[c-nsp] Tabo Topic? Third party Maintenance

[adamv0025 at netconsultings.com]

> Simon Lockhart
> Sent: Tuesday, January 24, 2017 8:09 AM
> 
> On Tue Jan 24, 2017 at 09:02:18AM +0100, Gert Doering wrote:
> > On Mon, Jan 23, 2017 at 07:33:08PM -0500, Charles Sprickman via
cisco-nsp
> wrote:
> > > I have to say, I haven???t been impressed with their support in a
> > > long time.  We have smartnet really just for hardware, and recently
> > > I figured that since we have support, I???d actually try and offload
> > > a task that I hate - picking a stable version of IOS that has all
> > > the security issues resolved.
> >
> > Bwahahaha.  Sorry.
> 
> We were also told that if we wanted Cisco to do a 'bug scrub', to see if
we
> would be affected by any known bugs, then they offer this as a seperately
> chargeable service. Yes, really, they want us to pay them more money to
find
> out how buggy their code releases are...
> 
How it works is you provide vendor with the desired target release, configs
from all your boxes (or a representative sample), network topology diagram
and a list of bugs you've been hit by, they will populate a huge list of all
SW features and HW with stuff you are using and will ask you to fill in what
features or HW you plan on using in the future. Once all these inputs are
crosschecked and agreed, vendor will run the info against the internal bug
database and will produce a huge list of bugs you might hit using the
features and HW listed (so you better be sure you want a feature when
filling the form cause every item is a potential for a long list of bugs you
need to review). The items in the list are listed based on the bug severity
and likelihood of running into it (-but vendor's opinion on
severity/likelihood might/will differ from yours so you better check every
bug anyways). You have a dedicated engineer with wom you can discuss details
of any of the bugs listed in order to make a more informed decision.
Based on the produced list vendor either says the desired code version is ok
or will recommend another one for which an incremental bug scrub is done
(free of charge of course).
You can also veto their decision, if you think some of the bugs are
showstoppers, and ask for an incremental bug scrub for another version of
code.

It's a long and tedious process and it costs a small fortune, but I think
it's worth it.
At least you get a more detailed map of the minefield. 

adam 

netconsultings.com
::carrier-class solutions for the telecommunications industry::