Percona Subscription Policies

How do I use Support as a part of the Percona Subscription?

Support is provided 24x7x365 worldwide for subscribers. You can contact Percona engineers via telephone, instant messaging, email, and our Customer Portal depending on your support tier. See contacting support for ways to open a support incident.

Percona prioritizes support requests based on incident priority to ensure that customers experiencing severe production outages are restored to service as soon as possible. Real-time contact methods such as telephone and instant messaging should be reserved for critical situations that demand and directly benefit from immediate feedback.

What is Customizable Support?

At Percona, we understand that one size does not fit all. You may request changes to how or what we support to meet your unique needs. While we cannot accommodate every request, we will engage in an exploratory process with you to identify and document any such requests, and agree on the specific changes and any corresponding change in cost. This ensures that customization is well-documented both for you and for our delivery teams so nothing is lost in translation.

How do I use Managed Services as a part of the Percona Subscription?

Customers with Managed Services are provided proactive, around-the-clock management of their database(s) that includes deep enterprise-grade expertise across a variety of database environments.

Which servers should I include in my Percona subscription?

For each Environment for which you intend to receive support, Percona requires that you include all production database servers that store data related to this application (Percona XtraDB Clusters and MongoDB clusters that use an arbiter node that doesn’t hold data do not need to be included for pricing considerations, but will be supported). This allows us to assist you with covered support requests before those issues cause production outages, and protects you by ensuring every server related to your business-critical applications receives timely responses to support requests.

If the application you wish to cover makes use of a complex configuration, such as multiple region Disaster Recovery (DR) or database clustering, we require that all servers that underpin that application be included in your support subscription. As an example, if you had a source-source cluster with a replica for performing backups and an identical environment in another region for DR, you would need to include all six servers in your support subscription to guarantee that Percona can provide support for any database issues that could arise. For customers with complex configurations or a large or dynamic overall server count, there are options that will meet your needs.

In addition to the above, Percona recommends that any servers that are used to provide testing, development, or staging environments for your organization related to the covered applications also be included. Covering these non-production servers allows us to help you stage and test database software upgrades or hot fixes, replicate issues outside of your production environment and gather and analyze query metrics before potentially problematic changes go into your production environment. These servers are typically priced at a lower cost than production servers. Please be aware that Percona can only provide assistance with servers that are covered as part of your subscription agreement. Percona may request a server inventory list be completed during the initial contracting phase, at renewal of the contract, and anytime throughout the support term to ensure compliance.

What is an Environment?

“Environment” means the Supported Software configured in a consistent manner across servers when running on the O.S. and Covered Servers in support of one or more applications. Customer shall ensure that the Environment meets Percona’s minimum requirements. Partitioned Environments or complex replication architectures in which databases serve distinct roles require that all servers be covered for any of the servers to be covered under contract. To be considered a single Environment, at minimum a collection of servers must be running a supported version or versions of software, on a supported platform, and leveraging supported software for its given level of Subscription.

In practice, what this means is that a collection of servers must be similar enough to be considered fundamentally the same. If a collection of servers are all running in production, have similar architectures, run the same major versions of software, etc., then we can consider them all fundamentally the same. Minor differences in configuration will not necessitate splitting these out into separate environments. However, if you have some servers that support an application that is higher priority and requires more stringent SLAs, leverages different technologies to perform given functions than others in your environment (like replication technologies), or that is on a completely different version than the rest, then this environment would be considered separate from the others. Any pricing differences would be limited to this specific environment, while you still benefit from volume discounts based on the entirety of your subscription.

What types of incidents are covered by my Percona Support subscription?

In a nutshell, we will fix covered software that is not working correctly, and coach you in specific tasks with which you require help. More specifically, we provide:

• Problem resolution support for the covered software, to diagnose and fix discrete problems with specific symptoms, when it is reasonable to believe that the problem is caused by the software’s misbehavior. Examples include server crashes and wrong results to queries.
• Advisory support answers your questions about how to use the covered software. For example, we can advise you with installation, upgrades, and backups; help you to understand how to use particular software features; and explain the purpose and behavior of a configuration option.
• Consultative support provides assistance with topics specific to your deployment, including assistance with writing or tuning queries and stored routines, optimizing schema definitions, indexing strategies, and server configurations for performance, and other similar tasks unrelated to product usage, service restoration, or bug fixing. Note that consultative support is not a replacement for dedicated Consulting engagements and is intended to resolve incidents that are well-defined with a narrow scope.

Further information about Percona spheres of support and Percona services lifecycle policy is here.

Some common topics for which customers use Percona Support include:

• Advice on performance issues
• Advice on operational best-practices
• Advice on backup and recovery
• Advice on advanced data recovery
• Analysis of software bugs
• Analysis of software crashes and outages
• Analysis and advice on replication
• Advice on high availability
• Assistance with query tuning

What types of incidents are not covered by Percona Support subscription?

