What Linux support specialists do

& how real companies have used them to thrive

Nearly a third of IT leaders say lack of expertise is the biggest obstacle they face in managing their open source environments. It’s a problem that slows progress, increases risk, and makes it tough for organizations to unlock the full value of technologies like OpenStack, Ceph, or LXD.

When every minute counts, especially in critical industries, technical skill alone isn’t enough. While typical 24/7 or weekday support models provide valuable reactive ticket handling and issue resolution, some organizations require a named expert who owns your case end-to-end and works closely with you until full resolution. Canonical’s named support resources deliver exactly that: continuous, proactive guidance from experienced Technical Account Managers and Support Engineers who deeply understand your systems and integrate closely with your teams.

In this blog, we’ll explore how named support can strengthen your team and help you achieve more with your open source infrastructure.

Beyond break-fix: embedded expertise at scale

Open source infrastructure in production is rarely simple. Whether you’re upgrading a distributed Ceph cluster, troubleshooting low-level live migration issues, or scaling OpenStack across multiple datacenters, there’s little room for trial and error – because downtime or misconfiguration can impact millions of users or critical services. 

For example, the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), which manages Aadhaar – the world’s largest biometric ID system, serving over a billion people – relies heavily on Ubuntu and open source infrastructure. There, continuous availability and data integrity are paramount, demanding near-zero tolerance for disruption.

Canonical’s Dedicated Support Engineers worked closely with UIDAI’s teams during key upgrades and scaling efforts, providing hands-on, real-time technical expertise. This embedded partnership allowed them to:

• Anticipate and mitigate risks in complex environments spanning thousands of nodes
• Provide tailored architectural guidance ensuring high availability and compliance
• Quickly resolve critical incidents without service interruptions
• Perform seamless upgrades backed by deep knowledge of Ubuntu and related technologies

For UIDAI traditional reactive support falls short – there’s no margin for error when your infrastructure supports essential national services. Organizations with unique platforms or compliance demands – especially those needing instant response, ongoing collaboration, and a single point of contact – face equally high expectations and risks. Canonical’s embedded experts become a true extension of your team, combining deep technical knowledge with intimate awareness of your unique environment to prevent downtime before it happens.

Learn how UIDAI and HPE worked with a Canonical DSE to transition from a monolithic code base to a microservice architecture >

Far from transactional, this support becomes a true expansion of your team – built on trust, context, and technical depth.

TAM vs DSE: choosing the right level of dedicated Linux support

While both Technical Account Managers (TAMs) and Dedicated Support Engineers (DSEs) provide personalized, expert Linux support, the most important difference lies in the depth of engagement and the nature of support they provide. Understanding these distinctions will help you select the best fit for your organization’s unique needs and operational style.

Technical Account Manager (TAM)

A TAM is your named, strategic advisor and single point of contact during business hours, focused on amplifying your team’s effectiveness through proactive, high-level guidance. Beyond simply managing support tickets, TAMs partner with you to plan major upgrades, anticipate risks, and align your Linux environment with industry best practices, ensuring your infrastructure evolves smoothly and securely.

Strategic planning in action

For instance, when a customer prepared to upgrade their Ceph clusters, their TAM designed a clear, risk-aware plan that highlighted dependencies and potential pitfalls well in advance. This proactive approach helped avoid downtime and ensured the upgrade aligned seamlessly with their long-term business goals.

What you get with a TAM:

• Regular strategic reviews, risk management, and compliance checks
• Prioritized support for faster case resolution when issues arise
• Proactive advice by tracking ongoing changes and participating in planning calls
• Access to Canonical’s broader technical experts when deeper help is needed
• Periodic onsite visits for strengthened collaboration and richer context understanding

Choose a TAM if you want a trusted advisor who drives long-term success through strategic support, without requiring hands-on, daily technical involvement.

Dedicated Support Engineer (DSE)

A DSE is fully dedicated to your account, working embedded alongside your team every day to provide responsive, hands-on technical support. They do more than offer guidance: DSEs actively roll up their sleeves to tackle complex issues directly with your in-house engineers, ensuring swift problem resolution and sustained operational stability. As Drew Dunn, Virtualisation Engineer at BT Group describes it, Canonical offers “professional help for other professionals, people who don’t leave you behind, but instead take you on the journey and educate.” 

Find out more about Canonical’s work with BT Group in this case study >

Hands-on expertise in action

For example, when a customer faced a critical issue during a live Ceph migration, their DSE diagnosed the root cause within the context of the customer’s unique environment, developed a custom tool to enable a safe migration, and collaborated directly with the customer’s engineers to resolve the blocker in days, transforming what could have been a prolonged problem into a quick win.

