Service Definition
VM Server as a Service
Prepared for G-Cloud
Contact Information
Your primary point of contact in relation to this document is:
Name Andy Dunn
New Business Sales Manager
Address Fairway House
1
Product Overview
The Adapt VM Server as a Service solution is for enterprises that wish to relieve the burden of managing and supporting their own server infrastructure in-house, which can prove a costly and time-consuming business. If the customer doesn’t have the expertise to hand, they will need to employ skilled staff to manage and support their server estate.
The cost of running servers (powering, cooling, maintenance, support, operating system patching etc.) is relatively high and manning their own infrastructure and support service may be unfeasible.
Also, the office space required to house servers can be freed. This enables either office space to be reduced, or allows space for housing more staff, omitting the need to obtain more space for expansion. Either way, the resulting effect is a reduction in costs.
By outsourcing the management of their servers to a dedicated 24/7 team, they are ensuring that their own customers/users get the best experience possible from their system, and they can put their attention where it belongs – providing service to their customers, not to their underlying infrastructure.
1.1
Configuration Options
Adapt’s VMSaaS solution is available in 3x configuration options which can be utilised to provide the most appropriate solution to the end user;
1.1.1
Small
1x CPU, 2GB RAM, 50GB OS + 50GB data Disk
The definition of Small, Medium and Large is around the compute and storage specification of the server which will be directly related to the application workload it will be running. Unless explicitly known what the specification requirements are, it is better to start small and then scale up if required.
1.1.2
Medium
2x CPU, 4GB RAM, 50GB OS + 50GB data Disk
The definition of Small, Medium and Large is around the compute and storage specification of the server which will be directly related to the application workload it will be running. Unless explicitly known what the specification requirements are, it is better to start small and then scale up if required.
1.1.3
Large
2
Product Description
The VM Server as a Service solution encompasses the infrastructure (network, compute and storage) and server management and monitoring services up to the operating system (OS) level, including maintenance of the infrastructure and OS. These services can either be owned by Adapt or by the customer.
Infrastructure is located within an Adapt data centre (DC). Adapt operate multiple data centres and are able to offer single or dual site configurations.
There are various configurations that Adapt can offer, in order to fulfil the spectrum of potential customer requirements. The following offerings are:
> Infrastructure as a Service
o Shared, cloud-based infrastructure whereby virtual and/or physical resources are provided to the customer on-demand
> Adapt-built Managed Dedicated Server
o Adapt custom-designed virtual infrastructure which is owned, managed and fully
maintained by Adapt
> Customer-provided Managed Dedicated Server
o Customer-owned virtual infrastructure which is deployed at an Adapt DC, where it is managed and monitored by Adapt
Note that Adapt are also able to supply hybrid solutions, incorporating both shared (IaaS) and private (Managed Server) configurations, with connectivity between the two.
2.1
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)
The IaaS solution provides virtual infrastructure resources from an Adapt DC to the customer’s network, securely, using either a Virtual Private Network (VPN) connection across the
Internet, or a dedicated circuit such as a Multi-Protocol Label Switching (MPLS) network.
Note that SLA’s cannot be guaranteed for VPN connections as they are internet-based, hence MPLS is the preferred option for connectivity between networks, where SLA’s up to 99.99% can be offered dependent on exact configuration.
The VPN link enables the Adapt host servers to send and receive data across shared or public networks as if it were a private network, with all the functionality, security, resilience and management policies of the private network.
Fig. 3: IaaS Basic Topology
Adapt offer the following resources as part of the IaaS product:
> Compute (virtual machines)
> Operating System (OS)
> Storage Area Network (SAN)
> Hardware
> Network (inc. IP addresses and, where applicable, Virtual Local Area Networks (VLAN’s))
> Backup and restore (optional). Note that a regular server backup (of C drive/root drive) is included as standard. It can be optionally removed but requires appropriate sign-off by the customer due to impact on RTO/RPO. Additional backups (higher
frequency/other drives) are optional
> Disaster recovery (DR) (optional)
> Anti-virus (AV) software. Note that customers can opt for no AV or to supply/specify their own but this must be agreed in the contract terms
Once a baseline requirement for resources is defined, these resources can be rapidly increased or decreased, dependent on contract terms.
