FME Flow Hosted is a powerful platform for managing FME Flow instances in the cloud. Two distinct support plans are available to FME Flow Hosted customers: the Included Support Plan and the Managed Support Plan. This article outlines the key differences between those plans and other elements of the FME Flow Hosted Support Policy, including support channels, scope of support, and the shared responsibility model.
Review this article alongside the general Safe Software Product Support Policy.
For an overview of FME Flow Hosted pricing, see the FME Flow Hosted pricing article.
Support Channels
There are three primary ways for all FME Flow Hosted customers to obtain support:
- FME Flow Hosted Status Page: status.safe.com provides up-to-date information on the current production status. In the event of an outage, it will be updated with details and a root-cause analysis once the issue is resolved. Customers are encouraged to check this page before submitting a support case. Subscribe to updates to stay informed.
- Community Forums: Safe Software's Support Center offers articles, tutorials, and FAQs. If additional help is needed, customers can post on the FME Community Forums or Ideas Exchange, where they may receive faster responses from the community and Safe Software support team.
- Customer Support: Customers can submit a ticket through customer support. Response times vary depending on the complexity and volume of requests. Customers with a Managed Support Plan should follow the contact procedures outlined in their contract.
Scope of Support
By default, all customers receive an Included Support Plan. Those seeking more comprehensive support can opt for a Managed Support Plan through a Managed Service Provider (MSP Partner).
Included Support Plans
In addition to our general Support Policy, the Included Support plan covers development and production issues on FME Flow Hosted. Safe Software provides technical product support for FME Flow Hosted instances for 2 years from the public release date.
Included support is limited to:
- Troubleshooting operational or systemic issues
- Addressing security concerns
- Resolving access issues
- Investigating product regressions and security threats
However, it does not include tasks such as performing proof of concepts, system administration, version upgrades, or proactive monitoring.
Managed Support Plans
Advanced support is offered by our MSP Partners through a Managed Support Plan. Managed Support offers services in addition to the default Included Support plan. The specifics of the offering depend on the terms agreed to between you and your MSP Partner. Some typical responsibilities of MSP Partners include:
- Architectural Review: Guidance on migrating to the cloud and optimizing architecture.
- Security: Advice on securing applications and data in the cloud.
- Proactive Monitoring: Monitoring for unexpected downtime.
- FME Flow Upgrades: Assistance with upgrading FME Flow versions.
Support Plan Comparison
Compare the Included and Managed Support plans to determine which best serves your needs.
| Included | Managed | |
| Hours of Coverage | M-F, 8am-5pm PST* | Personalized |
| Support | ||
| Helpdesk Support | Yes | Yes |
| Advanced Support | No | Yes |
| Knowledge Center (doc and forums) access | Yes | Yes |
| Proactive Management & Monitoring | ||
| Proactive monitoring of the FME Flow Hosted dashboard and API | Yes | Yes |
| Proactive monitoring of your FME Flow Hosted Instances | **Self-Service | Yes |
| Major FME Flow version upgrades | **Self-Service | Yes |
| Security Patching | **Self-Service | Yes |
| Implementing a disaster recovery plan | **Self-Service | Yes |
| Pricing |
Free |
Custom Contact Safe Software or an MSP Partner |
* Excluding statutory holidays in BC, Canada.
** "Self-Service" means that the FME Flow Hosted customer is responsible for managing these tasks.
Priority Levels
Included Support uses the same priority evaluation as outlined in the Product Support Policy. Review the table below for examples specific to FME Flow Hosted.
| Priority Level | Definition | FME Flow Hosted |
| P1 | Production workflows are unavailable. | You can’t access the FME Flow Hosted Web UI or API. |
| P2 | Issues which cause severe performance loss or affect the foundational components of FME Flow Hosted. The Web UI is accessible but certain critical operations are not working. | You can’t pause or start your instances. |
| P3 | Issues which affect major functionality of FME Flow Hosted. Key production workflows and data integrity are not affected, but you may experience a degraded level of performance. | Non-critical functions such as resizing a disk are not available. |
| P4 | Technical questions, configuration issues, suggestions and defects that affect a small number of users. Acceptable workarounds exist. | Report missing or erroneous documentation. |
Target Response Times
FME Flow Hosted customers should consider their response time requirements when choosing a support plan. Included Support follows the same target response times as outlined in the Product Support Policy. Managed support plans can offer faster response times to a wider variety of issues.
