Rackspace Ltd

Rackspace Elastic Engineering for Google Cloud Platform (GCP)

Elastic Engineering (EE) is a managed support model that provides on-demand access to Google experts via ongoing sprints, to continually remediate, innovate optimise, build and maintain customers' environments. Service is delivered via tiered number of hours monthly. EE allows customers to dynamically change scope and priorities based on business needs.

Features

• Ongoing support and maintenance through a flexible, collaborative approach
• Infrastructure builds, migrations, DevOps and automation
• Performance management and optimisation
• Database management
• Disaster recovery planning
• Cost optimisation helps balance IT spend with budgets
• Your support Pod includes Engagement Manager, architect(s) and engineer(s)
• Proactive 24x7 Advanced Monitoring & Resolution (AMR) add-on
• Advice and support from certified Google Cloud Platform (GCP) experts
• Rackspace was Google's first Premier Managed Services Partner

Benefits

• On-demand access to a team (Pod) of cloud experts
• Support for broad range of projects to meet evolving needs
• Always work with the same Pod/Squad that knows your business
• Simplified management and consolidated billing
• Design solutions with confidence that applications and services remain available
• AMR offers peace of mind for 24x7x365 monitoring and alerts
• Agile approach assists with long range planning and sprint reviews
• Help to implement changes towards more efficient, cloud-native operations
• Move to increasing mature DevOps model at your own speed
• Use Rackspace experience to extend your internal support team

£11,334.44 a unit a month

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

• Modern Slavery statement

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at ukpublicsector@rackspace.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.

Framework

G-Cloud 13

Service ID

127672541475901

Contact

UK Public Sector Sales
+44 (0)208 734 8107
ukpublicsector@rackspace.com

Service scope

• Service constraints: Support is limited to any product that is in 'General Availability' status. Support on pre-GA, Alpha or Beta products is provided at 'reasonable endeavours' basis.
• System requirements: N/a

User support

• Email or online ticketing support: Email or online ticketing
• Support response times: Non-priority project requests are responded during business hours. With AMR option, priority one incidents are responded to within 15 minutes of the incident being logged, 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Incidents are logged either by phone, email or the automated monitoring of infrastructure and applications.; ; Full details of the service response targets for incidents, changes and requests can be found in the terms and conditions.
• User can manage status and priority of support tickets: Yes
• Online ticketing support accessibility: None or don’t know
• Phone support: Yes
• Phone support availability: 24 hours, 7 days a week
• Web chat support: No
• Onsite support: Yes, at extra cost
• Support levels: Our core offering is:; ; Elastic Engineering (EE)- Primary managed support model that provides on-demand access to public cloud experts via ongoing sprints to continually remediate, innovate, evolve and improve customers environments. EE is delivered as tiers of service that include a number of hours per month. ; ; Additional optional / add-on services supplement EE:; ; Optimizer+ - A lightweight support option that provides world-class operational tooling, support and expert guidance needed to get the most out of public cloud infrastructure. With Optimizer, a team of cost optimisation experts provides detailed actions and recommendations to maximise workload performance, whilst saving money and supplementing your IT staff.; ; Advanced Monitoring and Response (AMR) - Built for customers' critical workloads, an always vigilant 24x7x365 team of operations engineers monitor and respond to alerts in customers' environments. ; ; VM Management (VMM) - A simple, full-featured tool that makes your most critical and time-consuming server tasks easy to complete. Built to be multicloud, VMM manages your VMs wherever they are located, through a simple interface and billed on one, consolidated invoice.
• Support available to third parties: Yes

Onboarding and offboarding

• Getting started: At the beginning of the engagement, Rackspace schedules a project kick-off call with the customer. The Rackspace Elastic Engineering delivery framework is used to provide an agile approach to onboarding.; ; Backlog and Sprint Planning: Before each iteration, Rackspace works with the customer to document and review a backlog of user stories. At the start of each sprint, Rackspace and the customer participate in another sprint planning meeting where new stories for the sprint are selected from the top of the backlog.; ; During the Sprint: Rackspace engineers conduct all analysis, design, engineering, and testing activities. The team meets each day for a stand-up meeting, where each member discusses his / her previous day’s accomplishments, their plan for the day and any issues that are blocking progress. ; ; Sprint Demo and Retrospective: At the end of each sprint is a demonstration is undertaken to key stakeholders of the functionality completed during the sprint. The team also holds a retrospective meeting, where lessons from the completed sprint are used to improve future sprints.; ; Customer Acceptance: At the end of each sprint Rackspace reviews the completed stories with the customer’s stakeholders. Stories are marked complete if they meet the agreed upon acceptance criteria.
• Service documentation: Yes
• Documentation formats: PDF
• End-of-contract data extraction: When working with the cloud services like Elastic Engineering, the customer retains full ownership of the cloud accounts in use. Therefore when 'offboarding' from the service, it will be a case of all Rackspace access and tooling being removed. No data will be deleted from within the cloud. Any Rackspace produced information, such as documentation, will be shared with the customer.
• End-of-contract process: Buyer may terminate the relationship with the Supplier for any reason by (i) providing the Supplier with 60 days notice (as per call-off contract terms) and (ii) closing Buyers account for all services for which the Supplier provide an account closing mechanism.; ; Buyers pay for the services they use to the point of account termination.; ; The Supplier customers' retain control and ownership of their data. The Supplier will not erase customer data for 30 days following an account termination. This allows customers to retrieve content from the Supplier services so long as the customer has paid any charges for any post-termination use of the service offerings and all other amounts due.

