Known Issues Lists

[markjx]

I wanted to start a quick discussion regarding Known Issues Lists, Release Notes, and documentation. Mainly, I want to pass on what we were told by our TAM (Technical Account Manager). In short:

The way to find out the Known Issues for 3.1.8 is to read the Release Notes for 3.1.9. Whatever is listed as fixed in 3.1.9 was obviously broken in 3.1.8. In other words, if support tells you to upload to version x; don't do it. Read the Release Notes for x+1. If it isn't out yet, then wait. But, certainly don't upgrade just because Support tells you to.

Again, this isn't me speaking, this is the guidance we got from our TAM.

Here's how this came about: We were having an issue where a PA-4020 stopped passing all traffic, causing a business interruption. The advice from support was to upgrade to 3.1.8. Of course, there are (now) well known issues with 3.1.8 breaking URL Filtering. We expressed outrage at being told to upgrade to a version of code which contained obvious, and huge bugs. We were told that we shouldn't have upgraded to 3.1.8 without first reading the 3.1.9 Release Notes. Kind of a, "If support told you to jump off a bridge, would you?" argument. It was an incredible argument from a vendor to a customer. Needless to say, as of July 1, 2011, we're not paying for a TAM.

MJ

[nrice]

There are multiple other ways to find out known issues in a certain release- 

1)  You can check that release’s release notes under the section titled “Known Issues”.

2)  For issues that impact functionality we have both a KnowledgePoint where questions, discussions, and articles can be posted, and also our case management Articles section has troubleshooting, how-to, and workarounds for potential case topics.

3)  In the extreme case a critical issue is discovered, we have a twitter account (http://twitter.com/pantwks_support) where we link to Knowledgepoint documents containing latest news on the issue.  Users who do not use twitter should make sure their user profile is configured to receive proactive support updates.    In this case we would also update the Announcement banner on the KnowledgePoint home page.

On the other note there are many variables to take in when choosing to upgrade. Feature set, and bug fixes are the main ones.  When running an older release the first question to ask yourself is “does the new version contain fixes or features that are important to my company?”  If yes, then you should look at upgrading. 

[Remo]

Hi everyone

I konw this discussion is very (very) old but to me it is still a very important thing.

What do you think about when Palo would maintain a more current "Known Issues List"? I konw there is a list in every release notes but I think it would be much more helpful (probably to every palo customer) if there would be a list of ALL known issues which would be kept current as soon as a Bug ID is assigned to a problem?

At least for me this would be very helpful and it would also reduce the effort for palo support. With such a list I were (probably) able to check in a few seconds if a problem/crash I had today is already known and I did not had to open a support case.

What do you think of that?

Regards,

Remo

PS: Or am I not up to date and such a list does already exist?

[pulukas]

Realistically, this is not going to happen.  Palo Alto holds the cards for both future features and known bugs close to the vest.  

Your best option is to keep the lines of communication open with the sales engineer who has direct access to this information.  The ones I've dealt with were always willing to make on-demand searches for me as my needs arose.

[Remo]

Hi Steve

Thanks for your input. But what do you (and also the rest of the community) think of this without thinking about whats realistic and not? I know that PAN is holding the cards very close and I also know the way with asking our SE. But still, I think this would make sense. And who knows what will happen if there are enough people who also think this would be useful.

Regards,

Remo

[reaper]

Hi Remo

The release notes always contain a list of 'known issues' that have been positively identified but have not been 'fixed' just yet, which we think are useful for our customers to be aware of

Having a list publicly available with each and every bug the moment it is created, while being helpful in some cases, might cause more harm in most cases as many 'bugs' have a tendency to evolve over the course of an investigation. something reported as one thing may actually be a side effect of something completely different or turn out to be nothing at all (it's not always the firewall).

For such cases it's more useful if you call support and someone can analyse your situation to see if it matches something that's already being worked on or not. This also helps prevent frustration in case of 'false positive': if one of the reported bugs matches your issue at the moment but turns out to be something else, when it is fixed in the next release and your issue persists

hope this helps