2.1.1
Enterprise Virtual Data Centre (eVDC)
The eVDC is the Adapt-designed flagship solution for IaaS. It is an award-winning cloud service platform that offers optimum levels of availability.
Based on NetApp’s FlexPod platform, it is a dual data centre virtual server and storage platform where the two physical data centres operate as one logical system infrastructure. The flexibility of the system enables Adapt to offer a combination of services and service levels, to cater from core critical production systems requiring high levels of resilience through to test systems that may not be as vital to the business.
Ensuring that compute resources are available for our customers enables Adapt to respond to changing requirements and to assist them in meeting their business demands. For the critical systems, Adapt can migrate operational virtual servers seamlessly between the two physical data centre facilities with no loss of service.
Fig. 4: eVDC Basic Topology
This solution includes all aspects of the build, management, maintenance and monitoring of the server up to the operating system (OS) level, including:
> Server build and test, including installation and configuration of the chosen operating system (see the Adapt Foundation Product Catalogue for supported operating systems). Note that application management and installation is excluded from the standard service, as these are usually performed by the customer. For MS Exchange, BlackBerry BES, SQL and Oracle databases, the customer may wish to investigate the use of Adapt’s XaaS and DBaaS managed application offerings
> Monitoring, reporting and resolution of errors and events
> Permission management (management of users and privileges)
> Patching and fulfilment of customer-requested OS related change requests
> Capacity management
> Performance analysis and management
> Availability management
> ITIL-compliant service management
> 24/7 Operations Bridge and Network Operations Centre (NOC)
> Dedicated service via the Adapt Management Portal (aMP) with online monitoring
> Preventative maintenance
http:/ /
Adapt Cloud Service
VMWare cluster operates as a single logical entity that spans both sites
Data Centre 1 Data Centre 2
Customer Site(s)
Entire Virtual Data Centre spans both physical locations (sites), leaving no single
point of failure
Dark fibre connects both sites’ storage replication and IP connectivity
2.2
Adapt-designed Managed Dedicated Server
The Adapt-developed Managed Dedicated Server solution offers secure, custom-built private virtual and/or physical infrastructure to meet the customer’s exact operating requirements. Adapt provide a wholly managed and supported end-to-end service which bundles additional services and products with the servers to provide a deeper level of management.
The Managed Server solution is a private service, which means that the servers and/or storage are not shared with anyone else, providing optimum levels of security and compliance.
Customers have full control and flexibility over their choice of supported servers and operating system. Adapt support all mainstream platforms, including – but not limited to – Sun’s Sparc and x86 hardware. On these environments, Adapt support a wide range of operating systems including Microsoft, Unix and Linux. Refer to the Foundation Product Catalogue for more details.
All platforms are built to ensure that there is no single point of failure and enough capacity exists to continue operating the platform should a hardware component fail. This resilience allows Adapt to offer availability Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) up to 99.99% (for dual site configurations).
Adapt offer the following resources as part of the product:
> Compute (virtual/physical machines)
> Operating System (OS)
> Storage Area Network (SAN)
> Hardware and firmware where applicable
> Network (inc. IP addresses and, where applicable, VLAN’s)
> Backup and restore (optional). Note that a regular server backup (of C drive/root drive) is included as standard. It can be optionally removed but requires appropriate sign-off by the customer due to impact on RTO/RPO. Additional backups (higher
frequency/other drives) are optional
> Disaster recovery (DR) (optional)
> Anti-virus (AV) software. Note that customers can opt for no AV or to supply/specify their own but this must be agreed in the contract terms
This solution includes all aspects of the build, management, maintenance and monitoring of the server up to the operating system (OS) level, including:
> Server build and test, including installation and configuration of the chosen operating system (see the Adapt Foundation Product Catalogue for supported operating systems). Note that application management and installation is excluded from the standard service, as these are usually performed by the customer. For MS Exchange, BlackBerry BES, SQL and Oracle databases, the customer may wish to investigate the use of Adapt’s XaaS and DBaaS managed application offerings (see the relevant Product Definitions)
> Permission management (management of users and privileges)
> Patching and fulfilment of customer-requested OS related change requests
> Capacity management
> Performance analysis and management
> Availability management
> ITIL-compliant service management
> 24/7 Operations Bridge and Network Operations Centre (NOC)
> Dedicated service via the Adapt Management Portal (aMP) with online monitoring
> Preventative maintenance
2.3
Customer-provided Managed Dedicated Server
The Customer-provided Managed Dedicated Server solution is an end-to-end management and support solution for customers’ existing physical and/or virtual infrastructure.
