AWS Support - Frequently asked questions

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

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

AWS 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.

Q: How are the enhanced AWS Support tiers different from Basic Support?

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

Customers who choose AWS 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.

Q: What types of issues are supported?

Your AWS 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
Problems detected by Health Checks
A number of third-party applications such as OS, web servers, email, databases, and storage configuration

AWS Support does not include:

Code development
Debugging custom software
Performing system administration tasks

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

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

Developer: Building Blocks

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

Business: 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.

Enterprise: Application Architecture

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

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 entire AWS service portfolio. As many of our customers are using multiple infrastructure web services together within the same application, we’ve designed AWS 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.

Q: How many support cases can I initiate with AWS Support?

As many as you need. Basic Support plan customers are restricted to customer support and service limit increase cases.

Q: How many users can open technical support cases?

The Business and Enterprise support plans allow an unlimited number of users to open technical support cases (supported by AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM)). The Developer Support plan allows one user to open technical support cases. Customers with the Basic Support plan cannot open technical support cases.

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 will use all reasonable efforts to provide responses within these time frames:

^{*Business hours are generally defined as 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM in the customer country as set in My Account console, excluding holidays and weekends. These times may vary in countries with multiple time zones.}

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, however, that we'll work closely with you to resolve your issue as quickly as possible.

Q: How do I contact you?

If you have a paid Support plan, you can open a web support case from Support Center. If you have Business or Enterprise-level Support, you can request that AWS contact you at any convenient phone number or start a conversation with one of our engineers via chat.

You can also see your options for contacting Support on the Contact Us page.

Support for Health Checks

Support for Health Checks monitors some of the status checks that are displayed in the Amazon EC2 console. When one of these checks does not pass, all customers have the option to open a high-severity Technical Support case. For more information, see Support for Health Checks.

Q: I'm not in the US. Can I sign up for AWS Support?

Yes, AWS Support is a global organization. Any AWS customer may sign up for and use AWS Support.

Q: Do you speak my language?

AWS Support is available in English and Japanese.

Q: How do I access Japanese Support?

To access Japanese 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.

Q: Who should use AWS Support?

We recommend all AWS customers use AWS Support to ensure a seamless experience leveraging AWS infrastructure services. We have created multiple tiers to fit your unique technical needs and budget.

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. You many also inquire about becoming an AWS Partner, which offers different end-customer support options. For more information, see AWS Partner Network.

Q: I use an application someone else built on Amazon Web Services. Can I use AWS Support?

If the application uses resources provisioned under your AWS account, you can use AWS 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 outcome, we'll either work to resolve your issue or let you know to contact the application developer for continued troubleshooting.

Q: How can I get started with AWS Support?

You can add AWS Support during the sign up process for any AWS product. Or simply select an AWS Support Plan.

Q: How much does AWS Support cost?

AWS Support offers differing levels of service to align with your needs and budget, including our Developer, Business, and Enterprise Support plans. See our pricing table for more details.

Q: Why does my AWS Support bill spike when I purchase EC2 and RDS Reserved Instances and ElasticCache Reserved Cache Nodes?

When you prepay for compute needs with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) Reserved Instances, Amazon Relational Database Service (Amazon RDS) Reserved Instances, Amazon Redshift Reserved Instances, or Amazon ElastiCache Reserved Cache Nodes and are enrolled in a paid AWS Support plan, the one-time (upfront) charges for the prepaid resources are included in the calculation of your AWS Support charges in the month you purchase the resources. In addition, any hourly usage charges for reserved resources are included in the calculation of your AWS Support charges each month.

If you have existing reserved resources when you sign up for a Support plan, the one-time (upfront) charges for the reserved resources, prorated over the term of the reservation, are included in the price calculation for the first month of AWS Support. For example, if you purchase a three-year reserved instance on January 1 and sign up for the Business support plan on October 1 of the same year, 75% of the upfront fee you paid in January is included in the calculation of Support costs for October.

Q: How will I be charged and billed for my use of AWS Support?

Upon signup, you will be billed a minimum monthly service charge for the first calendar month (prorated).

In subsequent months 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.

Reserved resource customers (EC2 and RDS Reserved Instances and ElastiCache Reserved Cache Nodes) should expect their prepaid amounts to be included in the usage-based component during the month they are purchased.

Q: How do I cancel my AWS Support subscription?

To cancel a paid Support plan, switch to the Basic support plan:

Sign in to your AWS account with your root account credentials
Go to https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/plans/home
On the Support plans page, choose Change plan
On the Change support plan page, select the Basic plan, and then choose Change plan

Q: Can I sign up for AWS Support, receive assistance, and then cancel the subscription? If so, will I be charged a prorated amount?

You are obligated to pay for a minimum of one month of support each time you register to receive the service. While you may see a prorated 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 AWS Support to any customer that frequently registers for and terminates the service.

Q: What is Infrastructure Event Management (IEM)?