Using the service

• Web browser interface: Yes
• Using the web interface: When working with Rackspace on anything GCP-related, customers retains full access to the cloud console to create new GCP projects and consume services. Rackspace can also create these and deploy all resources on behalf of the customer, if required.
• Web interface accessibility standard: None or don’t know
• How the web interface is accessible: No specific accessibility standards have been implemented with assistive technology users, however good practice development methods have been used to optimise the end user experience.
• Web interface accessibility testing: No specific web interface technology testing has been undertaken with assistive technology users, however good practice development methods have been used to optimise the end user experience.
• API: Yes
• What users can and can't do using the API: All cloud services functionality is exposed via the vendor's API. Where applicable, Rackspace systems also expose an API to customer for operations that Rackspace owns.
• API automation tools:
  • Ansible
  • Terraform
  • Other
• Other API automation tools:
  • CloudFormation
  • Azure Resource Manager
  • Cloud SDKs for popular languages like Python, Ruby, PHP, Node.js.
  • Automation technologies like Jenkins, CircleCI
• API documentation: Yes
• API documentation formats: HTML
• Command line interface: No

Scaling

• Scaling available: Yes
• Scaling type: Automatic
• Independence of resources: When the Rackspace GCP team architect and deploy solutions, we work with the customer to understand the application requirements so that auto-scaling can be enabled (where it is allowed by the application).; ; Google has a very large availability of resources, however quota limits are applied to ensure that no one customer can use excessive resources. Rackspace will work with the customer to understand quota requirements to ensure that these are set correctly to allow the workload to scale.
• Usage notifications: Yes
• Usage reporting: Other

Analytics

• Infrastructure or application metrics: Yes
• Metrics types:
  • CPU
  • Disk
  • HTTP request and response status
  • Memory
  • Network
  • Number of active instances
  • Other
• Other metrics:
  • Cloud monitoring metrics
  • Cloud logging metrics
  • Applicable cloud monitoring tool will be used for respective clouds
• Reporting types:
  • API access
  • Real-time dashboards

Resellers

• Supplier type: Reseller providing extra features and support
• Organisation whose services are being resold: Google (Google Cloud Platform)

Staff security

• Staff security clearance: Other security clearance
• Government security clearance: None

Asset protection

• Knowledge of data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Data storage and processing locations:
  • United Kingdom
  • European Economic Area (EEA)
  • Other locations
• User control over data storage and processing locations: Yes
• Datacentre security standards: Complies with a recognised standard (for example CSA CCM version 3.0)
• Penetration testing frequency: Less than once a year
• Penetration testing approach: ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
• Protecting data at rest:
  • Encryption of all physical media
  • Other
• Other data at rest protection approach: Cloud vendor provided encryption solutions and other data controls
• Data sanitisation process: Yes
• Data sanitisation type: Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
• Equipment disposal approach: Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001

Backup and recovery

• Backup and recovery: Yes
• What’s backed up:
  • Any cloud service with native backup functionality
  • Hybrid cloud deployments
  • Applications and data
• Backup controls: A custom backup solution can be developed and deployed to a customer's environment on a per cloud account basis.
• Datacentre setup: Multiple datacentres with disaster recovery
• Scheduling backups: Users contact the support team to schedule backups
• Backup recovery: Users contact the support team

Data-in-transit protection

• Data protection between buyer and supplier networks:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
• Data protection within supplier network:
  • TLS (version 1.2 or above)
  • IPsec or TLS VPN gateway

Availability and resilience

• Guaranteed availability: Google provides a large range of services and availability guarantees can vary according to service type. However, in terms of customer system availability, Google commits to customers achieving 99.9% availability on their systems.; Full details on GCP additional service SLAs are available to be viewed here: https://cloud.google.com/terms/sla/
• Approach to resilience: Google has one of the largest and most advanced computer networks in the world with routing resilience designed in from the outset. The Google Cloud Platform backbone network uses advanced software-defined networking and has edge-caching services to deliver fast, consistent, and scalable performance. GCP is based on multiple points of presence (PoPs) across the globe which provides strong system resilience and redundancy. Customer data is mirrored automatically across authorised storage devices in multiple locations with multiple routes to this data included in the basic GCP design.; ; For more information, please see:; https://cloud.google.com/infrastructure
• Outage reporting: Alerts are handled by the Rackspace ticketing system which includes a web interface and email alerts, as part of the AMR / Optimizer+ add-on offering. Customers who choose Advanced Monitoring and Resolution (AMR) add-on option receive 24x7x365 monitoring and alert response. Built for customers' critical workloads, an always vigilant 24x7x365 team of operations engineers monitor and respond to alerts in a customer’s environment. ; ; For customers who do not select AMR / Optimizer+, customers can choose to send alerts directly to the customer's operations team and would be outside the scope of Rackspace's managed service. Additionally, all application outages monitoring and notifications are handled by the customer.

