We had a Networker failure two nights in a row after only one unexplained 
outage over quite a few months. We got a standard response from the first 
responder to our Sev1 that we had to install patches and such.  But no 
explanation on what could have been the root cause of 2-nights-in-a-row.  So we 
escalated to our local EMC team.  They pulled Hopkington engineers onto the 
case and began pouring through the core dumps.  Within about 5 hours of the 
call we had a thorough explanation of why the build would address a Sun bug 
that was their best recommendation for solution.  They were honest in stating 
that they probably couldn't locate the source of the 2-nights-in-a-row problem 
in time for tonight's backup.  The explanation was complete enough in 
correlating failure messages to the Sun bug that even the Unix team signed off 
on the change.  'Course now that team is hoping that the fix doesn't work.

I've been impressed over the last year with EMC's stepped up commitment to the 
product.  We had a critical support team fly in for a week in mid-2009.  This 
may have been a "save the account" effort but we got a great check list of 
stability recommendations that were very effective.

It is still a bit of a pain to get past the first responder but, like I said, 
our local team jumps in when we escalate with a business problem.  And mind 
you, we are not an EMC storage shop having just gone through a take back from 
an IBM outsourcing deal.

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