Getting Started with AWS Support
AWS Support offers a range of plans that provide access to tools and expertise that support the success and operational health of your AWS solutions. All support plans provide 24x7 access to customer service, AWS documentation, whitepapers, and support forums. For technical support and more resources to plan, deploy, and improve your AWS environment, you can select a support plan that best aligns with your AWS use case.
Features of AWS Support Plans
AWS Support offers four support plans: Basic, Developer, Business, and Enterprise. The Basic plan is free of charge and offers support for account and billing questions and service limit increases. The other plans offer an unlimited number of technical support cases with pay-by-the-month pricing and no long-term contracts, providing the level of support that meets your needs.
All AWS customers automatically have around-the-clock access to these features of the Basic support plan:
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Customer Service: one-on-one responses to account and billing questions
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Support forums
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Service health checks
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Documentation, whitepapers, and best-practice guides
Customers with a Developer support plan have access to these additional features:
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Best-practice guidance
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Client-side diagnostic tools
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Building-block architecture support: guidance on how to use AWS products, features, and services together
In addition, customers with a Business or Enterprise support plan have access to these features:
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Use-case guidance: what AWS products, features, and services to use to best support your specific needs
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AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for controlling individuals' access to AWS Support
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AWS Trusted Advisor, which inspects customer environments and identifies opportunities to save money, close security gaps, and improve system reliability and performance
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An API for interacting with Support Center and Trusted Advisor, allowing for automated support case management and Trusted Advisor operations
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Third-party software support: help with Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) instance operating systems and configuration and performance of the most popular third-party software components on AWS
In addition, customers with an Enterprise support plan have access to these features:
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Application architecture guidance: consultative partnership supporting specific use cases and applications
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Infrastructure event management: short-term engagement with AWS Support to get a deep understanding of your use case and provide architectural and scaling guidance for an event
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AWS Concierge
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Technical account manager
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White-glove case routing
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Management business reviews
For more detailed information about features and pricing for each support plan, see AWS Support and AWS Support Features. Some features, such as around-the-clock phone and chat support, are not available in all languages.
Case Management
You can sign in to the Support Center at https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/home#/ by using the email address and password associated with your AWS account. To log in with other credentials, see Accessing AWS Support.
There are three types of cases you can open:
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Account and Billing Support cases are available to all AWS customers. This case type connects you to customer service for help with billing and account-related questions.
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Service Limit Increase requests are also available to all AWS customers. For information on the default service limits, see AWS Service Limits.
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Technical Support cases connect you to technical support for help with service-related technical issues and, in some cases, third-party applications. If you have a Developer support plan, you can communicate using the web. If you have a Business or Enterprise support plan, you can also communicate by phone or live chat.
To open a Support case:
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In Support Center, click the Create case button.
Example: Creating a Case
Here is an example of a Technical Support case (shown in two parts for readability). The lists that follow the form example explain some of your options and best practices.
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Contact Information. In the CC box, enter the email addresses of people to be notified when the status of the case changes. If you are signed in as an IAM user, include your own email address. If you are signed in with your email address and password, you don't need to include your email address in the CC box.
Note
If you have the Basic support plan, the CC box isn't available. However, the Operational contact specified in the Alternate Contacts section of the My Account page receives copies of the case correspondence.
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Regarding. Select the type of case you want to create. In this example, we select Technical Support.
Note
If you have the Basic support plan, you can't create a technical support case.
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Service. If your question affects multiple services, choose the service that is most applicable. In this case, we select Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2 - Linux).
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Category. Choose the most appropriate category. In this case, we’re having trouble connecting to an instance, so we choose Instance Issue. When you select a category, links to information that might help to resolve your problem appear below the Category selection.
Based on your category choice, contextual text boxes often prompt you for additional information. In this case, you're prompted to provide Instance ID(s). In general, it's a good idea to provide resource IDs even when not prompted.
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Severity. Customers with a paid support plan can choose General guidance (1-day response time) or System impaired (12-hour response time) severity. Customers with a Business support plan can also choose Production system impaired (4-hour response) or Production system down (1-hour response). Enterprise plan customers can also choose Business-critical system down (15-minute response). Response times are for first response from AWS Support, and don't apply to subsequent responses. For third-party issues, response times can be longer, depending on the availability of skilled personnel. For details, see Choosing a Severity.
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Subject. Treat this like the subject of an email message—sum up your issue as briefly as possible. In this case, we use the subject "Failed status checks."
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Description. This is the most important information that you provide to AWS Support. For most service and category combinations, a prompt suggests information that is most helpful for the fastest resolution. For more guidance, see Describing Your Problem.
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Attachments. Screen shots and other attachments (less than 5 MB each) are often helpful. In this case, we’ve added one to show the failed status check.
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Contact method. Select a contact method. The options vary depending on the type of case and your support plan. If you choose Web, you can read and respond to the case progress in Support Center. If you have a Business or Enterprise support plan, you can also select Chat or Phone. If you select Phone, you're prompted for a callback number.
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Submit. Click the Submit button when your information is complete and you're ready to create the case.
Choosing a Severity
It might be tempting to open cases at the highest severity allowed by your support plan. However, we strongly encourage that you limit the use of the highest severities to cases that can't be worked around or that directly affect production applications. Plan ahead to avoid needing high-severity cases for general guidance questions. For information about how to build your services so that losing single resources doesn't affect your application, see Building Fault-Tolerant Applications on AWS.
