xByte Support
Contacting xByte:
Do you require support from one of our Cloud Engineers?
We’re here to help! This article outlines the range of support packages offered by xByte and details the corresponding service expectations.
Find your support plan:
You can find your Support Plan within your billing area under the addons section.
Your Support plan options are:
- Standard Support
- Enterprise + Support
- Ultimate Support
- Managed Services ( MSP or Managed Updates )
…learn more about our support plan options below:
Opening a Ticket within your billing control panel is simple, select the department (i.e. billing, sales, support), and you can reach the department needed. You can also submit an email to [email protected] for support-related items. Please provide as much information as possible in your request, this will result in a quicker final resolution by our xByte Engineers.
Here are some helpful tips when submitting a request
- Overview of the issue experienced.
- Any logs pulled during the initial troubleshooting process.
- Exact steps on how to replicate the issue.
- Time-stamp of when you noticed the issue.
- If this is a new issue, or one you’ve been experiencing for a while?
- Has any updates been done on the server, software added, or a new application installed?
- Any information from your research in blogs, self-help, or chatGPT that you’ve found would be helpful for our team?
Managing your support contacts:
All individuals who will open support tickets must be associated with an organization that holds a valid/active product. To receive the proper support on your account, make sure all individuals who would be submitting tickets are users on the account. If you do not have a valid product or a valid user on account this will result in a potential rejection of the message or delay in response. If a new member of your organization reaches out to our team, they may not be associated with your current support package which could impact our systems handling of tickets. Support ticketing system auto-applies primary account holder details, all secondary account users will be applied manually based on the permission granted by the primary account hold.
Onboarding & Migration Support:
xByte Cloud exclusively handles onboarding, migrations, and related tasks during standard business operating hours. This approach ensures a focused and dedicated process, allowing for a single point of contact and minimizing the risk of communication issues related to requests and tasks. Onboarding and migrations are integral steps in transferring your digital assets to our Cloud, and we prioritize these processes to deliver a high-quality experience for our customers and team.
xByte Support Service Plans:
Standard Support
Standard Support is included with our Managed xByte Cloud Servers. Our default Standard Support includes a 14x5, with an up-to-next-business-day response. Standard support responses on average are same day during xByte Clouds’ normal business hours.
Enterprise + Support
Enterprise + Support designed for teams deploying and maintaining production workloads, includes 24x7 support with our xByte Cloud Servers. Enterprise + is a per-server add-on that can be included for each server you deem to require Enterprise + support. These plans receive Tiered Support response times:
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Normal Support Impact - First Response Weekdays: with < 2 hour response time.
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Normal Support Impact - First Response Weekends: with < 4 hour response time.
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Emergency Trigger Support - Emergency Trigger SOS for urgent server unresponsiveness.
Ultimate Support
Ultimate Support is designed for businesses serving enterprise customer bases with mission-critical applications. Ultimate includes 24x7 support, High-level technical staff experienced in all products resulting in quicker and consistent troubleshooting, a Team of Business Advisors, a Team of Technical Advisors, Fast Troubleshooting and Assistance, Architecture Reviews and Guidance, Business Reviews and Strategy Consultations, One-on-One Onboarding. This product is account-level.
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Normal Support Impact - First Response Weekdays: with < 30 minute response time.
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Normal Support Impact - First Response Weekends: with < 60 minutes response time.
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Emergency Trigger Support - Engagement in the incident within minutes, severity coverage covering low to high including mission-critical incident response.
How to trigger Emergency Support:
To trigger Emergency Support you must log into your billing control panel and select URGENT priority or send a new email to the emergency contact address [email protected]. Support Emergencies can be defined as a server or a licensed service provided by xByte that is unavailable or completely unusable. This trigger will alert our on-call heroes to take swift action on a resolution.
Important Notes:
By cc’ing the address on an existing ticket or forwarding it will not trigger the on-call engineer.
In addition, It is preferable to include any relevant screenshots/logs in the initial email. If you already have an open ticket that has since evolved into an emergency, please include the relevant ticket number in the initial email. Each Emergency Support Trigger requires a new submission for our trigger to work properly.
Note: The xByte Cloud infrastructure team is on-call 24/7 - please check https://status.xbytehosting.com/ before contacting Support.
