On Thu, May 23, 2002 at 08:52:23AM +0100, Ryan O'Connell wrote:
>
> This is what most people do I believe - if you have an Advanced Services
> contract with Cisco you can get them to prepare a report recommending a
> code release but they just look at the latest version and most suited code
> train for your requested feature set and compile a list of known bugs
> affecting features you request. It's a useful report to have for a large
> scale deployment however, if there are minor bugs that you're not too
> bothered about at least you know the workarounds in advance.
Cisco -> TAC (login) -> Training Resources -> TAC eLearning Solutions ->
Router Issues -> Router Crashes (or use the direct URL below)
http://www.cisco.com/E-Learning/cmn/vod4e/public/jbothra_12_27_2001_16_53_35/
Notice how Cisco gets all the good tools? Wouldn't it be nice to take
your IOS symbol table and srsym tool and figure out what that stack trace
really means? At least their TAC responds quickly and thoroughly.
Cisco internal bug tracking must be at least a million times cooler than
their TAC one. However, it's nice to have that as a feature from your
vendor. I use the Bug Toolkit to verify code releases all the time.
http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/Support/Bugtool/home.pl
The release notes are iffy. A lot of people get the feeling that Cisco
just isn't putting "enough" information in those things, and they're
probably right. I would think that Cisco has some sort of "Top N"
issues document that goes out weekly or monthly. Wouldn't it be nice
to get something like that?
I've been using the Software Advisor a lot, too, recently. It's another
good addition to the TAC toolkit available to anyone with a contract
number.
http://www.cisco.com/cgi-bin/Support/CompNav/Index.pl?Introduction=True
My suggestion is to use all the tools you have available on their website.
Open a P3/P4 case with Cisco TAC and make a big procedure out of it. Have
TAC on the phone when you reload with the new code. Open new cases to
document the problems with the new code once they start popping up.
That's about all you can do, unless you have the aforementioned "Advanced
Services" contract. Talk to your Cisco AM or SE about what *you* need
and require as a company. They might be able to work something out, and
improvement only comes through industry feedback. We'll just see how long
Cisco can keep up their excellent support taking into account marketing
objectives and intellectual capital in a downed market economy. I think
they're going to be ok, but make sure you follow through with them every
step of the way. You'll be doing a benefit to the rest of their customer
base, even if you choose to change vendors down the road.
-dre
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