As defined in the FME Flow Hosted Shared Responsibility Support Model, if the cause of the issue originates from the FME Flow application tier, it is your responsibility to diagnose and manage the issue. If you require the FME Flow application tier to be proactively monitored, then you need to purchase a Managed support plan through an MSP Partner.
Security Incidents
Download and review the Security Whitepaper for detailed information about Safe Software’s security practices for FME Flow and FME Flow Hosted, including:
- Cloud Infrastructure Security
- Security Operations
- Internal processes
Incident Types
We have identified two types of issues that could impact service for FME Flow Hosted customers:
- Outages: An outage potentially impacts more than one customer and instance.
- Isolated: This incident is specific to one FME Flow instance and thus one customer.
Outage Issues
We have identified four levels of outage. We follow a different process for each outage type.
| Outage Type | Description |
| Major Outage | Significant parts of the infrastructure are down. Many or all systems or services not operational and most or all customers are affected. An example might be that FME Flow instances become unreachable because of a network issue, or that there is a problem in the FME Flow Hosted tier preventing instances from being started/stopped. |
| Partial Outage | Some systems or services are not operational or only certain groups of customers are affected. An example might be a degraded level of service in a specific data center which only affects 10% of customers. |
| Degraded Performance | Performance is below normal standards but may still be usable. |
| Under Maintenance | Some systems or services are undergoing maintenance and are actively being worked on by Safe Software. |
In all cases, we report the issue on the Safe Software Status page. We continually update that status page until the issue has been resolved. It is recommended that you subscribe to receive email updates on this page as it is not tied to your FME Flow Hosted account.
During an outage our target response times may be compromised: we do our best to meet them.
Isolated Issues
If we identify an issue related to your specific FME Flow instance that we are responsible for (see FME Flow Hosted Shared Responsibility Model), we may need to contact you directly. To ensure we contact the correct person, we have created an Emergency Contact form on the FME Flow Hosted account settings page. Please fill this out and ensure it is kept up to date. If you do not have a named contact on file, it may impact your level of service as we sometimes need your assistance to fix an issue.
If the engineer can fix the incident without gaining direct access to the instance, then they will. However, the engineer may require access to resolve the issue. Direct access is heavily monitored and restricted. If an engineer accesses your instance via SSH, the owner on the FME Flow Hosted account automatically receives an email and the access is logged in the Instance Activity log.
FME Flow Hosted Shared Responsibility Model
FME Flow Hosted is a Platform as a Service (PaaS). Two components comprise FME Flow Hosted, each with different responsibility requirements:
- The FME Flow Hosted Dashboard and API (often referred to as the Dashboard tier): This is a multi-tenant application where FME Flow Hosted customers sign up, launch/manage FME Flow instances, and conduct billing and account management. Safe Software is solely responsible for monitoring, securing and maintaining the FME Flow Hosted tier.
- The FME Flow Instances (often referred to as the Application tier): These are where FME Flow Hosted customers publish their workspaces and associated data. Each FME Flow instance is a self-contained environment, isolated from other instances, and includes computing, storage, and database services. Both the FME Flow Hosted customer and Safe Software are responsible for supporting the FME Flow Hosted application tier—a shared responsibility model.
As a customer, you can purchase a Managed Support Plan from an MSP Partner who can handle both the FME Flow Hosted Dashboard tier and the FME Flow Application tier on your behalf.
FME Flow Hosted Dashboard Tier
Automated systems continuously monitor the FME Flow Hosted Dashboard tier. Safe Software’s operations team is dedicated to identifying and resolving any problems that may affect the infrastructure, core systems, or tools. This active monitoring of the Dashboard Tier is part of the Included Support Plan provided to all FME Flow Hosted customers.
FME Flow Application Tier
The responsibility of ensuring a high level of uptime for an FME Flow Application tier is split between the FME Flow Hosted customer/MSP Partner and Safe Software.
- Safe Software is responsible for monitoring and maintaining the operating system, including the hardware powering the instance.
- The FME Flow Hosted customer/MSP Partner is responsible for monitoring and maintaining the FME Flow application itself.
Compared to an on-premises and/or self-managed deployment of FME Flow, the FME Flow Hosted shared responsibility model reduces the customer’s operational burden in many ways.
