An overview of AWS Support plans

AWS Support provides an effective combination of tools, technologies, employees, and various programs that enable your organization to proactively optimize performance, reduce costs, and implement innovations at a faster rate. Regardless of your company's size or industry, Amazon Web Services enables you to move faster in the cloud and concentrate on core operations. This also affords the possibility of significant time savings.

Thus, AWS seeks to facilitate the success of its customers throughout their cloud journey and to respond to pertinent requests. Such requests include answering questions about best practices, providing configuration guidance, fixing bugs, and resolving various issues. To accomplish this, AWS offers four Support plans that enable the resolution of issues, the reduction of costs, and the proper utilization of AWS services.

In this blog post, we will examine briefly the AWS Support plans that can meet your organization's needs:

• Basic

• Developer

• Business

• Enterprise

Basic Support

Each customer automatically receives free AWS Basic Support. This tier comprises:

• communities and customer service

24/7 accessibility to customer service, relevant documentation and whitepapers, support forums, and communities such as AWS re:Post. With Basic Support, your organization can also contact AWS with questions about billing or to enhance service boundaries.

• Trusted Advisor on AWS

Connect to a limited number of AWS Trusted Advisor checks, as well as provisioning recommendations based on best practices. This allows for enhanced performance and security.

• AWS Personal Health Dashboard

This tool provides a customized view of the health of your AWS services. In addition, it provides alerts and remediation recommendations if your AWS resources are compromised.

The aforementioned features are complimentary for all customers. Even so, if your business begins to migrate mission-critical workloads to Amazon Web Services, you should consider higher support tiers to meet your business's requirements.

Developer, Business, and Enterprise Support

These three tiers include all the benefits of Basic Support as well as the capacity to open an unlimited number of technical support cases. Such Support plans offer month-to-month pricing and do not require long-term contracts. The Developer plan is the least expensive, while the Business plan is in the middle. The Enterprise plan is the priciest.

Developer Support

With the Developer Support plan, your organization can send an email to client support and receive a response within 24 hours to important questions. Additionally, you may be notified in less than 12 hours if your system is compromised. The Developer tier is ideal for businesses that are experimenting with Amazon Web Services or conducting proofs of concept.

Clients who subscribe to a particular Support plan receive the following benefits:

• Best practice guides;

• Customer-facing diagnostic equipment;

• Support for building-block architecture that includes guidance on integrating AWS offerings, features, and numerous services.

For example, suppose your company is looking into AWS services. Without a doubt, you have already recognized or even collaborated with a number of them. However, you do not comprehend how to combine these services to develop applications that meet the needs of your organization. This is when the support for building-block architecture comes in handy, as it enables the definition of opportunities to combine specific services and features.

Business Support

Customers should upgrade to the Business Support plan when they begin running production workloads on Amazon Web Services. This tier includes everything that the previous tiers provided. Here, however, Trusted Advisor will initiate all checks for your AWS account. Thus, you gain direct phone access to the AWS support team, which guarantees a four-hour response time based on the SLA (service-level agreement). However, if your system is compromised, you will only be notified within an hour.

Furthermore, as an integral part of the Business Support plan, AWS enables infrastructure event management access. Amazon Web Services can help your business plan for various massive events, such as new product launches and advertising blitzes, for an extra charge.

This tier gives clients access to additional features, including:

• Use-case guidance for identifying AWS offerings, features, and services that can meet the specific needs of your organization;

• Every single check provided by AWS Trusted Advisor;

• Limited assistance for third-party software (like common operating systems or application stack components).

For example, your organization has the Business tier and intends to install a common third-party operating system on the relevant Amazon EC2 instances. Contact AWS Support to install, configure, and troubleshoot this operating system. However, for advanced topics such as optimizing performance, utilizing custom scripts, and resolving security issues, you should contact a third-party software vendor directly.

Enterprise support

In conclusion, organizations with mission-critical workloads must utilize the Enterprise Support plan. The Enterprise tier incorporates all aspects of the previous plans. In addition, it offers a 15-minute response time for urgent workloads.

Customers with this plan will receive the following benefits:

• Application architecture advice that serves as a consultative relationship to support your organization's particular use cases or applications;

• Infrastructure event management is regarded as a short-term engagement with AWS Support. It facilitates deeper comprehension of the company's use cases and provides architectural and scaling guidance;

• TAM (Technical Account Manager).

Technical Account Manager

If your company has the Enterprise Support tier, the TAM is your main point of contact at Amazon Web Services. During the planning, deployment, and optimization of your applications, they provide the appropriate guidance and architectural reviews, as well as constant communication with your business.

In addition, your technical account manager offers guidance on various AWS services. Using an integrated approach, they assist with the design of solutions that can effectively apply multiple services together.

For example, your company wishes to develop an application that requires the use of multiple AWS services. In this case, your TAM will provide insightful advice on how to correctly utilize these services. This can be accomplished by aligning your organization's new application with its predefined requirements.

Scope of AWS Support strategies

AWS Support tiers address development and production issues associated with AWS services and products. In addition, they cover additional crucial components:

• "How to" inquiries about AWS services or features;

• Common best practices that facilitate the efficient integration, deployment, and management of cloud-based applications;

• Fixing issues with the API and AWS Software Development Kit (AWS SDK);

• Addressing operational and systemic problems with AWS resources;

• Issues with the AWS Management Console and other AWS applications;

• Problems uncovered by EC2 health checks;

• Multiple third-party applications, such as operating systems, web servers, databases, VPN, or storage configurations.

AWS Support does not include:

• Creating code

• Testing bespoke software

• Performing system administration tasks

• Configuring database queries

• Cross-account support

The conclusion

Amazon Web Services is focused on addressing the most difficult obstacles its customers face on their cloud journey. Occasionally, this may necessitate troubleshooting a pertinent issue. In the majority of instances, however, this entails assisting clients in better utilizing AWS services, responding to questions regarding best practices, and offering configuration guidance. Ultimately, AWS aims to assist your business in achieving the goals for its success.