Firefighting Support
The best self-managed alternative to Canonical Managed Services. Get Canonical engineers on call to help you resolve the most critical issues, while continuing to manage your own environments.
Alternative to direct management
Running a cloud on OpenStack or MicroCloud, or operating applications such as Kafka, Kubeflow, Spark, or OpenSearch, is complex and demanding. Canonical’s fully managed services take that responsibility off your hands – but in some environments, security or compliance rules mean our engineers can’t access your systems directly.
Firefighting Support is the answer to these restrictions: it gives the support, protection, and confidence you need, while allowing you to operate your own environments with full control and privacy.
Key benefits
We’ve designed Firefighting Support to give you an enhanced support service during critical incidents.
- Access to a video call with a Canonical Managed Solutions engineer within 1 hour of flagging a high severity incident
- Ubuntu Pro with 24/7 support included for other severity incidentsDual team cloud support for your products: the Support and Managed Solutions teams work together to resolve your issues
- Access to Ops Consulting packages
- Full control of your environments
Get Firefighting Support
What is Ubuntu Pro?
Ubuntu Pro is Canonical’s comprehensive subscription for open source security, support, and compliance. Get access to a trusted open source repository, compliance profiles for the most stringent security standards, and up to 15 years of vulnerability fixes for your OS, infrastructure, and applications.
With Ubuntu Pro + Support, you complement this security and compliance foundation with 24/7 enterprise break and bug-fix support from Canonical engineers, backed by SLAs for your infrastructure and applications.
Is Firefighting Support right for you?
Firefighting Support adds value in many situations, but we’ve designed it with three primary use cases in mind.
Government clouds
Generally, governments and intergovernmental institutions have stringent regulations that forbid third parties from providing direct operational management. This can make operations harder. Firefighting Support gives you extra peace of mind while allowing you to remain fully compliant with your security policies and these government requirements.
Highly private
telecommunications networks
There are telco networks that even the most secure third parties can't touch. But managing their workloads can be tough to do alone. Canonical's Firefighting Support can allow your private networks to operate more smoothly by having your back in urgent situations.
Cloud upgrades
It's time to upgrade your cloud to the newest version, and it's rightfully intimidating. Firefighting Support can allow you to benefit from the expertise and experience of our Managed Solutions engineers, who will help you immediately fix any issues that may arise during the upgrade.
Your options
| Fully managed solutions | Firefighting Support | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Canonical engineers deploy your environment and manage all operations. We maintain admin rights and a permanent connection. | Canonical engineers provide cloud support and guidance in high-severity situations, while you manage your operations. |
| Ubuntu Pro + Support 24/7 | Included | Included |
| Service levels | 1-hour SLA for high severity cases, all other cases addressed in under 24 hours | 1-hour SLA for high severity cases |
| Incident management | Unlimited, covering cases we identify ourselves or flagged by you | Only for high severity cases that impact the product's core functionality |
| Service requests | Unlimited | One at a time per environment for enhanced support, unlimited for standard 24/7 support service |
| Backup and recovery | Unlimited | Not covered |
| Software and package updates | Unlimited | Not covered |
| Capacity reports | Available | Unavailable |
| Admin access | Required | Not required |
FAQ
What's the difference between Firefighting Support and Ubuntu Pro + Support?
Ubuntu Pro is the security, compliance, and maintenance subscription that extends security updates for Ubuntu LTS, adds hardening profiles, and provides access to trusted open source repositories. Firefighting Support includes Ubuntu Pro + Support for all covered products and adds a dedicated Managed Solutions engineering team on top, with faster SLAs and experts who get to know your environment before helping you in high‑severity incidents.
With Firefighting support you get all the benefits of Ubuntu Pro, plus additional incident response and guidance capabilities tailored to your cloud.
Can I get Firefighting Support if I already have Ubuntu Pro?
Yes, you can. Your cloud may need to undergo a cloud validation from our team, and you will only pay an additional upgrade fee to add Firefighting Support on top of your existing Ubuntu Pro (or Ubuntu Pro + Support) subscription.
How much does it cost?
This depends on the products you want to cover and the number of nodes. Our pricing model is simple, intuitive, and works on a per node per year basis. Get in touch with our team to find out more.
Which products does Firefighting Support cover?
Firefighting Support covers Charmed OpenStack, Canonical Kubernetes, and our entire Managed Apps portfolio.
Unlock Ops Consulting
Want to discuss your tech plans in more depth? Curious about how you can start managing your environments yourself? Or do you simply want to learn more about the products in your stack?
Talk to Canonical Managed Solutions engineers through Ops Consulting, a package that gives you access to one-to-one calls with our topic experts.
Upgrade support
We understand that upgrading infrastructure or apps can be challenging. If we can't upgrade it for you via Managed Services, you can still discuss the best upgrade practices with our engineers through Ops Consulting and get guidance on how to do it yourself.
Operational experience
If there are topics that give you headaches when managing your environments, our engineers can advise you on how to avoid common mistakes and how to fix recurrent problems, drawing on over 20 years of open source expertise.
Team training
Have you already benefited from our Managed Solutions offering, and feel confident to manage your environments by yourself? We’ve still got you covered, with training material and best practices to be shared in consulting sessions.
Ops Consulting packages
You can access Ops Consulting regardless of the size of your infrastructure or current projects, as long as you've got one of our Firefighting Support or fully managed services active.
We offer three packages that give you a number of consulting hours you can book in a month to discuss topics of your choice with our engineers. The hours do not roll over, but you never have to commit for more than a month.
10h/month
$3,500
Occasional meetings for non-urgent matters, allowing you to discuss concerns and improve the efficiency of your operations.
20h/month
$6,000
Regular meetings that allow you to have in-depth discussions on pressing matters, or get a baseline training in operational management for your products.
40h/month
$10,000
Daily or highly recurrent meetings with engineers, helping you gain skills quickly or prepare for a significant change in your environment.