AWS Premium Support FAQs

Answers

Q. What is Amazon Web Services Premium Support (AWS Premium Support)?

AWS Premium Support gives customers help on technical issues and additional confidence to operate their infrastructures in the cloud. Customers can choose a plan that meets their specific requirements, continuing the AWS tradition of providing the building blocks of success without bundling or long term commitments.

AWS Premium Support is one-on-one, fast-response support from experienced technical support engineers. The service helps customers use AWS's products and features. With pay-by-the-month pricing and unlimited support cases, customers are freed from long-term commitments. Customers with operational issues or technical questions can contact a team of support engineers and receive predictable response times and personalized support.

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Q: How is AWS Premium Support different from Basic Support?

AWS Basic Support offers all AWS customers access to our Resource Center, Service Health Dashboard, Product FAQs, and Discussion Forums – at no additional charge. Customers who desire a deeper level of support can subscribe to AWS Premium Support.

Customers who choose AWS Premium Support gain one-on-one, fast-response support from AWS engineers. The service helps customers use AWS's products and features. With pay-by-the-month pricing and unlimited support cases, customers are freed from long-term commitments. Customers with operational issues or technical questions can contact a team of support engineers and receive a predictable response times and personalized support.

Select an AWS Premium Support Plan

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Q: What types of issues are supported?

Your AWS Premium Support covers development and production issues for AWS products and services, along with other key stack components.

  • "How to" questions about AWS service and features
  • Best practices to help you successfully integrate, deploy, and manage applications in the cloud
  • Troubleshooting API and AWS SDK issues
  • Troubleshooting operational or systemic problems with AWS resources
  • Issues with our Management console or other AWS tools

AWS Premium Support does not include:

  • Code development
  • Debugging custom software
  • Performing system administration tasks

AWS Premium Support Gold and Platinum levels include a Beta-level of support for common operating systems and common application stack components. The experience and diversity of our support team often allow us to provide guidance for a large number of other applications beyond what is listed below.

  • Operating Systems including Amazon Linux, Ubuntu, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, SUSE Linux, and Microsoft Windows 2003 & 2008 R2
  • Common application stack components including Apache and IIS web servers, the Amazon SDKs, Sendmail, Postfix, and FTP

To provide feedback on how we can improve our 3rd Party Software Support - Beta, including requests for prioritization of additional Application Infrastructure components, please click here.

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Q: What level of architecture support is provided by Premium Support?

The level of support provided varies by premium support level. Higher service levels provide progressively more support for the customer use case and application specifics.

Bronze: Building Blocks

Guidance on how to use all AWS products, features, and services together. Includes guidance on best practices and generalized architectural advice.

Silver: Service Reviews

Review of specific AWS products, features, and services being used. Includes basic guidance on aligning your current AWS usage to best practices.

Gold: Use Case Guidance

Guidance on what AWS products, features, and services to use to best support your specific use cases. Includes guidance on optimizing AWS products and configuration to meet your specific needs.

Platinum: Application Architecture

Consultative partnership supporting specific use cases and applications. Includes design reviews and architectural guidance. Platinum customers support team includes a dedicated Technical Account Manager, and access to an AWS Solutions Architect.

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Q: I only use one or two services. Can I purchase support for just the one(s) I'm using?
No. Our support offering covers the suite of services described above. As many of our customers are using multiple infrastructure web services together within the same application, we’ve designed AWS Premium Support with this in mind. We’ve found that the majority of support issues, among users of multiple services, relate to how multiple services are being used together. Our goal is to support your application as seamlessly as possible.
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Q: How many support cases can I initiate with AWS Premium Support?
As many as you need.
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Q: How quickly will you get back to me?

Our first-contact response times are based on your chosen severity level for each case. We're committed to providing a response within the time frames described below.

Severity Level Response Time Available For
Critical 15 minutes Platinum
Urgent 1 hour Gold, Platinum
High 4 hours Silver, Gold, Platinum
Normal 12 hours Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum
Low 1 day Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum

Bronze and Silver customers can expect a support professional to be available Monday through Friday 8am-6pm in the customer time zone. Gold and Platinum customers can expect support any time, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, and 365 days a year.

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Q: How quickly will you fix my issue?
That depends on your issue. The problems that application or service developers encounter vary widely, making it difficult to predict issue resolution times. We can say that we'll work closely with you to resolve your issue as quickly as possible.
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Q: How do I contact you?

All Premium Support customers can open a case online from the Support Center with "Web Support." Gold and Platinum customers may also Click to Call to have AWS contact you at any convenient phone number. If the status of your ongoing case changes, AWS Premium Support will send you an email notification.

Basic Support customers can Report an Issue if they see a system-wide problem that they believe originates with AWS. Additionally, Basic customers will find account and billing support on the Contact Us page.