AWS Infrastructure Event Management is a short term engagement with AWS Support, available as part of the Enterprise-level Support product offering, and available for additional purchase for Business-level Support subscribers. AWS Infrastructure Event Management will partner with your technical and project resources to gain a deep understanding of your use case and provide architectural and scaling guidance for an event. Common use case examples for AWS Event Management include advertising launches, new product launches, and infrastructure migrations to AWS.

Q: How does Chat support work?

Chat is just another way, in addition to phone or email, to gain access to Technical Support engineers. By choosing the chat support icon in the Support Center, a chat session will be initiated through your browser. This provides a real-time, one-on-one interaction with our support engineers and allows additional information and links to be shared for faster issue resolution.

Offering support via chat is new for AWS, but not for Amazon.com. We have taken the same chat capabilities currently in use by retail customers and made it available for AWS technical support. Business and Enterprise-level customers can access chat capabilities within the Support Center. Support users can also launch a chat session from an individual case or the Contact Us section of the AWS website.

Q: What are the best practices for fault tolerance?

Customers frequently ask us if there is anything they should be doing to prepare for a major event that could affect a single Availability Zone. Our response to this question is that customers should follow general best practices related to managing highly available deployments (e.g., having a backup strategy, distributing resources across Availability Zones). The following links provide a good starting point:

Q: How do I configure Identity and Access Management (IAM) for support?

For details on how you can configure your IAM users to allow/deny access to AWS Support resources, see Accessing AWS Support.

Q: How long is case history retained?

Case history information is available for 12 months after creation.

Q. Can I get a history of AWS Support API calls made on my account for security analysis and operational troubleshooting purposes?

Yes. To receive a history of AWS Support API calls made on your account, you simply turn on CloudTrail in the AWS Management Console.

Note: The following calls to the AWS Support API are not recorded or delivered:

All Trusted Advisor operations: DescribeTrustedAdvisorCheckRefreshStatuses, DescribeTrustedAdvisorCheckResult, DescribeTrustedAdvisorChecks, DescribeTrustedAdvisorCheckSummaries, RefreshTrustedAdvisorCheck

For more information, see Logging AWS Support API Calls with AWS CloudTrail.

Q: What is Support for Health Checks?

Support for Health Checks monitors some of the status checks that are displayed in the Amazon EC2 console. When one of these checks does not pass, all customers have the option to open a high-severity Technical Support case. Support for Health Checks covers certain checks for Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Elastic Block Store (Amazon EBS).

Q: Which AWS services provide access to support through Support for Health Checks?

Support for Health Checks currently covers three health check scenarios: EC2 system status, EBS disabled I/O, and EBS stuck in attaching.

Q: How can I get support if an EC2 instance fails the system status check?

If an EC2 system status check fails for more than 20 minutes, a button appears that allows any AWS customer to open a case. Most of the details about your case are auto-populated, such as instance name, region, and customer information, but you can add additional context with a free-form text description.

Note: Support for Health Checks covers only the EC2 system status check, not the EC2 instance status check. For troubleshooting ideas, see Troubleshooting Instances with Failed Status Checks.

Q: How can I get support if an EBS volume is stuck in attaching or has disabled I/O?

An EBS volume that has a health status of disabled I/O or is stuck in attaching displays a Troubleshoot Now button. You are presented with a number of self-remediation options that could potentially fix the problem without the need to contact support. If the EBS volume is still failing the health check after you have followed all applicable steps, choose Contact Support to open a case.

Q: What is the response time for my Support for Health Checks support case?

A Support for Health Checks case opened through the console is a high-severity case.

Q: How do I check the status of my case after it has been opened?

After you submit a case, the button changes from Contact Support to View Case. To view the case status, choose View Case.

Q: Do I have to open a case for each instance that is unresponsive?

You can, but you don’t need to. You can include additional context and instance names in the text description submitted with your initial case.

Q: Why must an EC2 instance fail the system status check for 20 minutes? Why not just allow customers to open a case immediately?

Most system status issues are resolved by automated processes in less than 20 minutes and do not require any action on the part of the customer. If the instance is still failing the check after 20 minutes, then opening a case brings the situation to the attention of our technical support team for assistance.

Q: Can any of my Identity and Access Management (IAM) users open a case?

Any user can create and manage a Support case for Health Checks case using their root account credentials. IAM users associated with accounts that have a Business or Enterprise Support plan can also create and manage a Support for Health Checks case.

Q: What is AWS Trusted Advisor?

AWS Trusted Advisor is an application that draws upon best practices learned from AWS’s aggregated operational history of serving hundreds of thousands of AWS customers. Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment and makes recommendations for saving money, improving system performance, or closing security gaps.

Q: How do I access Trusted Advisor?

Trusted Advisor is available in the AWS Management Console. All AWS users have access to the data for seven checks. Users with Business or Enterprise-level Support can access all checks. You can access the Trusted Advisor console directly at https://console.aws.amazon.com/trustedadvisor/.

Q: What made you choose the current checks/recommendations over others?

Every check was vetted for accuracy, consistency, and usefulness to our customers. We gather data and research to ensure we are making the right recommendations based on best practices and historical values. We have identified many possible checks for future implementation, and we will continue to add them over time.

