Solaris support information

The IS Enterprise Services Section has extensive knowledge of the Sun (now Oracle) operating systems and can provide comprehensive support to people running Solaris.

School computing officers or representatives and members of Information Services staff can contact the Unix Section directly, others should contact the Information Services Helpline in the first instance.

sunmans mailing list

We encourage all managers of Oracle Sun equipment to subscribe to the sunmans mailing list which is open to staff of the University of Edinburgh and related institutes. We use this list to announce operating system updates, patches and for general discussion of issues relating to the ownership of Sun equipment. To subscribe send a mail message to sympa@mlist.is.ed.ac.uk and put subscribe sunmans in the body of the message.

Supplier contact information

For most purchases of Oracle Sun hardware, the approved reseller is Esteem Ltd. They can be contacted by phone on 0845 0766105. Their website is available at:

Maintenance

Hardware maintenance

Hardware problems with machines that are on maintenance should be raised by calling the Oracle Support Centre (+44 870 4000 900 option 9). The operator will ask you for type of call (hardware/software), system serial number, contact person, description of fault and a priority. There are three priority levels: P1, P2 and P3. P1 is the highest priority for urgent problems, P3 is the lowest. It is up to you to decide on the priority, however the charges that Oracle set are based on a normal distribution of priorities. If we put everything in as a high priority call we may find that our charges go up in following years.

If your call is high priority, you should get put straight through to a engineer. With other priorities, you will be given a call number (which you should keep a note of) and an engineer will call you back.

Oracle are entitled to ask you to remove all third party hardware from a machine in order to demonstrate a fault on Sun-only kit.

Software maintenance

The Solaris operating system and some other previously Sun software not rebranded for sale, is free for educational use. This licence is a right to use only and does not provide media updates, bug fixes or hotline support. If these are required then you must pay for software maintenance.

Full conditions of use and downloading the software on Oracle support pages

Paying software maintenance entitles you to free upgrades to any release of the operating system, access to system patches other than security patches and free access to upgrades to any unbundled software such as compilers. Most hardware maintenance options also include a software maintenance component.

Each department (for this purpose department should be taken to mean a section of the Oracle hardware maintenance schedule) is entitled to a named person within the department who can contact the Oracle Support Centre (hotline) by phone (same number as for hardware) or email. The department is also entitled to an account for My Oracle Support, which gives access to a knowledgebase, call reporting and tracking through the Support Centre, Oracle Documentation, patches and contract management. To use and register for this service visit:

My Oracle Support

Adding/removing/changing details of machines on maintenance

To alter the details of machines on maintenance you should contact Oracle directly. They'll need to know the serial number and model of the machines, the date they were installed, the level of service you want for the machine, and any name you may wish to associate with the machine. They can be contacted at Sunservicecontracts_Gb@oracle.com and by phone to +44 1189 246235.

There are two levels of maintenance that can be taken out. In increasing level of support/responsiveness and expense, they are:

Warranty cover

Some systems include warranty cover with the purchase price. Support is for replacement parts only and Next Business Day response.

Premium service

24 hour 7 day Support Centre cover, 7am-7pm Mon-Fri 4 hour response time for an engineer, access to My Oracle Support for patches and software upgrades, reporting of problems and knowledge base.

Maintenance pricing

Warranty is usually available free of charge bundled with the purchase of the system but do check when you buy. Premium prices are calculated as 12% of the purchase cost of the system per annum + VAT.