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Hosting Backups and Storage Service Level Agreement

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  1. General Overview
  2. Service Description
  3. Roles and Responsibilities
  4. Requesting Service
  5. Hours of Coverage, Response Times and Escalation
  6. Maintenance and Service Changes
  7. Pricing
  8. Review and Reporting
  9. Approvals

Updated 2024

1 General Overview

This is a Service Level Agreement (“SLA”) between the campus community and the Information Technology Services Division (ITS) to document:
  • The suite of services provided by the Data Center
  • The general levels of response, availability, and  maintenance associated with these services
  • The responsibilities of ITS as a provider of these services
  • The responsibilities of the clients receiving these services
  • Deviations from the standard processes documented in the ITS and Campus SLA

This Agreement is valid from July 2019. Review is every two years, or as otherwise needed.

2 Service Description

The description of the the suite of services provided by the Data Center is on the service web page at: http://its.ucsc.edu/data-center/index.html

2.1 Service Scope

The ITS Data Center provides server hosting in support of UCSC-related business, education, and research. In addition to the day-to-day operations of the facility itself, the ITS Data Center Operations (DCO) team provides infrastructure, people and processes to support the following suite of services. Please refer to the Data Center Services link above for additional information about these services:

Active Directory (Campus AD)

  • File storage and sharing
  • Authentication
  • Printing

Data Backup and Recovery

Hosting

  • Physical Server Hosting
  • Virtual Server Hosting
  • Private Cloud Computing in the UCSC Data Center, using Joyent
  • Cloud Hosting at Amazon Web Services (AWS)
  • 24x7 Data Center Operations

Kerberos authentication

Managed Services (including server administration)

  • Unix Systems
  • VMware
  • Windows Systems

Storage

  • NFS storage for servers managed by the DCO Unix team
  • AFS storage for students, faculty, and staff, accessible through the Unix timeshare

2.2 Service Level Performance

For support requests submitted through the SlugHub system, first-response times and resolution times are tracked and reported as part of the ITS and Campus SLA. The report is posted quarterly in the ITS Service Catalog, under Service & System Metrics.


3 Roles and Responsibilities

3.1 Parties

The following Service Owner(s) will be used as the basis of the Agreement and represent the primary stakeholders associated with this SLA:

Stakeholder

Title / Role

Contact Information

Jocelyn Ferialdi

Data Center Manager

jferiald@ucsc.edu

Divisional Liaisons

 

3.2 ITS Responsibilities

ITS will provide the infrastructure, technology, people, processes and monitoring tools necessary for Data Center services and:
  • Clearly document services provided in the ITS Service Catalog.
  • Meet response times associated with the priority assigned to incidents and service requests.
  • Generate quarterly reports on service level performance.
  • Provide appropriate notification to the campus community for all scheduled maintenance via the Maintenance Calendar and/or a communication to campus via the ITS Communication Manager.

Adhere to UC, UCSC, and ITS policy; this includes:

3.3 Customer Responsibilities

Client responsibilities and/or requirements in support of this Agreement include:

  • Utilizing the Support Center for incidents
  • Contacting the IT Service Manager for additions or changes in established service levels

Adhering to UC, UCSC, and ITS policy; this includes:

Additional Roles and Responsibilities for ITS and the Customer are posted on the Data Center Service Pages for the following:

  • Managed Services
  • Physical Server Hosting
  • Virtual Server Hosting
  • Data Backup and Recovery
  • Private Cloud Computing in the UCSC Data Center, using Joyent

4 Requesting Service

See the ITS and Campus SLA for  standard methods of contacting ITS for service.

Physical and virtual hosting requests can be made through the links of this web page: http://its.ucsc.edu/data-center/request-service/index.html

5 Hours of Coverage, Response Times & Escalation

For all requests, the ITS goal is to have a staff member assigned and acknowledge requests within 4 business hours of receipt. Campus priorities may require exceptions to this goal during certain times of the Academic year.

5.1 Hours of Coverage

The Data Center Services are provided 24 hours a day seven days a week except for periods of planned maintenance.

