Amazon EC2 Support Options
Whether you are an enterprise or a small business, Amazon Elastic Cloud Compute (Amazon EC2) is a great cost-effective solution for getting scalable computing capacity on Amazon Web Services (AWS). It can help you save time and money. But you also need to be prepared to deal with any problems. You can either dedicate your own time for maintenance or subscribe to an AWS Support plan. A good support option can help you keep your Amazon EC2 instances running smoothly.
Supporting Your Own Infrastructure
For small-scale infrastructures, if you have an IT background, then you might be able to maintain your Amazon EC2 instances yourself. If you need to get your skills updated, you can always take an online course or go through the Amazon tutorials. Even if you subscribe to more advanced support options, it’s still a good idea to start with learning about self-supporting your infrastructure. As your requirements grow, the knowledge will help you make better decisions.
One of the best resources for this is the Amazon Support forums.
https://forums.aws.amazon.com/
AWS Support Plans
AWS Support offers different levels of plans. At the moment, there are four levels: Basic, Developer, Business, and Enterprise. Here are more details about these support plans:
Basic Support Plan
The Basic Support Plan is free and available to all Amazon EC2 customers. This plan gives AWS customers 24/7 access to customer service for account and billing questions and service limit increase requests. It also provides access to support forums, personal health dashboard, and 6 core Trusted Advisor checks. Documentation, white papers, and best-practice guides are also available for free as part of this plan.
Pricing: Free.
If you are just playing around with ideas or creating your prototypes, this plan will give you the cost-effective support you need. This support plan has all the benefits of the Basic plan. In addition, you will get guidance on best-practices and how to make your Amazon EC2 work with other components of AWS. You will also have access to client-side diagnostics tools to figure out performance issues in your system.
Pricing: Greater of $29 or 3% of monthly AWS usage.
If you are ready to run production-level workloads, then Business Support plan is a great option. You will have all the features of the previous plans with the following extras: use-case guidance for your specific needs, AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) based individual access control, full set of AWS Trusted Advisor checks, third-party software support for Amazon EC2 instances and an API to interact with Support Center and AWS Trusted Advisor.
Pricing: Greater of $100 or 0% of monthly AWS usage for the first $0–$10K, 7% of monthly AWS usage from $10K–$80K, 5% of monthly AWS usage from $80K–$250K or 3% of monthly AWS usage over $250K.
If you are running a large and mission-critical workload on Amazon EC2, then the Enterprise Support plan has everything you need to support your large business. You get the benefit of all the other plans as well as application architecture guidance, architectural and scaling guidance for use-case specific needs, AWS Concierge, a Technical account manager, and white-glove case routing for faster support.
Pricing: Greater of $15,000, 10% of monthly AWS usage for the first $0–$150K, 7% of monthly AWS usage from $150K–$500K, 5% of monthly AWS usage from $500K–$1M or 3% of monthly AWS usage over $1M.
Accessing AWS Support
There are two ways to access AWS Support. You can log into your AWS account at Support Center Link or use IAM to create users who can interact with Support Center (preferred method). Business and enterprise customers also can use AWS Support API for programmatic access.
It is an online resource to provide real-time guidance to optimize your production environment. The Trusted Advisor checks can lead to cost savings, performance improvement, and better security.
Last Words
You can run your Amazon EC2 instances on your own. But if you need help, there are a plenty of resources available.
So there you have it. If you liked this post, please follow me on the web https://buildingbettersoftware.io/contact/
References:
- http://docs.aws.amazon.com/awssupport/latest/user/getting-started.html
- https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/
- https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/developer-support/
- https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/business-support/
- https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/enterprise-support/
- https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/compare-plans/
- https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/pricing/
- https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/testimonial/
- https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/trustedadvisor/
