Working with F5 Support Services

Remote technical support is available for all F5 customers with eligible support contracts. Annual support services can be purchased from your F5 authorized reseller. Learn more about F5 Customer Support Programs.

Our Commitment

We are constantly striving to improve our service and create closer customer relationships. F5's worldwide customer support organization has pursued and achieved voluntary ISO 9001:2015 certification. You can always expect consistent, professional, high-quality service from F5, which means:

• We expect our Network Support Engineers to conduct themselves professionally at all times
• We are committed to providing the best customer experience possible
• You will be treated with respect and given every consideration possible
• Our goal is to provide our customers with resolutions the first time, every time
• You have a right to request manager escalation for unresolved or "network down" issues

Scope of Support

F5 Support Services is designed to remotely assist you with specific break-fix issues regarding ongoing maintenance of your F5 products. All F5 products come with a one-year manufacturer's hardware warranty and 90 days of software media warranty. Technical support is limited to F5 products with active support contracts. Subscribers who require higher levels of support from our support team may opt to upgrade to either Premium Support or Premium Plus Support.

F5 technical support is not designed to walk you through the installation process. If you need comprehensive installation assistance, you may opt for installation services from your local F5 authorized reseller or through F5 Professional Services.

Support for Programmatic Interfaces:

Customers typically leverage programmatic interfaces when they author custom code that employs the calls, events, methods and operations provided by the interface to achieve a desired function. Most implementations of programmatic interfaces are considered custom code. Implementations distributed on the F5 Downloads site, are included in a supported product release, or otherwise marked by F5 as supported software that remain unmodified are not considered custom code and will receive full product support within appropriate limits.

At this time, only the specific interfaces noted below are fully supported; all other interfaces are currently supported with reasonable effort only and with no implied or explicit service level targets. Any support provided will be subject to the limits specified.

• Support for Programmatic Interfaces requires an active F5 Support Services contract
• Support for Programmatic Interfaces is the same for F5 standard and Premium support levels with the only difference being the support availability time.
  • Standard is Monday – Friday, 8:00 am to 6:00 pm customer local time
  • Premium is always available, 24x7x365
• F5 Programmatic Interfaces are officially supported by F5 through F5 Support Services only
• F5 Support Services will not provide concept, design, authoring, or creation of code associated with F5 Programmatic Interfaces
• Additional assistance is available through DevCentral* and F5 Professional Services

iRules-specific

• The iRule must have been previously operating prior to contacting F5 support
• F5 will provide basic support for existing iRules to
  • Check iRule syntax
  • Assist in troubleshooting iRules
  • Validate iRule logic against functional requirements to F5’s reasonable effort

iControl REST-specific

• Unless otherwise noted, F5 Support Services will provide basic support only to assist with proper usage and verification of the calls, events, methods, and operations provided by the iControl REST Programmatic Interface on F5 platforms
• F5 Support Services provides troubleshooting assistance when investigating runtime errors, compile-time errors, and unexpected results in customer code, but does not support the business logic of custom code

F5 will not author new functionality, nor design solutions involving these interfaces. While F5 supports the Extensibility Framework/APIs, F5 may not support the artifacts and extensions build on top of these frameworks.

For requests that fall outside normal scope of Support, F5 Professional Services provides a comprehensive portfolio of solutions to help you leverage F5 technology to meet your business needs, including assistance with planning, design, deployments, upgrades, migrations, optimization, and application verification to ensure a highly available, scalable, and secure infrastructure. On contacting  F5 Professional Services, you will receive a detailed quote, including a comprehensive Scope of Work (SOW) statement.

Additional assistance is also available from the active community of F5 users and experts worldwide participating in the F5 DevCentral* community portal.

*Note: A DevCentral login is required to access this content.