Phone and video call support
xByte does not offer support via inbound or on-demand calls.
xByte Support Engineers communicate with you about your tickets primarily through updates in the tickets themselves. At times it may be useful and important to conduct a call, video call, or screen-sharing session with you to improve the progress of a ticket. The support engineer may suggest a call for that reason. You may also request a call if you feel one is needed. Either way, the decision to conduct a call always rests with the support engineer, who will determine:
- whether a call is necessary; and
- whether we have sufficient information for a successful call.
Once the decision has been made to schedule a call, the support engineer will:
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Send you a link (through the ticket) to our scheduling platform or, in the case of an emergency, a direct link to start the call.
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Update you through the ticket with (a) an agenda and purpose for the call, and (b) a list of any actions that must be taken to prepare for the call.
During a screensharing session Support Engineers will act as a trusted advisor: providing troubleshooting steps and inviting you to run commands to help gather data or help resolve technical issues. At no time will an xByte Support Engineer ask to take control of your computer or to be granted direct access.
Note: Calls scheduled by xByte Support are on the Microsoft Teams platform. Other video platforms are not supported.
Please Note: Attempts to reuse a previously-provided scheduling link to arrange an on-demand call will be considered an abuse of support, and will result in such calls being canceled.
We handle each incident within a single support ticket
We handle a single issue or incident within a single support ticket. If you have multiple unrelated problems that need resolution, we recommend that you submit a separate ticket for each problem to ensure that each issue is tracked and addressed. There may be occasions when support engineers identify that problems or requests within a ticket are best handled in a new separate ticket. In situations such as these, the support engineer may create a new ticket on your behalf.
Working Effectively in Support Tickets
As best you can, please help the support team by communicating the issue you're facing, or the question you're asking, with as much detail as available to you. Whenever possible, include:
- log files relevant to the situation.
- steps that have already been taken towards resolution.
- relevant environmental details, such as the architecture.
We expect for non-emergency tickets the xByte Engineer will take 30-60 minutes to formulate the support ticket with relevant information. A ticket without the above information will reduce the efficacy of support.
In subsequent replies, the support team may ask you follow-up questions. Please do your best to read through the entirety of the reply and answer any such questions. If there are any additional troubleshooting steps or requests for additional information please do your best to provide it.
The more information the team is equipped with in each reply will result in faster resolution. For example, if a support engineer has to ask for logs, it will result in more cycles. If a ticket comes in with everything required, multiple engineers will be able to analyze the problem and will have what is necessary to further escalate to developers if required.
Automated Follow-up for Pending Cases
The support teams strive to provide quick and efficient responses to technical challenges. To help gather the necessary details and efficiently troubleshoot issues it may be necessary to request some additional information from the case submitter. When this is done the ticket will go into a pending state to indicate support is waiting to hear back with the results of the troubleshooting or more information. After 3-7 days of pending, our system will move the ticket to a solved status. If the issue is resolved you can solve the case yourself via your billing control panel, otherwise, the case will solve itself in 3- 7 days. If the issue is not resolved by the information the support engineer provided, you can reply to the case and provide the current status of the troubleshooting, along with any information the engineer may have requested, and the case will continue once more.
Do not contact Support Engineers directly outside of issues or support cases
xByte Support engages with users via the ticket system. Using this scoped method of communication allows for efficiency and collaboration, and ensures both parties' safety while addressing problems that may arise. No attempts should be made to receive support via direct individual email, social media, or other communication methods used by xByte team members. The use of these unofficial methods to obtain support may be considered abuse. Repeat violations may result in termination of your services and/or business relationship with xByte.
Support for Scaled Architecture:
A Support Engineer will work with your technical team around any issues encountered after the implementation of a scaled cloud architecture. We request you contact your Account Manager to start this engagement.
Service Level Agreements:
xByte provides 14x5 support by default with the ability to select additional add-ons to support your business needs.
The SLA times listed are the time frames in which you can expect the first response.
xByte Support will make the best effort to resolve any issues to your satisfaction as quickly as possible. However, the SLA times are not to be considered as an expected time-to-resolution.
Hours of Operation
Definitions of xByte Global Support Hours 14x5 - xByte Support Engineers are actively responding to tickets Monday - Friday from 7:00 AM Eastern to 9:00 PM Eastern. 24x7 - xByte Support Engineers are actively responding to tickets 24x7 days per/week in the order received and by service impact; for Emergency Support there is an engineer on-call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. On designated Holiday's, xByte provides on-call support and tickets will be addressed based on urgency and service impact.