5.2 Incidents

5.2.1 Incident Response
See the ITS and Campus SLA.

5.2.2 Prioritization
See the ITS and Campus SLA.

5.2.3 Service Request
See the ITS and Campus SLA.

5.3 Escalation

See the ITS and Campus SLA.

5.4 Information

See the ITS and Campus SLA.

5.5 Other Requests

Requests for service features and functions not yet implemented can be submitted to the ITS Support Center though the online ticket system, SlugHub.

6 Maintenance and Service Changes

Some Data Center Services have pre-scheduled maintenance windows (which are superseded by campus-wide change-restricted days, as noted on the ITS Maintenance Calendar). Most maintenance will not impact service; in the event that maintenance is expected to result in a service outage, ITS will provide at least two weeks’ notice. These pre-scheduled maintenance windows are listed on the Data Center service web pages and on the ITS Maintenance Calendar.

See the ITS and Campus SLA for details of our standard maintenance and service process.

7 Pricing

Some Data Center Services are provided without charge to customers through IU funding. For other services, ITS covers the costs relating to these services in order to encourage members of the UCSC community to use the central computing facilities and to take advantage of the secure and power-protected environment. These include the following services:

  • Physical Server Hosting
  • Private Cloud Computing in the UCSC Data Center, using Joyent (when fully self-managed)
  • 24x7 Data Center Operations
  • Campus Active Directory (AD) - file storage and sharing, authentication, printing
  • Kerberos Authentication
  • Storage - AFS storage for students, faculty, and staff, accessible through the Unix timeshare, NFS storage for servers managed by the DCO Unix team

For Cloud Computing through AWS, services are arranged on behalf of the customer; costs are passed through without mark-up.

Other Data Center Services are provided through individual arrangement with customers, and recharge rates (or cost pass-through) apply. This includes the following services:

  • Virtual Hosting in the UCSC Data Center
  • Managed Services (including server administration)
  • Data Backup and Recovery

Data Center Billing

For customers who arrange for recharge or pass-through services, charges will be billed at the close of each month in the Pinnacle billing system, then transferred to FIS Banner. Questions regarding billing or specific charges should be sent via email to itsbill@ucsc.edu.

Data Center Recharge Methodology

The total annual recharge estimate is a combination of known fixed costs and projections of variable costs. While the actual time spent providing Managed Services (which include systems administration) can vary from month to month, support hours are calculated by averaging annual support and normalizing support over a three- to four-year period. The method enables consistent budgeting and avoids cost spikes when major system enhancements or replacements take place.

Due to a general-fund offset provided by the campus, Managed Services (including systems administration) are provided at a reduced rate, and physical-server hosting services are provided at no cost. These funding offsets are intended to encourage campus departments to use the Data Center rather than departmental space to host their servers and applications, since the Data Center provides a secure and reliable environment.

Some Data Center charges (e.g. backups) are calculated using actual consumption of the service, and as a result these charges vary each month.

In some cases, departments provided a permanent transfer of funds to ITS for their services. In such cases, these funds are reflected as funding offsets on the monthly billing statement, and are used to reduce the overall monthly recharge.

For each recharge service, a rate packet is submitted to the Campus Direct Costing Committee containing all applicable templates. More information is available here: UCSC Recharge Rates

Data Center Pricing

Recharge rates for Data Center services are available here: http://its.ucsc.edu/data-center/pricing-billing.html

8 Reviewing and Reporting

8.1 System Performance and Availability Reporting

Support response time will be tracked and reported separately as part of the ITS and Campus SLA.

8.2 SLA Reviews

The Designated Review Owner ("Document Owner") is responsible for facilitating regular reviews of this document. Contents of this document may be amended as required, provided mutual agreement is obtained from the primary stakeholders and communicated to all affected parties. The Document Owner will incorporate all subsequent revisions and obtain mutual agreements/approvals as required.

Next Review Date: July 2023

This Agreement will be posted to the following location and will be made accessible to all stakeholders:

Document Location: http://its.ucsc.edu/sla/

9 Approvals

The Divisional Liaisons and ITS Senior Managers approve this document. This document is then published on the ITS Service Catalog web site along with other service level agreements. Service level information is integrated into the service page in the ITS Service Catalog.