This solution is for customers who want to re-use assets/protect investments by migrating them into the Adapt data centres and management service.
Servers are relocated (lifted and shifted) to an Adapt DC, where management and monitoring responsibilities are taken over by our team of dedicated personnel – 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.
Infrastructure can be delivered in either single site or dual site configurations. The availability SLA will be reviewed and contracted based on the exact configuration of the customer platform.
This solution includes all aspects of the management and monitoring of the server up to the operating system (OS) level, including:
> Monitoring, reporting and resolution of errors and events
> Permission management (management of users and privileges)
> Patching and fulfilment of customer-requested OS related change requests
> Capacity management
> Performance analysis and management
> Availability management
> ITIL-compliant service management
> 24/7 Operations Bridge and Network Operations Centre (NOC)
> Dedicated service via the Adapt Management Portal (aMP) with online monitoring
> Preventative maintenance
Note that for single site hybrid solutions, it is not possible to additionally consume some storage or compute from eVDC, as such services are designed for dual site replication (mirrored) services only.
2.4
Management Options
The following table defines the options included for each solution, and Adapt’s position in terms of management responsibilities for each option.
IAAS
ADAPT-BUILT
DEDICATED
CUSTOMER-PROVIDED
DEDICATED
Hardware Break/Fix Yes Yes Yes
Monitoring Yes Yes Yes
Storage Provision Yes, included Optional No by default, but negotiable in
contract terms
Security Options Encryption,
firewall(s) and AV AV
No by default, but negotiable in contract terms
OS Patch Yes Yes No by default, but negotiable in
contract terms
Firmware Yes Yes N/A
2.5
Risks and Mitigations
The table below provides some potential high-level risks which the customer could face by migrating to the IaaS/Managed Server solution. It also outlines the resolutions which Adapt will/may undertake in order to mitigate against these risks.
RISK
MITIGATION
Migration of physical assets to an Adapt DC will obviously result in downtime of this equipment and associated applications and services.
Rental of physical infrastructure can be provided as standby equipment in order to mitigate against downtime of business critical servers during any physical move.
Security and data integrity may be an issue with the customer.
> Physical segregation, through the use of dedicated firewalls
> Logical segregation, through the use of VLAN’s
> Deployment of anti-virus software on operating systems
> Patching to apply security and critical fixes to the OS
3
Product Benefits
The product benefits are split into general benefits which are applicable to all configurations (see section 3.1), IaaS benefits (see section 3.2), Adapt-built Managed Server benefits (see section 3.3), and customer-provided Managed Server benefits (see section 3.4).
3.1
General
The following are general product benefits which apply to all the configurations which are offered as part of the IaaS/Managed Server solution.
Enables the customer to focus on business, not on the supporting IT – optimising operational efficiency:
> Alleviates the need to employ additional IT support staff, enabling customers to streamline their business;
> Avoids the high costs of maintaining and supporting their own infrastructure in-house, reducing operational expenditure;
> 24/7 management and monitoring of infrastructure, therefore if a problem occurs out-of-hours Adapt will endeavour to fix it so that there are no interruptions to customers’ business in core operating hours;
> Provides access to our 24/7 Operations Bridge and Network Operations Centre (NOC) so that issues can be reported any time;
> Adapt 'Pod' managed service support structure provides the highest level of customer support quality available in the UK market;
> Allocated Service Manager looking after their account personally. Protects the customer’s mission critical data:
> Options for Disaster Recovery, and Backup and Restore;
> Delivers secure and compliant systems which frequently meet or exceed the majority of business requirements. Adapt is ISO27001 and ISO9001 certified and offers solutions which can deliver up to Government Impact Level Assessment Level 4 (IL4) and PCI DSS Data Security Tier 1 compliance assurance, if required.
