 2022 |
| 1.6 | August 18, 2020 | August 18, 2021 | March 31, 2022 |
Product lifecycle and support - Open source Istio
As of December 31, 2022, we will no longer offer support for open source Istio. (Existing support contracts for open source Istio will be honored.)
How we handle bugs
Given the nature of open source, we can’t commit to delivering specific fixes because we don’t have control over timelines in the community. When possible, we provide workarounds for any bugs so we can help you meet your business goals. If we determine that the issue you report in your service request is due to an open source Istio bug, we submit a bug report to the upstream community on your behalf and then close your service request.
Determine whether a bug has been fixed
→ See the product release notes for later versions.
How we handle enhancement requests
Given the nature of open source, we can’t commit to delivering enhancements because we don’t have control over timelines in the community. If we determine that your enhancement request is for open source Istio, we submit it to the upstream community on your behalf and then close your service request.
Submit an enhancement request
→ Email the Aspen Mesh Product team.
To provide us with context and help us understand the value your requested enhancement would provide, describe the following:
- The product name (open source Istio)
- The enhancement, in as much detail as possible
- The problem you’re trying to solve
- The value that would be provided if the problem were solved
Support policy on third-party products
We support the use of the following third-party products:
- Helm (for installing and upgrading Istio)
- Istio
If you need support for the use of other third-party products (for example, Jenkins), we take a best-effort approach, which means we use reasonable efforts to assist you in resolving your issue, assuming we have the necessary support resources. If we don’t, we ask you to diagnose and resolve the issue with the third party.
Support policy on customizations
We don’t perform or maintain customizations (functionality or configurations that are not included as part of our standard generally available product releases)—such as Proxy-Wasm filter plugins to extend the Istio proxy (Envoy)—unless we develop and deploy them. Our support is limited to helping ensure that the Aspen Mesh product, which enables the addition of customizations, is functioning as designed.
If you need support for customizations that you design and develop, and you don’t find the information you need in the Aspen Mesh knowledge-base articles, we recommend an architecture essential service engagement so we can review the environment and custom code.
Lapsed support
If your support contract lapses, you won’t have access to support.
Support status of open source Istio versions
|
Version
|
Currently supported?
|
Release date
|
End of life
|
Supported Kubernetes versions
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1.13 | Yes | February 11, 2022 | December 31, 2022 | 1.20, 1.21, 1.22, 1.23 |
| 1.12 | Yes | November 18, 2021 | December 31, 2022 | 1.19, 1.20, 1.21, 1.22 |
| 1.11 | Yes | August 12, 2021 | December 31, 2022 | 1.19, 1.20, 1.21, 1.22 |
| 1.10 | Yes | May 18, 2021 | December 31, 2022 | 1.18, 1.19, 1.20, 1.21 |
| 1.9 | Yes | February 9, 2021 | October 8, 2022 | 1.17, 1.18, 1.19, 1.20 |
| 1.8 and earlier | No | — | — | — |