How do I get a support contract?

[ToddAndMargo]

Hi All,

Bug 7607 is killing one of my customers how lost yet another client yesterday over it. 7606 is causing serious financial harm. I really, really need a support contract.

How do I get a support contract for Virtual Box?

I have been calling for months to Oracle and can not find anyone who can help.

The phone number support gives you for software contracts is 800-672-2531 and it is permanently busy for months. The other number support gives you is 800-786-7638 and that is a porn site (oh so very, very funny). I finally talked to my sale rep, which took months to find, and he says he will have them call me, but no one does.

This is very, very frustrating.

-T

[Sasquatch]

Since the problem isn't in an older version, what is the exact reason you upgraded to the current one without proper testing? Isn't that something you do when you're dealing with production vital systems?

[ToddAndMargo]

Since the problem isn't in an older version, what is the exact reason you upgraded to the current one without proper testing? Isn't that something you do when you're dealing with production vital systems?

Hi Sasquatch,

I am not sure what you are asking, so I will flail around a bit. On the odious bug in question, 7607, we were on 3.2.4. This was due to the odious bug 6928, which was not fixed until 3.2.10. The now fixed odious bug 6928 caused a CPU storm, except when using a single soft core processor. When 6928 got fixed, we upgraded to 3.2.10 to *finally* start using some of the multicores in our $1,200.00 x5650 processor. No Joy. Enter odious bug 7607. Windows Server 2008 32 bit SP2 (not r2) runs so, so very slow that it corrupts databases, rendering the guest completely unusable. Fortunately our Vital Production Level Testing showed the problem before more than one database corrupted, which I was able to restore. So we downgraded back to 3.1.8 and a single soft core. 3.1.8 does not work with multicores and the x5650 either, again due to odious bug 6928. (We have 12 GB of RAM. If your machine has 2 GB or less, you should not see 6928.)

So my customer is now stuck back at 3.1.8 with a single software core. His customers are complaining bitterly about the bad performance. And, he lost a serious customer yesterday over it. Bug 7607 is causing my customer grievous financial damage.

And, Oracle is acting like a bunch of keystone cops. They will "Reach out to me". EEEEWWWW! Business psycho babble. I would live with the psycho babble if they actually tried to help. Month after month after month. This all started in bug 6928. See http://www.virtualbox.org/ticket/6928#comment:19

Oracle, if you are reading this, this is not funny anymore. You are causing serious financial damage by not making a support agreement available to my customer. You are creating some serious, serious ill will. How would you like to loose your business?

Sasquatch: sorry for the melodrama. This is not what you signed up for when you answered me. My apologies. Hopefully, you are still talking to me.

-T

[Sasquatch]

Ah, I see, that's why you 'had' to upgrade. Man, that sure does suck. Things were fine when it was just Innotek, it was acceptable when Sun was in control and now that Oracle has the strings, it's been one disaster after another with customer support. People can't buy a license, etc. The entire sales department seems to be unaware of this software and it seems that something else is distracting the devs. Lets hope that the upcoming v4 will have your fix, even though you don't see it in the bug tracker.

I wish you good luck and I hope your company survives this mess.

[ToddAndMargo]

Ah, I see, that's why you 'had' to upgrade. Man, that sure does suck. Things were fine when it was just Innotek, it was acceptable when Sun was in control and now that Oracle has the strings, it's been one disaster after another with customer support. People can't buy a license, etc. The entire sales department seems to be unaware of this software and it seems that something else is distracting the devs. Lets hope that the upcoming v4 will have your fix, even though you don't see it in the bug tracker.

I wish you good luck and I hope your company survives this mess.

Thank you. I have been looking at KVM on the just released Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0. No clipboard support and no Virtual RDP for headless. But, it is backed by Red Hat and my experiments with the older 32 version shows real promise. Plus it is faster than hell. Kinda of looks like Oracle is killing Virtual Box. Red Hat, on the other hard, looks like they are plowing full speed ahead.

The sales guy at Oracle has been eMailing a guy trying to get him to call me. No Joy. I also left the guy three messages. How does Oracle even keep their doors open?

