Technical Tip: Scope of TAC support with respect to firmware upgrades, maintenance, and proactive assistance

Description

This article describes the scope of TAC support regarding firmware upgrades, routine maintenance activities, migration, and requests for proactive and standby support.

Scope

FortiWeb, FortiADC, FortiGate, FortiMail, FortiClient EMS.

Solution

Fortinet's Technical Assistance Centre (TAC) provides technical support for reported issues, including troubleshooting, incident resolution, addressing product-related concerns and appropriate 'break/fix' assistance.

Standby assistance (such as remaining on standby or joining calls during planned activities), as well as migrations and routine administrative tasks (including upgrades or disaster recovery drills), fall outside the scope of TAC support.

Firmware upgrade:

The steps for upgrading firmware on a standalone node or cluster are outlined in the Administrator Guide. For details regarding a particular firmware version, including its upgrade path and important upgrade notes. The relevant release notes should be consulted. These can be downloaded for the appropriate version under the section 'Release Notes'.

All related documentation sections can be accessed as follows:

• FortiWeb

• FortiADC 

• FortiGate / FortiOS 

• FortiClient

• FortiMail 

Troubleshooting-related documentation:

• Troubleshooting Guide

• Technical Tip: General Troubleshooting Library for Administrators

DR activity or other maintenance tasks: If specific instructions or guidance are required, the support ticket must include all the necessary detailed information. Providing comprehensive information enables TAC to understand the situation better and offer appropriate guidance. However, the activity itself remains the responsibility of the administrator, and TAC should only be engaged if an issue arises during or after the task.

Standby Support: Standby support requests, except where an issue has already been previously encountered, are outside the scope of TAC. Such requirements can be covered through Advanced Support.

General Guidance: If issues are encountered during or after the activity, such as a migration, upgrade, DR drills, or maintenance, a ticket with all necessary details must be raised so that TAC can proceed with troubleshooting. Each distinct issue must be submitted as a separate ticket with the relevant information. This ensures compliance with the 'one issue per ticket' policy, supporting clear orientation within the ticket and efficient review of the ticket history when required.

If the encountered issues are severe enough to be classified as P1/P2, as per the FortiCare Service Level Agreements: Customer Service Tip: Fortinet Support: FortiCare Case Priority, the support line must be contacted to reach an available engineer, explain the business impact, and request a priority increase.