Yesterday I had a problem with an Intel Hybrid Cloud Server that we had deployed to a customer. If you are not familiar with the Intel Hybrid Cloud Server you can check it out here.
The Problem
The Intel Hybrid Cloud Server comes with 3 NIC’s. Each one has a special function. When we ran the initial configuration, we mis-configured one of the NIC’s.
- NIC A is for remote management and the internal network.
- NIC B is for use if you are using the appliance as a firewall.
- NIC C is reserved for later use.
None of the documentation said any of this, and even if it did, who really reads the instructions anyway? My over thinking tech thought he’d be smart and configure NIC A for Remote access and NIC B for the internal network which makes perfectly logical sense to me. It worked fine for the customer, but we didn’t have remote access for some reason.
Intel Tech Support
I called Intel Tech Support and got Luis on the phone within 2 minutes. I was working remotely from my office and we worked for about an hour to change the network to NIC A to no avail. I needed to be on-site.
The next morning Luis called me back and I told him that I was on my way but I wouldn’t be at the client for a few hours.
I showed up at the client around 12:40PM and got setup. The cell reception at that location is non-existent so I had to use a land line and the closest phone was about 30′ away from the server, 2 rooms away. I called in and got Luis on the phone in 2 rings. We worked for a while with me running back and forth between the phone and the server. Eventually he suggested we use a go-to-meeting session for the audio, that way I could sit in the server room. Since I didn’t have Internet on my laptop because of a custom IP config to manage the server, I had to borrow a laptop to get the audio session running.
After about an hour and a half of removing NIC’s and rebooting, adding NIC’s and rebooting (each reboot was about 15 minutes) he got another tech on the line to help out. About 5 minutes after that a THIRD tech joined the call. Most of the time you can’t get one tech that knows what they are doing AND speaks proper English and I had THREE. I won’t go into all the details about what we did but all in all it took about 5.5 hours to get this resolved with some creative thinking and more creative networking. At the end of the day I had a fully functional server with remote access.
Now don’t get me wrong that everything was cherries and gravy, the initial problem was lack of documentation from Intel and an overthinking tech on my end, but I can’t say enough about the superior tech support at Intel. All three of them stayed on the phone with me until this was resolved and I really appreciate that.
So to summarize:
- First call less than 2 minutes on hold for an English-speaking tech.
- The next day he called me back.
- I called back in and got him in 2 rings.
- Situation was escalated and rather than hand me off he stayed on the phone while 2 additional English-speaking techs helped me work through the problem for 5 hours!
- All three techs stayed with me until the issue was resolved and the customer was back online.
That is how tech support is done.
If you are interested in the Intel Hybrid Cloud Server fill out the form or call 619-717-8070 for more information.