Support for F5 projects posted to GitHub

Customers may wish to leverage open-source projects created by F5 Networks and posted on GitHub. The list of GitHub projects for which F5 Technical Support is provided can be found at K80012344: F5 support for GitHub software. Any support provided will be subject to the limits specified. Community assistance (which may include assistance provided by F5 employees) can be obtained by filing an issue in the GitHub project. The SUPPORT.md file for each project may list additional ways of obtaining community support.

Support for F5 Modules for Ansible

The F5 Modules for Ansible which are shipped as a part of the “Red Hat Ansible Engine” package deliverable signed by the Red Hat Engineering team or the open-source "Ansible Core" are considered supportable by F5 in an unmodified state. F5 will provide technical support and troubleshooting for specific software versions that contain specific release tags as noted within http://clouddocs.f5.com/products/orchestration/ansible/devel/usage/supported-versions.html as these are the versions that have undergone rigorous testing by F5 prior to release.

F5 Support Services will provide basic support only to assist with proper usage and verification of the calls, methods, and operations provided by the F5 Modules for Ansible.

F5 will provide basic support for existing Ansible playbooks to:

• Check F5 Modules for Ansible task syntax
• Assist in troubleshooting task output
• Verify the calls and operations provided by the F5 Modules for Ansible

F5 technical support is not designed to:

• walk through the design or creation of Ansible playbook(s). 
• walk through the design or creation of Ansible roles.
• write complete playbooks, nor engage in wholesale playbook debugging. 
• write custom plugins or modules, nor engage in troubleshooting custom plugins or modules with the F5 Modules for Ansible. 

F5 support of F5 Modules for Ansible is provided on a basis of reasonable effort, with no contractual obligations specified or implied.

Support Hours

F5 support hours are built around your core business hours. We staff F5 Network Support Engineers continuously, 24 x 7 x 365. Regardless of where your offices are located, technical support from F5 is available during your business day.

Information Needed When Submitting a Service Request

You can submit a service request online or by telephone. Providing the following information will ensure that your issue is resolved as efficiently as possible:

1. Product serial number
2. Software versions and types of equipment
3. Description of problem and symptoms (only one problem description per request)
4. Log files and all other relevant output (Login required)
5. Network topology and explanation, if applicable.
6. Case severity

Response Times

F5 aggressively pursues fast response times for all incoming cases. If a technician is not immediately available to help you, a Customer Care Representative will log your call in our case response system and issue you a case number. Learn more about response times and escalation policies.

Expedited RMA Services

F5 customers can upgrade the RMA service levels on their existing Standard, Premium, or Premium Plus maintenance with Expedited RMA Services for business-critical hardware. This option is available to customers whose F5 products are deployed within range of an F5-authorized RMA Depot. F5 offers customers both 4-hr and Next Business Day options. Please contact your f5 Sales Representative for more information.

For complete details of this program, please refer to our Expedited RMA Services data sheet.

Managerial Escalation

If at any time you believe that a case is not being handled in accordance with the service levels in your support contract, or if you wish to comment on the way a particular case is being addressed by a Network Support Engineer, please contact F5 Support and request to speak with a Technical Support Manager.

Support Services for NGINX Software

F5 provides support services for NGINX software in accordance with the general F5 support policies as applicable, and as further described at https://www.nginx.com/support/. NGINX support services for third-party modules (including, without limitation, the ModSecurity Module) are provided on a commercially reasonable efforts basis and are limited to updates and reasonable assistance with installation, initial configuration, fault-finding and troubleshooting.

Support service obligations exclude (a) NGINX products and third-party modules that are used on or in conjunction with hardware or software other than as specified in the applicable documentation; (b) altered or modified NGINX products and third-party modules; (c) defects in NGINX products and third-party modules due to accident, hardware malfunction, abuse or improper use; (d) any version of NGINX products and third-party modules for which support services have been discontinued by F5; (e) any errors caused by third-party modules not licensed through F5; (f) unless otherwise expressly provided in the applicable license terms, evaluation software or other software provided by F5 at no charge; (g) unless otherwise expressly provided in the applicable license terms, open source versions of F5 products; and (h) any products sold separately by F5.