Domain 6 of 6 · Chapter 4 of 6

Production Support

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Included in this chapter:

  • Two sides of supporting a deployed solution
  • Choosing a Customer Care tier
  • Case priority and the support case lifecycle
  • Running incidents: roles, runbooks, and the incident vs problem split
  • Proactive support with Active Assist
  • Exam-pattern recognition

Google Cloud Customer Care tiers

DimensionBasicStandardEnhancedPremium
Cost modelFree with every accountPaid, % of spend (min $29/mo)Paid, % of spend (min $100/mo)Paid, % of spend (higher minimum)
P1 first-response targetNo technical SLANo P1 target; P2 within 4 hoursWithin 1 hourWithin 15 minutes
AvailabilitySelf-service onlyLocal business hours, Mon-Fri24/7 for high-priority cases24/7 for high-priority cases
Named account contactNoneNoneTechnical Account Advisor (value-add)Technical Account Manager (TAM)
Distinct servicesBilling support, docs, Active AssistCloud Support API, RecommenderCloud Support API, third-party tech supportCustomer Aware Support, Event Management, Operational Health Reviews
Best forSandbox / early evaluationDev and test workloadsProduction needing 24/7 critical responseMission-critical 24/7 production

Decision tree

Production users?is the workload liveBasic or Standardsandbox / dev / test24/7 P1 response?round-the-clock criticalNeed TAM / 15-minP1 / event mgmt?StandardP2 within 4 hoursEnhancedP1 within 1 hour, 24/7PremiumP1 within 15 min, TAMnoyesnoyesnoyes
Cheat sheet

Cheat sheet

  • Production support has two sides: the Google relationship you buy and the operations practice you run
  • Choose the Customer Care tier from the P1 response time the business can tolerate
  • Premium is the only Customer Care tier with a named Technical Account Manager
  • Enhanced is the first tier with 24/7 critical-case response
  • Basic Support is free with every account and includes Active Assist
  • Case priority P1 to P4 measures production impact, not how urgently you ask
  • Tier sets the response-time ceiling, priority selects the lane within it
  • First meaningful response is a response, not a resolution
  • Separate incident management from problem management
  • Define incident roles before the outage, starting with an incident commander
  • A runbook lets on-call follow a tested procedure instead of improvising
  • Automate incident response to cut resolution time and human error
  • A production workload without an on-call rotation is not ready to be supported
  • Act on Active Assist proactively to prevent incidents, not just react to them
  • Active Assist recommendations span six value categories that map to the WAF pillars

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Also tested in

References

  1. Google Cloud Customer Care
  2. Active Assist and Recommender overview
  3. Standard Support
  4. Enhanced Support
  5. Premium Support
  6. Customer Care procedures and case priorities
  7. Well-Architected Framework: Manage incidents and problems Well-Architected