@scottalanmiller said in What Is Expected of Microsoft Server Support?:
Did they fix something broken with the OS that IT could not have fixed?
There are some quirky poorly documented things that are sometimes need to be done with ESEUTIL, and repairing from corruption, or failed log replays on Exchange and SQL. In theory it's not always Microsofts fault (caused by storage layer issues).
The other issue is driver issues for IO devices. In theory this should be transative (supported by teh OEM who agree's to support your OS). That said OEM's often don't support the free OS's because they don't have joint engineering commitements to fix issues on them.
RedHat has hard commitments from Avago/Broadcom to fix a driver HBA issue if they find it. Having a Server that has a supported OS means they have Avago's commitment to spend hundreds of thousands of engineering time to fix an issue. Redhat will possibly work to mitigate it from their side if possible. Missing the OS vendor in this conversation/effort can make things move slower or stall. Avago and other component manufactoreres will refuse support calls from a customer who bought the device through an OEM so without the OEM listing your OS as supported you are kinda screwed.
(A long time ago) I saw a case where a I/O device had outright buggy silicon, and a driver and OS side workaround was needed to resolve it. This is all the more fun as how the I/O device engineering teams work is they generally refuse to work with a customer directly and require the OS vendor escalate the issue to them.