Avocent AutoView 3200 – Bad Documentation and Support
The product seems to work fine, but the documentation is a disappointment. I had to send an e-mail to them to complain about that and never received a response. Also, no one contacted me to followup on the case and apparently it's been closed. I won't purchases Avocent products again unless there's absolutely nothing else that can compete with them. Not only was the documentation bad, but the support was worse.
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From: M
Sent: Tuesday, May 27, 2008
To: Technical Support (techsupport@avocent.com)
Subject: Case XXXXXXXX
To Whom It May Concern:
I opened up case XXXXXXXX earlier this morning and after looking through the AutoView 3100/3200 Installer/User Guide again, I had to write this e-mail to express my disappointment with your documentation. This is the first time that I’ve worked with Avocent products (I actually recommended this purchase to my manager) and after seeing the poor documentation, it’s enough to make me look at other KVM brands in the future.
Here are two issues with the documentation that are very obvious:
1.) There is supposed to be a “Network Ping” command in the console interface. I didn’t see that command and even after I upgraded to the latest firmware version I still didn’t see the command. So I have no idea where this command is.
2.) There is a section on pp. 49–52 about how to integrate the device with Active Directory. There is not enough background information here. What do these terms mean: Query Mode (Appliance) and Query Mode (Device)? There are no definitions of those terms anywhere. There has to be more background information here because I don’t see how this is supposed to work. How does the device access Active Directory to authenticate and authorize a user’s access? I don’t see any configuration setting on the device that points it to a particular domain controller or anything of that sort. The support rep I spoke to this morning stated that the Active Directory integration was a new feature and that he would try to find additional documentation to send to me. So while I’m waiting for him, I can’t complete my KVM configuration.
Sincerely,
M
