DataStax Astra Support Policy

This Support Addendum is part of and subject to an agreement with DataStax (the “Agreement”) that includes the DataStax Astra Terms (at https://www.datastax.com/legal/datastax-astra-terms), unless Customer has executed a separate agreement with DataStax governing Customer’s receipt and use of DataStax Astra.

DataStax provides Support of eligible Cloud Services under the terms of this Support Policy. “Support” means the services described in this Support Addendum and does not include one-time services or other services not specified in this Support Addendum, such as training, consulting or custom development. Self-service support is included with any paid Compute Tier of DataStax Astra. In addition, DataStax offers 3 levels of paid Premium Support as further described below, which can be procured via an Order Schedule  Any capitalized terms not defined hereunder shall have the meaning specified in the Agreement.

Definitions

“Business Day” means Monday through Friday in Customer’s selected support region.

“Business Hours” means 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. on Business Days.

“Customer Representative” means the individual employee of Customer that submits an Issue via phone, email or through the Support Portal.

“Documentation” means the published documentation describing the functionality of the Cloud Service

“Issue” means a material and verifiable failure of the DataStax Cloud Service to conform to the specifications set forth in the Documentation.

“Support Portal” means the 24-hour Cloud Services web ticketing system available at http://houston.datastax.com.

1. Supported Services

Support is offered for and covers only Customer’s use of DataStax’s Cloud Services provided under the Agreement (the “Supported Services”). 

2. Information Support. 

DataStax will provide reasonable product and technical support to address questions concerning use of the Supported Services. Customer Representative may initiate Support by submitting a ticket through the Support Portal. Support is provided in the English language only. Customer acknowledges information and materials provided to DataStax in connection with receiving Support may be used by the DataStax global support team for the purpose of providing Support in accordance with this Support Policy. 

 3. Issue Support. 

DataStax will make commercially reasonable efforts to resolve any Issues submitted by a Customer Representative. Such efforts may include helping with diagnosis, suggesting workarounds, providing patches, or making a change to the Supported Services in a new release. Support will not be provided for the following: (1) If the Issue is caused by Customer’s negligence, hardware malfunction, network latency or causes beyond the reasonable control of DataStax, (2) the Issue is caused by third party software not managed by or provided by DataStax as part of the Cloud Services, (3) Customer has not paid the Cloud Service fees when due,  (4) use of the Software or Cloud Services in a manner inconsistent with the applicable Documentation, (5) modifications to the Software or Cloud Services not provided by or approved in writing by DataStax, or (6) use of the Software or Cloud Services with products or software not provided or approved in writing by DataStax. Customer shall not submit Issues arising from any software or services other than the Supported Services or otherwise use Support for unsupported software or services. 

4. Service Levels

When a Customer Representative submits an Issue, Customer may assign in the Support Portal a priority level based on the relative impact an Issue has on the use of the Cloud Services. DataStax may re-assign the priority level, as defined below, in its sole discretion.  DataStax will confirm the priority level with Customer and will resolve any disagreement regarding the priority as soon as is reasonably practicable. Certain priority level tickets may not be available to the Customer depending on the Support offering purchased.

* At the start of Bronze Support, the Customer must select a Support Region (US EAST, US WEST, APAC, or EMEA).

“Urgent” means a critical production issue that severely impacts and halts your use of the Cloud Service where there is no procedural workaround. Examples include: Cloud Services are down or unavailable, Customer Data is corrupted or lost and must restore from backup, or a critical documents feature and/or function of the Cloud Services is not available.

“High” means a major functionality of the Cloud Services is impacted or significant performance degradation in the Cloud Services is experienced where a reasonable workaround exists which allows for continued essential operations. Examples include: Cloud Services are operational but experiencing highly degraded performance to the point of a major impact on usage or an important feature and/or function of the Cloud Services offering is unavailable but operations can continue in a restricted fashion.

“Normal” means a partial, non-critical loss of use of the Cloud Services where a short-term workaround is available but not scalable and Customer can continue essential operations.

“Low” means a routine technical issue; information requested on application capabilities, navigation, installation or configuration; or a bug affecting a small number of users of the Cloud Services where an acceptable workaround is available. There is no impact on the quality, performance, or functionality of the Cloud Services

Responses: A “Response” is an initial reply or communication with the Customer by DataStax about the reported Issue. The “Target Initial Response Times” shall be measured by the elapsed time between DataStax’s receipt of a reported Issue within the Support Portal and the time when there is a Response.  The actual time required to work towards  resolving the Issue, if such full resolution occurs, may be longer than the Target Initial Response Time. Customer understands and agrees that resolution of an Issue is not guaranteed and may not occur.

5. Customer Responsibilities.

DataStax’s obligation to provide Support Services is conditioned upon Customer satisfying the following responsibilities with respect to each Issue:

• Customer making reasonable efforts to resolve the Issue before reporting the Issue to DataStax, including having the Issue reviewed by the representative of the Customer that submits the Issue;
• Customer has provided DataStax with sufficient information, including any reproducible test cases requested by DataStax;
• Customer has designated personnel resources to provide necessary diagnostic information until a fix or workaround is made available. For Urgent Issues Customer must have a dedicated resource available to work on the Issue on an ongoing basis with DataStax.

 

6. How to Escalate a Support Issue.

DataStax Support is committed to providing accurate and timely solutions to technical support needs. If Customer has a critical or serious technical issue on its production system or is not satisfied with the response or resolution provided by DataStax Support, Customer may use one of the following escalation paths to have its concerns addressed:

• For Support Issues where the availability of the Cloud Services has changed or was not correctly stated initially, request to have the priority of the ticket increased according to the above service level definitions;
• For an existing Issue that has become critical in nature where the Cloud Services are down, inaccessible, or Customer is dissatisfied with the DataStax response or resolution, follow the procedure below for management review:
• Verify that the support ticket is up-to-date and all requested information and files have been provided and request an escalation; and/or
• Contact Support by calling the DataStax escalation phone line to speak with a support engineer. The escalation number can be found on the ‘Contact Us -> Ticket Escalation’ page once logged into the DataStax Support Portal. (You will receive access to the Support portal upon processing of your contract.) Customer’s Representative will be asked for the Representative’s name, company name, ticket number, contact number, and reason for the escalation. If a DataStax support engineer is not available an operator will take the information and generate an urgent support request.

Once an escalation request has been received, the support manager will: (1) contact Customer’s Representative to acknowledge the escalation and determine the mode of communication and frequency of updates; and (2) work to ensure that the appropriate resources are available to identify a solution or workaround.

7. Amendment.

Except as expressly provided herein, no modification of this Support Addendum will be effective unless contained in writing and signed by an authorized representative of each party. From time to time, DataStax may amend this Support Policy in its sole discretion. DataStax will post the amended terms on the DataStax website at https://www.datastax.com/legal/datastax-astra-support-policy. DataStax will also update the “Last Updated Date” at the top of this Support Policy. By continuing to access or use Support after DataStax has provided Customer with such notice of a change, Customer is indicating that it agrees to be bound by the modified Support Policy. If the changes have a material adverse impact on and are not acceptable to the Customer, then Customer must notify DataStax within 30 days of the applicable Last Updated Date. If DataStax cannot accommodate Customer’s objection, then the prior Support Policy shall govern until the expiration of the then-current Order Schedule. Any renewed Order Schedule will be governed by the then-current Support Addendum. No term or condition contained in Customer’s purchase order or similar document will apply unless specifically agreed to by DataStax in writing, even if DataStax has accepted the order set forth in such purchase order, and all such terms or conditions are otherwise hereby expressly rejected by DataStax.