Storage Standard Service Level Agreement
June 17, 2009 ____________________________________________________________________ Overview The Computing and Information Technology Center’s (“CITC”) unique role in accomplishing the University’s mission is to provide the primary university-wide, shared resources of computing hardware, software, data and voice communications, software customization and integration services, and professional IT personnel on campus. Within CITC, the ITS (Infrastructure and Technical Services) group provides services to departments on campus. This document describes the services that the CITC-ITS has enabled and serves as an agreement between the CITC-ITS and client departments. 1.0 Service Level Agreement This Service Level Agreement (SLA) is between the Computing and Information Technology Center (CITC), who is the service provider, and the customers of that service, the colleges and departments, including areas internal to CITC, at the University of North Texas. This document is designed to cover service details, expectations, roles, and responsibilities and provides a framework for problem resolution and communication. 2.0 Services 2.1 Service description - The storage system services covered in this SLA are provided to users from colleges and/or departments on the UNT campus. 2.2 SAN - A storage area network (SAN) is an architecture to attach remote computer storage devices, such as disk arrays, to servers in such a way that the devices appear as locally attached to the operating system. Currently the connectivity we’re using is Fibre Channel which provides faster and more reliable access than higher-level protocols. In order to take advantage of the Fibre Channel technology, the server connecting to the SAN will need to be physically located in either the General Academic Building room #560 or at Discovery Park in room #E268.
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3.0 CITC Responsibilities
The CITC Primary Storage system is designed to house the Data defined, created and controlled by the users and/or administrators of that Data. The Data itself is not defined, created or controlled by the administrators of the Storage Systems. Any Data lost, deleted or in any way corrupted by the users and/or administrators of that Data is not the responsibility of CITC or the administrators of the Storage Systems. It is, therefore, imperative that backups be maintained through the CITC Backup Services (or a vehicle of the Data Administrators choosing) so that no data is permanently lost under any of the circumstances described above. The Primary Storage team will, at its sole discretion, determine best use of the Storage Systems themselves and the data that resides therein.
3.1 The ITS Primary Storage Team is responsible for all of the centrally based hardware including Fibre switching infrastructure, the Storage Systems themselves and all other components specifically related to these services. The Primary Storage Team will refresh the hardware and software utilized by the services when, in the CITC’s sole opinion, it is in the best interest of the University to do so. Hardware and software refreshes will be coordinated with server and application administrators to minimize any disruption in service. 3.2 The Primary Storage Team provides services based on a target up-time for all services covered by this SLA at 99.9% and is exclusive of scheduled maintenance windows. Maintenance will be performed at times with the least impact on all of CITC’s services, including its enterprise systems, and customers will be notified at least one to two weeks in advance of any scheduled maintenance down time. 3.3 The Primary Storage Team will be available for creation and deletion of storage space during regular business hours and at all hours during a production emergency situation. Since the Storage Systems present storage as "just another disk", there is little or no need for support with regard to setting up storage from the user/system administrator viewpoint once the server is physically connected into the Fibre Channel Network. The Primary Storage Team, in conjunction with Operations and Datacomm, will be available during regular business hours to provide assistance in setting up the connectivity required to initialize this service. 3.4 The Primary Storage Team will provide support for both emergency and routine creation/deletion issues. Emergencies must be reported to the team at: 940-5654440. For routine issues, users should contact storage@unt.edu for storage related problems. Under normal circumstances, the team will answer all non-emergency queries within one business day.
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3.5 The Primary Storage Team will monitor the performance and do routine testing on all its systems to ensure the reliability of these services. 3.6 In the event of a large-scale disaster involving one or both of the UNT primary data centers, the Primary Storage Team will work with the customer to create a duplicate environment and optimize the restore time to the best of our ability. We will only be able to devote resources to the extent that other customers are not affected. Recreating the physical environment and restoring large file servers (multiple terabytes) can take several days. When planned maintenance is expected to cause a system outage, the outage will be posted here
https://untranet.unt.edu/citc/Lists/SANBackupMaintenance/calendar.aspx
4.0 Customer Responsibilities 4.1 Customers are responsible for acquiring their own fully configured servers, software, networking and related systems, including the HBA/CNA card (of a brand and type specifically recommended by the Primary Storage Team) and any necessary components in order to insure successful Fibre Channel Network connectivity. 4.2 Customers are responsible for providing to the Primary Storage Team up-to-date contact information of persons who are responsible for the server(s) provided under this agreement, including their name, e-mail, phone, and pager number. Customers are also responsible for providing machine configuration information in a timely manner upon request. A link to the site to enter updated information and all additional requests for storage services may be found at: http://citc.unt.edu/its 4.3 As stated in the first paragraph of this SLA, the customer is solely responsible for the integrity of their Data placed onto and removed from the Storage Systems.
5.0 Acceptable Use 5.1 CITC and customers are responsible for adhering to relevant UNT acceptable use and security policies and standards related to the acquisition, development, testing, implementation, and production usage of servers, software, networking, related systems, or data stored on their respective systems.
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