I will survive. My customer may not. I am a consultant. I will just have to hustle and find another customer (sounds really cold, but I don't mean it that way). Thank you for still speaking to me.

-T

[crash0veride]

I have looked through your bug postings, and many forum posts.
From what I can glean you still seem to be having an issue running VBox 3.2.10 on a CentOS 5.5 x64 Host with a Server 2008 SP2 Guest VM serving windows terminal services.

What I can tell you 100% certain is that your tylersburg (X58) motherboard and Westmere CPU have no bearing on the issue you are seeing. Nor does VirtualBox not work and play well with that hardware. Rather I think your issue lies elsewhere in your equation. That particular Intel based motherboard has the C2 revision of the X58 silicon. Previous Intel X58/5520 boards used a B3 level level silicon, C2 is the same but with 5 focused silicon erratum fixes.
But enough with the hardware trivia...

Can you be more verbose as to:

1) The "corrupted" database type mysql, postgres, oracle, sql, etc ?
2) The underlying storage subsystem configuration of the server (EG: where are your virtual disks stored)? (DAS, NFS/CIFS, ISCSI)
- Underlying Drive Type SATA, or SAS, drive vender/model?
- HW/SW raid ?
- IF Linux software raid, disk count, raid level stripe size?
- IF LVM, Disk count, stripe size?
- IF HW Raid, HW raid controller make/model, cache size, raid level ?
3) What filesystem did you format the underlying storage with (I assume you stuck with the default of ext3)
4) I note you are using SATA as your controller type, did you install the Intel RST drivers within the guest? (If so please try removing them and using the builtin microsoft AHCI driver)
- The Intel RST drivers have known performance and data integrity issues when used with the Virtual SATA controller inside of Virtual Guests.
5) Additionally have you installed and are using the Intel Pro NIC drivers within the guest for the Intel Pro 1000 (82545EM) VNIC?

[ToddAndMargo]

The sales guy at Oracle has been eMailing a guy trying to get him to call me. No Joy. I also left the guy three messages. How does Oracle even keep their doors open?

As it stands, a tech from Oracle got back to me yesterday and here is the official story from Oracle: they have not come up with a pricing plan yet for support contracts, so no support contracts. And, they have no plan to correct the situation anytime in the near or far future. Yee gads!

-T

[ToddAndMargo]

1) The "corrupted" database type mysql, postgres, oracle, sql, etc ?
2) The underlying storage subsystem configuration of the server (EG: where are your virtual disks stored)? (DAS, NFS/CIFS, ISCSI)
- Underlying Drive Type SATA, or SAS, drive vender/model?
- HW/SW raid ?
- IF Linux software raid, disk count, raid level stripe size?
- IF LVM, Disk count, stripe size?
- IF HW Raid, HW raid controller make/model, cache size, raid level ?
3) What filesystem did you format the underlying storage with (I assume you stuck with the default of ext3)
4) I note you are using SATA as your controller type, did you install the Intel RST drivers within the guest? (If so please try removing them and using the builtin microsoft AHCI driver)
- The Intel RST drivers have known performance and data integrity issues when used with the Virtual SATA controller inside of Virtual Guests.
5) Additionally have you installed and are using the Intel Pro NIC drivers within the guest for the Intel Pro 1000 (82545EM) VNIC?

Crash,

I was at the customer's site yesterday and put added a single soft core (vb 3.1. windows server 2003R2Sp2x32 into the fray. I demo'ed the difference between 2003 and 2008 (vista server). Things ran at least four times faster -- maybe as much as eight times faster. My customer made a very quick and wise decision to dump Vista server. [editorial comment] Vista server is a *h-o-r-r-i-b-l-e* -- avoid it at all costs [/editorial comment].

So, since I also have another customer with an identical server (24 GB vs 12 GB) that is on 3.2.10 and 2003R2Sp2x32 which runs beautifully, I would like to hold you off on your most gracious offer of help as I believe I would only be wasting your time, being that this Vista server is finally (well almost) out of my life. If you would still any of these questions answered, please reply back.

Many thanks,
-T

[Sasquatch]

Please open a new topic for this conversation. This thread is about support contracts, not the discussing of bugs.