VOLT ACTIVE DATA SUPPORT AND MAINTENANCE POLICY FOR VOLT CUSTOMERS
This document refers to Volt Active Data Product release, Support Policy, Maintenance Policy and End-of-Life Policy.
Volt Support Overview
Volt Active Global Support addresses production systems only.
Issues that occur on pre-production, testing or development systems are addressed via Volt Active Customer Success Management (CSM) team. They can be reached via the ticketing system link listed below and selecting the Customer Success Form.
Support Hours
Volt Support business hours are 8am-6pm Eastern Time.
For 24×7 support for Severity 1 (Critical) Production Issues ONLY – please call us at +1 339-298-2023.
You will be asked to provide the following information:
- Customer Contact Name and Phone number
- General description of issue being experienced
After calling, please also open a ticket at https://support.voltactivedata.com completing all necessary fields and providing, at a minimum, volt logs and volt statistics.
Contacting Volt Support
For all issues, a ticket must be opened with Volt Active Data (“Volt”). This can be done by registering for web access and opening a ticket at https://support.voltactivedata.com. The ticket can be for Global Support or for Customer Success Management (CSM) team.
The ticket should provide the following information:
- Description of the event
- Date and time of the event (including time zone)
- Description of any steps already taken to resolve it
- Any actions that were taken prior to the event occurring
- Any relevant log files, stack traces, or other artifacts that may assist in diagnosis
- Fill out the information needed in the ticket e.g., volt version, end customer, bare metal or container, test/dev/production environment
Volt provides documentation to direct customers (“Licensee”) to assist on simple troubleshooting methods, how to gather log files and stack traces. These can be found in two places:
- Online documentation of Volt product: https://docs.voltactivedata.com
- Support Knowledge Base with additional information about Volt product: https://support.voltactivedata.com/hc/en-us
Technical Support Responsibilities
The following table defines the responsibilities of technical support.
| Responsibilities | Description |
| Licensee |
|
| Volt Support |
|
Data Collection
Data collection and its timely delivery to Volt is the responsibility of the Licensee.
Minimum data requirements for tickets should include the following:
- Date and time of the incident
- All logs should be captured and sent using the same time criteria
- Logs should start from just before the incident and from all nodes in the cluster
- For XDCR issues, volt logs from all the nodes on XDCR clusters also required
- Crash file (when available)
- Volt Statistics
- Actions taken prior to the incident
- Actions and their outcomes taken as a result of the incident
Data should be sent to our Securefiles website:
Escalation Process
Volt’s Escalation Process is our way of establishing a working relationship with our customers in the rare instance we cannot resolve an issue within a timely manner.
Every effort will be made by the Support team to work efficiently and effectively to provide fast relief. Support will be the coordination ambassadors that engage any and all resources within Volt to assist in providing relief and resolution.
If the issue is unable to be resolved in a timely manner, the next stage is to work with the Licensee and to develop an action plan that would include, but not be limited to:
- Agreement on regularly scheduled calls. These can be daily, for issues in production, or at a lower frequency, if the issue is not pressing
- Setup of a similar cluster at Volt or Licensee facilities to replicate the problem in a lab, potentially using Licensee’s actual catalog and software
- Review by Volt of the Volt cluster installation, including review of deployment, system environment, source code for and stored procedures, etc.
- Access to systems – through sharing technology
- Upgrades to Volt with interim updates that aid in debugging (e.g. extra logging) and/or fix issues as they occur
- Additional logging or monitoring using system tools (e.g. sar, iostat) or custom Volt monitors
Support Severity Level Definitions
Volt recognizes three (3) levels of severity. Within each severity category, there is an understanding of timeliness in three (3) parts:
Initial Response: Non-automated contact through email or phone from Volt Support in response to an issue raised by the Licensee.
Relief: Any reasonable work-around, correction, improvement, extension or other change recommended or made by Volt in response to a specifically reported problem that allows Volt product to run without affecting business operations. At this point, Volt reserves the right to downgrade the Severity level with agreement from the Licensee.
Resolution: If the resolution is corrected with an update release, the release will go through testing and quality process at Volt prior to being released to the Licensee which allows for the correction to be included in subsequent releases. If resolution is a result of a configuration change, this will be documented in the ticket and if applicable, a knowledge base article will be produced.