Q: Does Trusted Advisor monitor my usage? Can Amazon see what I’m doing with 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 account without your consent.

Q: What does Trusted Advisor check?

Trusted Advisor includes an ever-expanding list of checks in the following four categories:

Cost Optimization–Recommendations that can potentially save you money by highlighting unused resources and opportunities to reduce your bill.
Security–Identification of security settings that could make your AWS solution less secure.
Fault Tolerance–Recommendations that help increase the resiliency of your AWS solution by highlighting redundancy shortfalls, current service limits, and overutilized resources.
Performance–Recommendations that can help to improve the speed and responsiveness of your applications.

For more information on Trusted Advisor and an up-to-date listing of checks, see Meet AWS Trusted Advisor.

Q: How does the Trusted Advisor notification feature work?

The Trusted Advisor notification feature helps you stay up-to-date with your AWS resource deployment. You will be notified by weekly email when you opt in for this service, and it is totally free.

What is in the notification? The notification email includes the summary of saving estimates and your check status, especially highlighting changes of check status.
How do I sign up for the notification? This is an opt-in service, so do make sure to set up the notification in your dashboard. You can choose which contacts receive notification on the Preferences pane of the Trusted Advisor console.
Who can get this notification? You can indicate up to three recipients for the weekly status updates and savings estimates.
What language will the notification be in? The notification is available in English and Japanese.
How often will I get notified, and when? Currently you will receive a weekly notification email, typically on Thursday or Friday, and it will reflect your resource configuration over the past week (7 days). It is in our roadmap to provide an event-triggered mailer and more flexibility.
Can I unsubscribe from the notifications if I do not want to receive the email anymore? Yes. You can change the setting in your dashboard by clearing all the check boxes and then selecting "Save Preferences". Also, help us make this feature more relevant and better for you by using the "Feedback" button on the dashboard.
How much does it cost? It is totally free. Get started today!

Q: How does the "Recent Changes" feature work?

Trusted Advisor tracks the recent changes to your resource status on the console dashboard. The most recent changes over the past 30 days appear at the top to bring them to your attention. The system will track seven updates per page, and you can go to different pages to view all recent changes by clicking the forward or the backward arrow displayed on the top-right corner of the "Recent Changes" area.

Q: How does the "Exclude Items" function work?

If you don’t want to be notified about the status of a particular resource, you can choose to exclude (suppress) the reporting for that resource. You would normally do this after you have inspected the results of a check and decide not to make any changes to the AWS resource or setting that Trusted Advisor is flagging.

To exclude items, check the box to the left of the resource items, and then choose "Exclude". Excluded items appear in a separate view. You can restore (include) them at any time by selecting the items in the excluded items list and then choosing "Include".

The "Exclude Items" function is available only at the resource level, not at the check level. We recommend that you examine each resource alert before excluding it to make sure that you can still see the overall status of your deployment without overlooking a certain area. For an example, see AWS Trusted Advisor for Everyone in the AWS Blog.

Q: What is an action link?

Most items in a Trusted Advisor report have hyperlinks to the AWS Management Console, where you can take action on the Trusted Advisor recommendations. Action links are included for all services that support them.

For example, the Amazon EBS Snapshots check lists Amazon EBS volumes whose snapshots are missing or more than seven days old. In each row of the report, the volume ID is a hyperlink to that volume in the Amazon EC2 console, where you can take action to create a snapshot with just a couple of clicks.

Q: How do I manage the access to the Trusted Advisor console? What is the IAM policy?

For the Trusted Advisor console, access is controlled by IAM policies that use the trustedadvisor namespace, and access options include viewing and refreshing individual checks or categories of checks. For more information, see Controlling Access to the Trusted Advisor Console.

Q: How do I access AWS Trusted Advisor via API?

You can retrieve and refresh Trusted Advisor results programmatically. For more information, see About the AWS Support API.

Q: How often can I refresh my Trusted Advisor result?

You can refresh a check 5 minutes after it was last refreshed. You can refresh individual checks or refresh all the checks at once by choosing "Refresh All" in the top-right corner of the summary dashboard.

When you visit the Trusted Advisor dashboard, any checks that have not been refreshed in the last 24 hours are automatically refreshed; this can take a few minutes. The date and time of the last refresh is displayed to the right of the check title.

In addition, for customers with Business or Enterprise Support plans, the Trusted Advisor data is automatically refreshed weekly.

What does "The check could not be completed in the allotted time" mean? How can I fix this?

We set a limit on the amount of time a Trusted Advisor check can spend to process a check. You can try to refresh the check again later, in case it was a one-time failure.

Q: How do Trusted Advisor activities affect my Amazon CloudTrail logs?

Each customer action in Trusted Advisor trigger

	Developer Plan (Business hours*)	Business Plan (24x7)	Enterprise Plan (24x7)
General guidance	24 hours or less	24 hours or less	24 hours or less
System impaired	12 hours or less	12 hours or less	12 hours or less
Production system impaired		4 hours or less	4 hours or less
Production system down		1 hour or less	1 hour or less
Business-critical system down			15 minutes or less

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