Improved services to their own customers:
> Defined and improved service levels with end-to-end service management;
> SLA-based performance management;
3.2
IaaS
The following are benefits which are specific to the IaaS configuration. Note that all the general benefits (see section 3.1) still apply to this configuration.
Simplifies budget management:
> Offers a highly flexible 'pay as you grow' model giving businesses access to the benefits of on-demand infrastructure services without upfront capital investment;
> OPEX-based cost models reflect utilisation, matching spend with evolving business needs so customers only pay for what they use;
> Management of Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM) and third party maintenance agreements;
> Evergreening (upgrading) is Adapt’s responsibility.
Allows the customer to retain control and flexibility, increasing business agility:
> An IT system that can grow and adapt with the business;
> Scales precisely with a customer’s evolving compute and storage requirements;
> Adapt to consumer demands rapidly, efficiently and cost-effectively;
> Delivers a service management layer that keeps the customer informed and in control of their requirements;
> Options for Public, Private, Hybrid (both physical and virtual infrastructure) and G-Cloud hosting;
> Multiple data centres allowing disaster avoidance (DA) to be enabled where required;
> Ability to connect a customer’s physical, legacy infrastructure directly to their cloud platform, moving workloads between their private cloud and fully locked down, dedicated physical environments.
Maximises return on investment (ROI):
> Effectively manages complex environments;
> Grow without further capital investment or initial outlay;
> Affordable enterprise-grade service and availability. Improves operational performance:
> Increased system availability, reliability and performance;
> Fully resilient disaster recovery protected environment can be provided, ensuring a guaranteed service availability of 99.99% if this option is taken;
> Ensures business critical servers are available through inbuilt resilience, backup and recovery facilities, incident, change and capacity management, designed to ensure a stable and controlled environment;
> Ensures servers are kept within a supported OS patch level.
3.3
Adapt-built Managed Server
The following are benefits which are specific to the Adapt-built Managed Server configuration. Note that all the general benefits (see section 3.1) still apply to this configuration.
Relieves burden of owning and managing IT infrastructure:
> Provides a wholly managed and supported end-to-end hosting service;
> Infrastructure is owned, managed and monitored at one of Adapt’s DC’s, where it is housed and maintained as part of the service.
Custom to their business needs:
> Customised service;
> Bespoke, custom-built infrastructure which meets their exact operating requirements, utilising Adapt’s experience with the major vendors, plus our relationships with the vendors, buying power, support agreement, tried and tested architecture designs, etc. Provides a stable and secure working environment:
> Dedicated, private infrastructure providing optimum levels of security;
> All hosting platforms are built with N+1 resilience at all levels, ensuring that there is no single point of failure and enough capacity exists to continue operating the platform should a hardware component fail. This resilience allows Adapt to offer availability Service Level Agreements (SLA’s) up to 99.99%.
3.4
Customer-provided Managed Server
The following are benefits which are specific to the customer-provided Managed Server configuration. Note that all the general benefits (see section 3.1) still apply to this configuration.
Minimal outlay:
> No upfront investment;
> No additional infrastructure to purchase. Protection of investments:
3.5
References
IaaS (eVDC)
Wildnet
Orbian
3.6
Awards
The following Adapt awards have been considered as relevant to this solution:
Tech Success Awards – 2012 Winner
Cloud Project of the Year with customer Orbian
SVC Awards – 2012 Winner
Cloud Project of the Year with customer Orbian
SVC Awards – 2012 Runner-up
Managed Services Provider of the Year
Datacentre Solutions Awards – 2012 Finalist
Datacentre Service Provider of the Year
Cisco Innovation Awards – 2012 Finalist
3.7
Partners and Certifications
3.7.1
Partners
Adapt has strong technology partnerships with the following vendors in order to provide its comprehensive Server Management solutions:
Cisco Master Managed Services Certified Partner NetApp Service Provider
VMware Enterprise Level Service Partner Microsoft Gold Partner
Symantec Partner
Red Hat Ready Hosting Partner
3.7.2
Certifications
Adapt focuses on the provision of effective, efficient and economic service delivery. To help us achieve this goal, we've attained the following formal certifications:
BSI ISO 9001:2008
Quality Management Systems
BSI ISO 27001:2005
Information Security
ISO/IEC 20000-1:2011
Appendix A – Frequently Asked Questions
Q1
What is your process for hardware upgrades, i.e. do you warn us of old equipment
or imminent failures etc?