The following types of incidents are excluded for Support customers:

• Bug fixes for non-open-source versions of software (e.g. OEM-licensed MySQL, MongoDB Enterprise, etc.)
• Performing tasks for you, rather than advising you in your efforts to perform them. For example, we can coach you on how to configure replication, but we will not set up replication for you. If you need assistance in setting up replication, Percona Professional Services would be happy to assist.
• Open-ended requests, such as reviewing a server to find whether anything is wrong with it. This type of open-ended performance review or system audit is covered under a Percona Managed Subscription or Professional Services Audit. Each incident must be filed to resolve a pre-existing specific question or situation.
• Architecture and design advice, such as choosing a good scaling strategy. This type of request requires a deep analysis and review of your requirements and setup and is handled by a Professional Services architecture and design review.
• Support specific to technology that underlies or interacts with the database infrastructure. Examples include operating systems, Kubernetes, your application layer, artificial intelligence/machine learning, or data analytics/data science applications. Percona’s expertise is in the performance and healthy operation of your database environment, which may allow us to assist in identifying issues based on what we are able to see in the database itself.

What types of incidents are covered by my Percona Managed Services subscription?

Percona Managed Services covers many of the same needs as Percona Support. However, since Managed Services are hands-on and much more tightly integrated as a part of your operational team, there are additional options available as a result. The key is how your organization plans to leverage Managed Services to support your team, whether primarily to support the day-to-day operations, to augment your capacity and capabilities to handle just your biggest problems or your most complex database projects (upgrades, migrations, etc.), or to be your database team handling everything while working with your application team(s). More specifically, we provide:

• Incident response for the covered software, to diagnose and fix any issues that arise in your database environment. Managed Services leverages a monitoring solution in your environment, so they are many times working on a solution before you know there is a problem.
• Advisory support answers your questions about how to use the covered software. For example, we can advise you with installation, upgrades, and backups; help you to understand how to use particular software features; and explain the purpose and behavior of a configuration option. In addition, Managed Services can work hands-on with you to test and implement these solutions, whether in an active advisory capacity or by doing the work on your behalf.
•  Consultative support provides assistance with topics specific to your deployment, and how you specifically leverage the technology.
  •  Some common topics for which customers use us include:
  •  Advice on performance issues
  •  Advice on operational best-practices
  •  Advice on backup and recovery
  •  Advice on advanced data recovery
  •  Analysis of software bugs
  •  Analysis of software crashes and outages
  •  Analysis and advice on replication
  •  Advice on high availability

Query optimization and tuning is a key part of the healthy operation of any database solution. As a Managed Services customer, you will get a minimum of one Top Query review each year to assess your most commonly used queries and key suggestions for optimizing them. Premium Managed Services customers receive a quarterly Top Query Review in addition to an allotment of hours to tune your queries on a monthly basis.

• Architecture, Design, Performance, and Business Continuity Advice is included by default in the service. Managed Services follows Percona Best Practices and will review your entire environment when you join to ensure it is highly performant, scalable, optimized for your use case, and capable of withstanding unexpected events that impact a portion or all of your database infrastructure. A series of reports will be delivered during the onboarding phase with advice on how to address any issues, and a roadmap will be built to improve the environment. We include some time by default so you can use Percona to perform this work, or do it yourself if you wish. We then review it every year to ensure we are addressing the highest priority issues and improving over time. Premium Managed Services subscribers get quarterly reviews for faster improvement, along with more time to perform the work for you.
• With Managed Services, any open-ended request is acceptable as if they are a part of your team. If you have a question or think something may be misbehaving or could be done differently, you are free to ask.

What types of incidents are not covered by Percona Managed Services subscription?

The following types of incidents are excluded for Managed Services customers:

• Bug fixes for non-open-source versions of software (e.g. OEM-licensed MySQL, MongoDB Enterprise, etc.)
• Any assistance specific to technology that underlies or interacts with the database infrastructure. Examples include operating systems, Kubernetes, your application layer, artificial intelligence/machine learning, or data analytics/data science applications. Percona’s expertise is in the performance and healthy operation of your database environment, which may allow us to assist in identifying issues based on what we are able to see in the database itself. However, Percona Managed Services is responsible for managing your database environment, not all of the components that are required to make it work effectively or that interact with it in your unique environment.

What are the different priority levels and response times?

PRIORITY 1 (URGENT)
A problem that severely impacts your use of the software in a production environment (such as loss of production data or in which your production systems are not functioning). The situation halts your business operations and no procedural workaround exists.

PRIORITY 2 (HIGH)
A problem where the software is functioning, but your use in a production environment is severely reduced. The situation is causing a high impact to portions of your business operations and no procedural workaround exists.

PRIORITY 3 (MEDIUM)
A problem that involves partial, non-critical loss of use of the software in a production environment or development environment. For production environments, there is a medium-to-low impact on your business, but your business continues to function, including by using a procedural workaround. For development environments, where the situation is causing your project to no longer continue or migrate into production.