Figure 1: FME Flow Hosted Shared Support Responsibility Model
Safe Software Support Responsibilities
Safe Software is responsible for monitoring and responding if there is an issue with the operating system, hardware or network. We monitor the health and operation of all these components and will be alerted immediately if there is an issue.
- Operating System: FME Flow Hosted instances run on Ubuntu. Safe Software will fix any issues at the operating system (OS) level. Safe Software will notify you if your Ubuntu version is no longer maintained or supported by Canonical and we require you to upgrade FME Flow version (and thus the underlying Ubuntu version which FME Flow was built using) as this becomes a security risk to Safe Software and the customer.
- Hardware Failure: If there is an issue with the underlying hardware hosting the instance, Safe Software will be alerted and will work to either fix the issue or help the FME Flow Hosted customer migrate to another instance if the damage is irreparable.
- Networking: If there is a network issue that causes connectivity to the machine to degrade, then Safe Software will be alerted and will work to fix the issue. If it is a global outage that affects all customers, Safe Software will communicate the issue as defined in our support policy.
Customer/MSP Partner Support Responsibilities
FME Flow Hosted is a Platform as a Service (PaaS), allowing the FME Flow Hosted customer to provision an instance with FME Flow installed in minutes instead of weeks. After provisioning the instance, Safe Software cannot access the instance through the FME Flow web interface or APIs. This means Safe Software can't support the FME Flow application uptime as we have no access, and thus insight, into FME Flow workloads being run. It is this application tier that the MSP Partner or FME Flow Hosted customer is solely responsible for supporting.
FME Flow Hosted instances are built on a current, maintained version of Ubuntu at the time of release. Due to the Ubuntu lifecycle, Safe Software provides technical product support for FME Flow Hosted instances for 2 years from the public release date. Customers/MSPs are responsible for keeping FME Flow versions current, thus still being eligible for OS security and maintenance.
Monitoring and Automated Alerts
To help the FME Flow Hosted customers and MSP Partners manage this application tier, FME Flow Hosted provides a suite of tools (in addition to those FME Flow provides).
- Disk Monitoring: If an FME Flow instance runs out of disk space, then it can cause a critical outage as FME Flow requires free disk to function. FME Flow Hosted customers/MSP Partners can monitor disk usage and define alerts that will send a notification when the amount of remaining disk goes below a certain value.
- Memory Monitoring: If an FME Flow instance is consistently running out of memory, then it can potentially cause a severe degradation of service. FME Flow Hosted customers/MSP Partners can monitor memory and define alerts that will send a notification when the memory usage is above a certain value for a period of time.
- Web Server Responsiveness: If an FME Flow instance is overloaded, or experiences connectivity issues, one of the best indicators of a potential critical outage is whether the FME Flow web server is responsive. FME Flow Hosted customers/MSP Partners can define alerts on the server response time and there is a special alert which triggers when the server is unresponsive. Notifications can then be configured to ensure the correct people are instantly made aware of the issue.
- FME Flow Load: If an instance is constantly overloaded, then it can cause a degradation in service as all services (engines, web server, database, etc.) share the same compute resources. For example, if an FME Engine hogs all of the CPU, then it can cause the database and web server to crash. If the load is consistently high, then the FME Flow Hosted customer/MSP Partner may need to upgrade the instance type. FME Flow Hosted customers/MSP Partners can monitor server load and define alerts that will send a notification when the load is above a certain value for a period of time.
Security Update Management
Ensuring the FME Flow Hosted customer’s instance is secure is critical to ensuring a high level of uptime. If the operating system is not patched with the latest fixes, then the instance could be vulnerable to attack. Safe Software provides updated security patching which allows FME Flow Hosted customers/MSP Partners to ensure the instance is patched with a few clicks in the dashboard.
Each FME Flow version that is built for FME Flow Hosted is tied to a specific release of Ubuntu (e.g 22.04). Safe Software provides automatic security patching dependent on the underlying Ubuntu release and is only available while that OS is within its support lifecycle. Customers/MSP Partners are responsible for ensuring the instance is patched with a few clicks in the dashboard. If the underlying Ubuntu release goes out of support Safe Software will notify customers/MSP Partners to upgrade the FME Flow version (and thus underlying Ubuntu release) so that they can continue to receive security patching.
Resources
- Safe Software Product Support Policy
- FME Flow and FME Flow Hosted Security Whitepaper
- Find a Managed Service Provider (MSP Partner)
- Feature Comparison: FME Flow and FME Flow Hosted
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