- Agreement on regularly scheduled calls. These can be daily, for issues in production, or at a lower frequency, if the issue is not pressing
- Setup of a similar cluster at Volt or Licensee facilities to replicate the problem in a lab, potentially using Licensee’s actual catalog and software
- Review by Volt of the Volt cluster installation, including review of deployment, system environment, source code for and stored procedures, etc.
- Access to systems – through sharing technology
- Upgrades to Volt with interim updates that aid in debugging (e.g. extra logging) and/or fix issues as they occur
- Additional logging or monitoring using system tools (e.g. sar, iostat) or custom Volt monitors
| Severity | Description | Response | Relief | Resolution |
| Severity 1: Critical
| Critical Business Impact:
Licensees production use of Volt products in production environment is stopped or so severely impacted that the Volt products cannot reasonably continue to work. A wo rkaround is not successful. Severity Level 1 problems could have the following characteristics:
Severity Level 1 issues should be reported via telephone in the first instance followed by opening a ticket. | 1 hour | 4 hours | 30 Days |
| Severity 2: Major | Potential Critical Business Impact:
Licensee’s production use of Volt products in production environment, are operating in a partial state; potential to become a full outage is imminent; degraded performance or loss of k-safety. Severity Level 2 problems could have the following characteristics:
| 2 hours | 8 hours | 45 Days or Next Release |
| Severity 3: Minor | Minimal Business Impact: Minor functions/features are easily avoided or a workaround exists while the product is still usable. Severity Level 3 problems could have the following characteristics:
| 1 business day | 7 business days | Scheduled release |
Requests for product enhancements, suggested improvements should be directed to product@voltactivedata.com.
Software Maintenance
Licensees have access to all supported versions of Volt software, including new versions, for the term of their Support Agreement.
Product Release Definitions
Volt classifies and numbers releases according to the definitions below. All releases contain cumulative updates and features from the release before them, unless noted in the release notes.
For Severity 1 cases, Volt may provide an Update Release if needed to resolve the issue.
| Release Type | Version # Example | Description |
| Major Release | V12.0 | A major release contains significant new functionality and defect fixes and may require adjustment to applications, deployments and scripts in order to upgrade. A major release may also include removal of previously deprecated features. |
| Minor Release | V12.2 | A minor release contains some new features and defect fixes while maintaining backwards compatibility within that major version. A minor release may announce the deprecation of features. |
| LTS** Release | V12.3 | For each major release, one point release is chosen as the LTS version which will have all critical defect fixes and security fixes applied and updated through the lifetime of that version. |
| Update Release | V12.3.6 | An update release contains critical defect fixes and security fixes and will maintain backwards compatibility. An update release may contain minor updates to existing functionality. |
** LTS (Long Term Support) is a version of software that is available to Licensees for a period of three years to allow them to plan and schedule upgrades – see End-of-Life Policy below for Versions, Release Dates and EOL Dates.
End-of-Life Policy
Volt Active Data Long Term Support (LTS) releases are available once a year and are supported for three (3) years. The LTS program is designed to provide a longer supported term to allow for planning and choice when deploying or scheduling upgrades. Licensees should upgrade before their version reaches End-of-Life (EOL).
All non-LTS releases are supported for one year. Licensees deploying on a non-LTS release should plan on upgrading to an LTS release for that version when it becomes available.
The following table shows planned releases as of this revision. Future major releases, minor releases, and LTS releases will follow the same pattern.
| Volt Version | Release Date | EOL for Fixes |
| V13.xLTS | ETA Jun 2024 | 3 years from release date |
| V13 | Sept 2023 | Sept 2024 |
| V12.3 LTS | July 2023 | July 2026 |
| V12.1 LTS | Dec 2022 | Dec 2023 |
| V12 | Oct 2022 | Oct 2023 |
| V11.4 LTS | July 2022 | July 2025 |
| V10.2 LTS | May 2021 | May 2024 |
Volt Software is considered expired and non-supportable at the end of the month for EOL. Licensees who continue running on expired software EOL will receive best effort support, only while upgrading to a currently supported LTS version. Best effort support is where we advise the Licensees on workarounds for relief.
Any defects that require an update release would be corrected in a currently supported release and the Licensee will need to upgrade to apply the correction. Upgrades to a currently supported LTS version must be completed no later than 6 months from EOL of the existing version.