Adapt work with our technology partners as well as monitoring bulletin boards and vendors sites for announcements of new firmware for applicable hardware.
Adapt would notify the customer where versions are made available. The decision to implement upgrades remains with the customer and the process of implementation is performed in line with an agreed Change Management process
Q2
What storage, computer and network components comprise your underlying
infrastructure?
The Enterprise Virtual Data Centre (eVDC) is based upon a referenced design architecture. The infrastructure consists of Cisco UCS blades and chassis as the server technology, Cisco network infrastructure, NetApp Storage, running NetApp MetroCluster as the
synchronisation technology between the replica data centres. VMware ESXi is used as the hypervisor technology.
Q3
Do you offer Storage as a Service? If so what options are available?
Adapt offer two levels of Storage as a Service. These are high performance fibre attached FC or SAS disks, or a more cost-effective SATA disk structure, providing an ideal solution for storage of less active types of data (see STaaS Product Definition).
Note that storage is included as part of the IaaS/Managed Server offering, therefore Storage as a Service is only offered to customer managed, colocated servers.
Q4
Are you able to perform physical to virtual conversions (P2V)?
Adapt can provide P2V conversions and has done successfully for many of Adapt’s customers. Adapt would undertake a health check on the system prior to conversion to determine supportability. This is a standard requirement to ensure that the system can be converted correctly and to stop any inherent issues being moved to the new platform.
Q5
Typically, how long will it take you to provision new virtual servers and/or
storage?
Adapt’s current delivery time for the provisioning of new servers from a standard build template is within two hours of notification; custom builds are typically 24 hours, but may take longer depending on the system requirements.
Q6
What firewall solutions do you offer?
Adapt offer both dedicated and shared (multi-tenanted) firewall solutions. Dependent on the specific requirement of the customer, the correct solution will be recommended. For the dedicated solution, Adapt are vendor agnostic and can support a wide range of technologies including Cisco, Juniper and Checkpoint firewalls.
Q7
Do you have the capability to respond to complex security requirements such as
PCI?
Yes, Adapt’s proposed eVDC solution has been designed, built and implemented with customer security requirements in mind. The service is baselined to ISO27001. Adapt already delivers a number of solutions to customers which include FSA compliance. Adapt are currently working on a project to achieve PCI compliance for the eVDC platform. Providing infrastructure that meets the required principles of PCI-DSS
compliance enables customers to deploy services knowing that the infrastructure is fully secure.
Q8
Are there any limitations on the Operating Systems or applications you would
allow to be run in your Virtual Infrastructure?
Adapt will only operate and run operating systems that are still under general support and are verified for operation under the hypervisor technology VMware (for the full range see the Adapt Foundation Product Catalogue).
Q9
Do you offer applications as a service and if so which ones?
Applications as a service that Adapt support and manage are our Database as a Service and Exchange as a Service solutions (see associated Product Definitions).
Adapt will supply as part of our Microsoft SPLA arrangement other Microsoft applications such as MS Dynamics if required. Additionally, Adapt has an SPLA arrangement with Citrix and can provide Citrix services for the Adapt customer base if required.
Q10 What OS patching methods do you employ?
A mix of patching methods are used, these include standard tools such as Windows Server Update Services (WSUS) and System Center Operation Manager (SCOM).
Adapt work with the customer to determine the approach that fits best. Whether this is in line with the Microsoft ‘Patch Tuesday’ methodology or a delayed phased approach, or a bespoke patching process that fits the customer requirements.
Patching is frequently performed in a delayed manner, patching test and development systems prior to user acceptance testing (UAT) and production systems.
Q11 For customer-owned kit, who is responsible for the maintenance?
Extending the warranty for maintenance of customer-owned hardware is the customer’s responsibility, unless specified in the agreed contract terms.
Under agreement with Adapt and the Third Party vendor/maintenance provider, the hardware maintenance contract can be transferred to Adapt, or the authority can be given to Adapt to make support calls regarding the kit to the Third Party
vendor/maintenance provider.