PRIORITY 4 (LOW)
A general usage question, reporting of a documentation error, or recommendation for a future product enhancement or modification. For production environments, there is low-to-no impact on your business or the performance or functionality of your system. The potential for future issues cannot be used to justify an increase in priority unless there is proof from prior incidents and the request is clearly backed with supporting data. For development environments, there is a medium-to-low impact on your business, but your business continues to function, including by using a procedural workaround.

Response time commitments for each priority differ based on your subscription level.

Subscription Levels for Percona Offerings at a Glance

[1]*Proactive deliverables apply only to Managed Services subscriptions. Proactive Deliverables are a series of reports intended to assess the healthy operation of the database environment in order to make recommendations for improvement. These include a Performance Review, Business Continuity Review, and Top Query Review. They are yearly for Advanced Subscribers, or quarterly for Premium Subscribers.
**Phone support does not apply to Managed Services subscriptions
***Optional Technical Account Manager applies only to Support subscriptions

Response Time (SLA) Details

Resolution Goals (Premium subscriptions only)

* Exclusions

Resolution is defined as restoration of service**. Root cause analysis and any resulting bug fixes or hotfixes will be a secondary item and are not governed by the same resolution goal. Resolution times are only included for Premium subscribers.

Unless otherwise agreed to in an executed Statement of Work, the following exceptions apply to Resolution time calculations:

● If customer is not currently running on the Supported Software as listed, resolution times will not take effect until an initial Percona engagement to migrate to Supported Software has been completed, and recommendations resulting from the engagement applied successfully (by Percona or the customer, depending on the mutually agreed responsibility for the recommended change) within the environment in which Supported Software operates;
● Any cause or causes beyond the reasonable control of Percona;
● Modifications or enhancements (queries, customizations) to the integrated software application(s) that directly or indirectly affect the normal operations of Supported Software;
● Customer’s failure to comply with recommendations, operating instructions and/or fixes provided to customer through normal support processes, whether to Supported Software or other parts of the infrastructure/software environment in which the Supported Software operates;
● Any issue resulting from customer customizing, modifying, or otherwise changing the Supported Software;
● Any time spent by customer gathering further details required for proper analysis of an incident or problem.

* To the extent the information herein is inconsistent with an applicable statement of work, the terms and conditions of the statement of work shall control.
**For Managed Services customers only. For the Percona Support service, it is at the point that recommendations to restore service are provided, based on our analysis of all required logs and information. As Support does not have access to your environment and therefore cannot apply fixes themselves, it will be up to the customer to actually restore services based on our recommended steps.

What kinds of bugs will Percona fix?

Percona will fix bugs within Percona software subject to the Percona Software and Platform Lifecycle.

When requested, Percona will investigate possible bugs, for example ones that cause crashing, freezing, incorrect results, data corruption, performance problems, or security breaches. Bugs must be verified via repeatable test cases.

Percona engineers can work together with you to create test cases. Collaboration with you is key for us to be able to verify and fix any bug that we are working on. We will work with you to collect analytics data and test potential workarounds.

With any issue reported to us, our number one goal is to restore service. When it comes to handling bugs, the quickest way to restore service and prevent downtime is often to provide a workaround (for example changing settings, changing sql, starting with special flags, etc.).

Fixing a bug is a complex and often time-consuming process. Sometimes it is not possible or feasible to fix a particular bug, but we will apply our best effort in good faith. If no fix is possible, we will seek a workaround instead.

Percona may merge bug fixes from newer versions to older versions of the software, or undo fixes that were added in newer versions if appropriate and technically feasible.

What is the difference between a bug fix and a hot-fix?

For Percona software, once we are able to repeat a bug and the development work is completed, a bug fix will be included in the next released version of the software and you will need to upgrade after the release to receive the fix.

Customers with a Premium level subscription who request a hot-fix are entitled to a hot-fix build of the current version of Percona software with the fix applied as soon as development has completed the fix. This gives you access to critical bugs as soon as possible. Note, you will not need to upgrade server versions to receive the fix.

We are unable to guarantee that bug fixes will be incorporated into other flavors of the software, but bug fixes will always be contributed upstream to Oracle®, MongoDB, and the PostgreSQL community to adopt freely if they so choose.

What is the timing of bug fixes in Percona software?

Bug fixes will be included in the next scheduled release that is open for code changes. This may not be the immediate next release because it may already be frozen or being built.

Premium level subscriptions include hot fixes. Hot-fixes are available more quickly, as they are created specifically to address the identified issue(s), and are based on the version you are currently running. This lets you keep using exactly the same version plus fixes to customer-reported bugs. Hot-fixes are created to get you a resolution as quickly as possible, and therefore go through an accelerated release process.

We report bugs upstream wherever possible and work to leverage our relationship with the open source community, partners, and other vendors to find solutions for our customers. All bug fixes created by Percona are made available at no charge to the open source community and upstream vendors such as Oracle, MariaDB, MongoDB, and PostgreSQL so that the fixes may be incorporated into their versions of the software. However, the decision when or whether to incorporate those fixes is beyond Percona’s control.