L17. AWS Support Plans and Trusted Advisor
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AWS offers four support plans with increasing features and response times. The Cloud Practitioner exam tests plan differences, AWS Trusted Advisor check categories, and personal health resources.
AWS Support Plans
AWS offers four support plans:
Basic (Free)
- Access to all AWS documentation, whitepapers, and support forums
- AWS Personal Health Dashboard
- 7 core Trusted Advisor checks
- No technical support contacts
Developer ($29/month minimum)
- One primary contact for technical support (business hours)
- General guidance response: < 24 business hours
- System impaired response: < 12 business hours
- Best for: experimentation and development environments
Business ($100/month minimum or 3-10% of monthly usage)
- Unlimited contacts with technical support 24/7
- Production system down: < 1-hour response
- Full Trusted Advisor checks
- AWS Health API access
- Third-party software support
- Best for: production workloads
Enterprise On-Ramp ($5,500/month minimum)
- Pool of Technical Account Managers (TAMs)
- Business-critical system down: < 30-minute response
- Concierge support team for billing
Enterprise ($15,000/month minimum or % of usage)
- Dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM)
- Business-critical system down: < 15-minute response
- Infrastructure Event Management (planned events support)
- Best for: mission-critical workloads
AWS Trusted Advisor
Trusted Advisor analyzes your AWS environment and provides recommendations across five pillars:
| Pillar | Example Checks |
|---|---|
| Cost Optimization | Idle EC2 instances, underutilized Reserved Instances |
| Performance | High-utilization EC2, CloudFront optimizations |
| Security | Open S3 buckets, MFA on root account, open ports |
| Fault Tolerance | RDS Multi-AZ, Auto Scaling, EBS snapshots |
| Service Limits | Services approaching account limits |
AWS Personal Health Dashboard
The Personal Health Dashboard provides alerts and notifications for AWS service events that affect your specific resources (not the global status page). vs. AWS Service Status page: the Service Status page is global; Personal Health Dashboard is personalized to your account and services. Exam tip: Developer plan does NOT include phone support or 24/7 technical access. Business is the minimum for 24/7 phone support and full Trusted Advisor. Enterprise includes a dedicated TAM.
- ✓Four support plans: Basic (free), Developer, Business, Enterprise; only Developer and above have technical support
- ✓Business is the minimum plan for 24/7 technical support access and full Trusted Advisor checks
- ✓Enterprise includes a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM) and 15-minute response for critical systems
- ✓Trusted Advisor five pillars: Cost, Performance, Security, Fault Tolerance, Service Limits
- ✓Personal Health Dashboard is personalized to your account; AWS Service Status page is global
1. Which AWS Support plan provides a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM) and a 15-minute response time for business-critical system outages?
2. A company needs Trusted Advisor checks for all five recommendation categories and 24/7 technical phone support. What is the minimum support plan required?
Recommended: Pluralsight
Complement these lessons with Pluralsight: structured CLF-C02 learning paths, AWS hands-on labs, and realistic practice questions for exam day.