Here is a summary of severity levels, response times, and example problems. For more information about the scope of support for each AWS Support plan, see AWS Support Features. Note: We make every reasonable effort to respond to your initial request within the indicated timeframe.
| Severity | First-Response Time | Description / Support Plan |
|---|---|---|
| General guidance | 24 hours | You have a general development question, or you want to request a feature. (Developer*, Business, and Enterprise support plans) |
| System impaired | 12 hours | Non-critical functions of your application are behaving abnormally, or you have a time-sensitive development question. (Developer*, Business, and Enterprise support plans) |
| Production system impaired | 4 hours | Important functions of your application are impaired or degraded. (Business and Enterprise support plans) |
| Production system down | 1 hour | Your business is significantly impacted. Important functions of your application are unavailable. (Business and Enterprise support plans) |
| Business-critical system down | 15 minutes | Your business is at risk. Critical functions of your application are unavailable. (Enterprise support plan) |
* For the Developer plan, response targets are calculated in business hours. Business hours are generally defined as 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM in the customer country as set in the contact information of My Account, excluding holidays and weekends. These times can vary in countries with multiple time zones.
Describing Your Problem
Your description should be as detailed as possible, and it should include relevant resource information, along with anything else that might be beneficial, depending on the case. For example, to troubleshoot performance, include time stamps and logs. For feature requests or general guidance questions, include a description of your environment and purpose. In all cases, follow the Description Guidance that appears on your case submission form.
When you provide as much detail as possible, you increase the chances that your case can be resolved quickly.
Monitoring and Maintaining Your Case
You can monitor the status of your case in Support Center. A new case begins in the "Unassigned" state. When an engineer begins work on a case, the status changes to "Work in Progress." The engineer responds to your case, either to ask for more information ("Pending Customer Action") or to let you know that the case is being investigated ("Pending Amazon Action").
Whenever your case is updated, you receive email with the correspondence and a link to the case in Support Center—you can't respond to case correspondence by email. When you're satisfied with the response or your problem is solved, you can select Close Case in Support Center. If you don't respond within six days, the case is closed automatically. You can always reopen a resolved or closed case.
It's important to create a new case for a new issue or question. If case correspondence strays from the original question or issue, a support engineer might ask you to open a new case. When opening cases related to old inquiries, it's helpful to include the related case number so that we can refer to previous correspondence.
Case History
Case history information is available for 12 months after creation.
Accessing AWS Support
There are two ways to access Support Center: by using the email address and password associated with your AWS account or (preferred) by using AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM). Customers with a Business or Enterprise support plan can access AWS Support and Trusted Advisor operations programmatically by using the AWS Support API.
AWS Account
You can use your AWS account information to access Support Center. Simply sign in at https://console.aws.amazon.com/support/home#/ and then enter your email address and password. However, AWS recommends that you avoid using this method as much as possible and that you use IAM instead. For more information, see Lock away your AWS account access keys.
IAM
You can use IAM to create individual users or groups, and then give them permission to perform actions and access resources in Support Center.
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IAM users who are granted Support access can see all the cases that are created for the account.
By default, IAM users do not have access to Support Center. You give users access to your account’s Support resources (Support Center cases and the AWS Support API) by attaching IAM policies to users, groups, or roles. For more information, see IAM Users and Groups and Overview of AWS IAM Policies.
After you create IAM users, you can give those users individual passwords. They can then sign in to your account and work in Support Center by using an account-specific sign-in page. For more information, see How IAM Users Sign In to Your AWS Account.
The easiest way to grant permission is to attach the AWS managed policy
AWSSupportAccess to the group, role, or user. Support does not let
you allow or deny access to individual actions. Therefore, the Action
element of a policy is always set to support:*. Similarly, Support does
not provide resource-level access, so the Resource element is always
set to *. An IAM user with Support permissions has access to all
Support operations and resources.
For example, this policy statement grants access to Support:
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Allow", "Action": "support:*", "Resource": "*" }] }
This policy statement denies access to Support:
{ "Version": "2012-10-17", "Statement": [ { "Effect": "Deny", "Action": "support:*", "Resource": "*" }] }
If the user or group already has a policy, you can add the Support-specific policy statement illustrated here to that policy.
Note
Access to Trusted Advisor in the AWS Management Console is controlled by a separate
trustedadvisor IAM namespace. Access to Trusted Advisor with the
AWS Support API is controlled by the support IAM namespace. For more
information, see Controlling Access to
the Trusted Advisor Console.
AWS Trusted Advisor
AWS Trusted Advisor draws upon best practices learned from the aggregated operational history of serving hundreds of thousands of AWS customers. Trusted Advisor inspects your AWS environment and makes recommendations when opportunities exist to save money, improve system availability and performance, or help close security gaps. All AWS customers have access to four Trusted Advisor checks. Customers with a Business or Enterprise support plan can view all Trusted Advisor checks. For more information, see AWS Trusted Advisor.
For information about using Amazon CloudWatch Events to monitor the status of Trusted Advisor checks, see Monitoring Trusted Advisor Check Results with Amazon CloudWatch Events.
Trusted Advisor can be accessed in the AWS Management Console; programmatic access to Trusted Advisor is available with the AWS Support API.
Troubleshooting
For answers to common customer troubleshooting questions, see the AWS Support Knowledge Center.
For Windows, Amazon EC2 offers EC2Rescue, which allows customers to examine their Windows instances to help identify common problems, collect log files, and help Support troubleshoot issues. It can even be used to analyze boot volumes from non-functional instances. For more information, see How can I use EC2Rescue to troubleshoot and fix common issues on my EC2 Windows instance?
Service-specific Troubleshooting
Most AWS service documentation contains troubleshooting topics that can get you started before contacting Support. The following table provides links to troubleshooting topics in AWS documentation, arranged by service.