What you get with a DSE:

• Immediate and direct involvement in troubleshooting complex production issues by working closely with your logs and configurations
• Active participation in executing upgrades, migrations, with live troubleshooting and remediation support
• Daily integration with your team to assist with scaling and configuration, helping avoid common pitfalls
• Continuous technical mentorship and regular workshops to build your team’s expertise and confidence
• Proactive risk identification and prevention, spotting issues before they impact operations
• Onsite availability for critical projects and incidents, enabling face-to-face collaboration when it matters most

Choose a DSE if your team needs a trusted, embedded technical expert providing direct leadership, hands-on problem solving, and continuous partnership and education through daily infrastructure operations and challenges.

Contact our experts to find out more about DSEs and TAMs, and discuss which would be best for your needs >

A spectrum of deep, sustained collaboration that makes a difference

TAMs and DSEs both provide proactive guidance, own escalations, and lead strategic planning, acting as part advisor, part engineer, part communicator, and part advocate for your organisation within Canonical. They are generalists but also they dive deep into your unique environment, spotting patterns, anticipating risks, and delivering solutions tailored to your infrastructure and priorities. 

As one of our TAMs puts it: “Since we work face-to-face a lot, big, long-term projects depend on our work. Therefore, expectations can be high to deliver good results and to stay informed about the customer environments and projects in a much deeper way than our typical support relationships.” 

With this level of commitment, customers experience faster problem resolution, smooth and confident upgrades, expert advice on scaling, and thorough performance troubleshooting, all while catching issues early to avoid downtime. In short:

• TAMs provide strategic, proactive guidance and planning to help you make confident, long-term decisions.
• DSEs embed with your team daily, actively guiding hands-on issue resolution and upgrade execution to maintain stability and momentum.

Real-world impact: how our dedicated support teams make a difference

Migration blockers, resolved live

Running mixed x86 hardware environments is possible but presents unique requirements, even with standard technologies like live migration. One enterprise, for example, wished to migrate virtual machines dynamically and seamlessly between AMD EPYC and Intel XEON hosts.  Subtle CPU instruction set support differences made live linux Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM) hypervisor migrations unreliable, impacting project deployment. Canonical’s Dedicated Support Engineer (DSE) to that enterprise stepped in, working side‑by‑side with the enterprise and AMD’s engineering team to define a processor configuration consistent between EPYC and Xeon nodes, validate safe configurations, and design a repeatable migration process. What started as a pressing customer issue grew into a broader solution: the collaboration matured into a jointly authored public guide with AMD, ‘Preparing a cluster of mixed server processors for liver KVM migrations’.  Today, this flow enables any IT organization running mixed CPU environments to build in flexibility with qualified applications. 

This case shows how DSEs don’t just solve local problems: they connect customers, vendors, and Canonical expertise to create solutions widely applicable in the open source community..

Scaling safely with confidence

A financial services provider needed to expand their OpenStack and Ceph deployment across three regional datacenters. Instead of duplicating data and adding operational complexity, we worked with their team to design a site-local storage layout that aligned with their compliance and performance goals – without downtime.

Building what’s not yet documented

Another customer was experimenting with NVIDIA BlueField SmartNICs and LXD integration – functionality not officially supported or documented. Working alongside them in a lab setup, we validated drivers, tested deployment patterns, and collaborated with Canonical’s LXD team to improve product support. Their proof of concept now helps define new best practices.

A strategic investment in platform reliability

Not all Ubuntu Pro customers need a TAM or DSE – but for enterprises running critical infrastructure, dedicated resources are a strategic multiplier.

We recommend them for:

• Organizations with large or highly customized OpenStack, Ceph, LXD, or Kubernetes environments
• Teams seeking proactive, forward-looking support
• Companies that want a single, trusted technical contact – not a ticketing queue

Your Canonical TAM or DSE provides tailored guidance based on your platform, people, and priorities. They help translate Canonical’s engineering expertise into operational success – for everything from tuning disk I/O throughput to planning a transition to Juju 3.x or MicroK8s.

Summary: support as a force multiplier for your team

Built around our customers’ unique environments and operational reality, Canonical’s relational support centers on collaboration, trust, and tailored expertise. Your named support engineer becomes an embedded team member who lives and breathes your infrastructure – joining planning calls, tracking changes, and offering proactive advice based on deep knowledge of your infrastructure to help you operate confidently at scale. 

Ubuntu Pro is backed by a world-class support organization. With a TAM or DSE, that support becomes personal and proactive, a partner intimately familiar with your platform and business needs who accelerates your Linux support journey.