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Q: My business needs more named support contacts. How do I add them?
You can manage your named support contacts from the Support Center. Bronze customers are eligible for one named support contact; Silver, two; Gold, three; and Platinum, an unlimited number.
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Q: I'm not in the US. Can I sign up for AWS Premium Support?
Yes. Any AWS customer may sign up for and use AWS Premium Support.
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Q: Do you speak my language?
Premium Support is available in English and Japanese.
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Q: How do I access Japanese Premium Support?
To access Japanese Premium Support, subscribers should select Japanese as their language preference from the dropdown at the top right of any AWS web page. Once your language preference is set to Japanese, all support inquiries will be sent to our Japanese support team.
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Q: Who should use AWS Premium Support?
We recommend all AWS customers use AWS Premium Support to ensure a seamless experience leveraging AWS infrastructure services.
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Q: How do I offer support for my end customers' AWS-related issues?
If an issue is related to your AWS account, we'll be happy to help you. For problems with a resource provisioned under their own accounts, your customers will need to contact us directly. Due to security and privacy concerns we can only discuss specific details with the account holder of the resource in question.
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Q: I use an application someone else built on Amazon Web Services. Can I use AWS Premium Support?
If the application uses resources provisioned under your AWS account, you can use AWS Premium Support. First, we'll help you to determine whether the issue lies with an AWS resource or with the third-party application. Depending on that, we'll either work to resolve your issue or let you know to contact the application developer for continued troubleshooting.
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Q: How can I get started with AWS Premium Support?
You can add AWS Premium Support during the sign up process for any AWS product. Or simply Select an AWS Premium Support Plan
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Q: How much does AWS Premium Support cost?
AWS Premium Support offers differing levels of service for a variety of budgets. The Bronze plan is the only fixed rate plan, and the Gold plan lets you earn volume discounts. With AWS Support, you have the flexibility to choose the support type that makes sense for you.
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Q: Why does my AWS Premium Support bill spike when I purchase Reserved Instances?
When you pre-pay for compute needs with Reserved Instances and are enrolled in a Premium Support plan, the one-time fee for your Reserved Instances will be included in the calculation of your AWS usage in the month you purchase the Reserved Instances. For customers who sign up for Platinum, Gold, or Silver support after purchasing Reserved Instances, a prorated portion of the one-time fee paid for your Reserved Instances will be included in the first month of Premium Support. The hourly usage charges for Reserved Instances will be included in the calculation of your AWS usage each month.
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Q: How will I be charged and billed for my use of AWS Premium Support?

On the first of each month (and upon signup) you'll be billed a minimum monthly service charge. If your usage-based charges exceed the minimum monthly service charge, you'll be billed for the difference at the end of the month. End of the month bills, being dated on the first of the following month, will thus reflect both the current month's usage-based charges as well as the following month's minimum monthly service charge.

Reserved Instance customers should expect their Reserved Instances to be included in the usage-based component.

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Q: How do I cancel my AWS Premium Support account?

You can cancel your subscription to any of AWS's paid, opt-in services in three steps.

  1. Sign in to your "Manage Your Account" page.
  2. Scroll down to "Cancel Selected Services".
  3. Select "AWS Premium Support" in the drop down list.
  4. Click "Cancel Service".

Your next bill may include usage from the period before your service was canceled. Those charges will not be pro-rated.

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Q: Can I sign up for AWS Premium Support, receive assistance, and then cancel the subscription? If so, will I be charged a pro-rated amount?
You are obligated to pay for a minimum of thirty (30) days of support each time you register to receive the service. While you may see a pro-rated refund when you cancel the service, your account will be charged again at the end of the month to account for the minimum subscription fee. We reserve the right to refuse to provide Premium Support to any customer that frequently registers for and terminates the service.
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Q: Does AWS Trusted Advisor monitor my usage? Can Amazon see what I’m doing with AWS?
AWS Trusted Advisor respects your privacy just as all Amazon Web Services do. We will never have access to your data or the software running on your EC2 instances without your consent.
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Q: What does AWS Trusted Advisor check?
The AWS Trusted Advisor program includes an ever-expanding list of best practice checks. The checks are grouped into three families: fault tolerance checks, security audits, and cost optimizations. Here are examples of checks performed by AWS Trusted Advisor:
  • Security Group - Open Ports. This check inspects your security groups and classifies each open port into one of three categories. Green ports for common protocols such as SSH and HTTP, Red ports for protocols that don't usually need to be open on internet-facing servers (e.g. port 1443 for Microsoft SQL Server), and Yellow for all others.
  • Security Group - CIDR Rules. This check inspects your security groups for rules that have errors which might allow more access than may be intended. Some people often confuse "/0"and "/32" addresses.
  • Reserved Instance Recommendations. This check looks at your billing and instance utilization history and recommends optimizations that could be achieved by the purchase of Reserved Instances.
  • Unused Elastic IP Addresses. Elastic IP Addresses that are not attached to an Amazon EC2 instance will be flagged since you pay for them if you don't use them.
  • EBS Snapshots. This check looks for EBS volumes that don't have a snapshot, or which have only aged snapshots. Volumes will show as red if there is no snapshot at all or if the most recent one is very old; Yellow if the most recent snapshot is somewhat old, and Green if the most recent snapshot is reasonably recent.
  • Amazon EC2 Availability Zone Balance. This check identifies situations where Amazon EC2 instances are not evenly distributed across Availability Zones, or if (even worse) they are all in the same Availability Zone.
  • Elastic Load Balancer Optimization. This check determines whether instance allocation across Availability Zones for each Load Balancer is balanced.
  • Service Limits. This check gives you visibility into the per-account limits and usage of things like instances, Elastic IP addresses, and other resources (in almost every case, limits can be raised using the appropriate online form).
AWS Trusted Advisor does not have access to customer data. Recommendations are made by analyzing information gathered using a constrained set of internal and documented AWS API calls.
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Q: What if you can’t resolve my 3rd Party Software issue?
In the case that we are not able to resolve your issue we will collaborate with, or refer you to, the appropriate vendor support for that product. In some cases you may need to have a support relationship with the vendor to receive support from them.
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Q: What are some of the most common reasons a customer might require 3rd party software support?
  • Installation and Configuration
  • Performance Tuning
  • Architecting for Failure (e.g. Backups and Failover)
  • Application and System Troubleshooting
  • Security Questions
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