Identity and authentication

• User authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Username or password
• Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels: Customers have unique account numbers and users are created under these account numbers. Customer information is not shared across these account numbers. Customers are also verified using challenge questions before any action is take on their behalf.
• Access restriction testing frequency: At least once a year
• Management access authentication:
  • 2-factor authentication
  • Dedicated link (for example VPN)
  • Username or password
• Devices users manage the service through: Dedicated device on a segregated network (providers own provision)

Audit information for users

• Access to user activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long user audit data is stored for: User-defined
• Access to supplier activity audit information: Users contact the support team to get audit information
• How long supplier audit data is stored for: User-defined
• How long system logs are stored for: Between 1 month and 6 months

Standards and certifications

• ISO/IEC 27001 certification: Yes
• Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001: British Standards Institute (BSI)
• ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date: 21/10/2021
• What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover: Software development controls are excluded and some international office space is not in scope.
• ISO 28000:2007 certification: No
• CSA STAR certification: No
• PCI certification: No
• Cyber essentials: No
• Cyber essentials plus: Yes
• Other security certifications: Yes
• Any other security certifications:
  • ISO 27017
  • ISO 27018
  • SOC 1/2/3

Security governance

• Named board-level person responsible for service security: Yes
• Security governance certified: Yes
• Security governance standards:
  • CSA CCM version 3.0
  • ISO/IEC 27001
  • Other
• Other security governance standards: Cyber Essentials Plus; ISO 27017; ISO 27018; SOC 1/2/3
• Information security policies and processes: Rackspace’s Leadership Team has assigned lead responsibility for information security to the Chief Security Officer. The Chief Security Officer has reviewed and approved the information security management system (ISMS), which demonstrates the commitment to the establishment, implementation, operation, monitoring, review, maintenance and improvement of the ISMS. The Chief Security Officer collaborates with Rackspace Legal to monitor compliance with all local, state, and federal laws and regulations that apply to Rackspace.; ; Rackspace has documented policies which meet the recommendations of the ISO27001 standard (including an Information Security Policy).The Rackspace Information Security Policy is reviewed at least annually or as a significant change occurs to ensure its continuing suitability, adequacy, and effectiveness.; ; Supporting policies include:; -Global Rackspace Corporate Information Security Policy; -Global Organization of Corporate Information Security Policy; -Management of Information Security Incidents Policy; -Global Information Technology Risk and Compliance Policy; -Global Business Continuity Policy; -Global Supplier Relationship Management Policy; -Global Communication Security Policy; -Global Operations Security Policy; -Global Physical Security Policy; -Global Access Control Policy; -Global Asset Management Policy; -Global Vulnerability Management; -Global System Acquisition Development and Maintenance Policy; -Global Cryptography Policy; ; Policies and processes are audited internally and externally by an independent assessor

Operational security

• Configuration and change management standard: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Configuration and change management approach: Changes to Rackspace owned services and features follow secure software development practices, including security risk reviews prior to launch. Developer access to production environments is via explicit access system requests, subject to owner review and authorisation. All production environment changes are reviewed, tested and approved. Stages include design, documentation, implementation (including rollback procedures), testing (non-production environment), peer to peer review (business impact/technical rigour/code), final approval by authorised party.
• Vulnerability management type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Vulnerability management approach: Rackspace security teams check weekly with our vendors and US-CERT for discovered vulnerabilities. All identified vulnerabilities are evaluated against our system architecture and scored. If a CVE or vendor score is available that is used as the base score. Compensating controls such as accessibility are considered to adjust the severity. Once prioritised, respective patches are applied to Rackspace owned systems as per our change management process. For customer owned solutions, our support teams will work with the customer to follow the customer's process.
• Protective monitoring type: Conforms to a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v3.0 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
• Protective monitoring approach: Monitoring is configured using various cloud provider tools to detect anomalous events. Events are sent to support teams for further investigation and triage. Response is governed by service SLAs.
• Incident management type: Supplier-defined controls
• Incident management approach: Rackspace will apply a consistent approach to all incidents, except where a specific approach is agreed upon with you in accordance with your custom runbook. Incidents can be initiated by either: named customer contacts, Rackspace, event management tools (e.g. Watchman). All incidents are logged in tickets accessible via the Rackspace Control Panel. Rackspace Support teams will investigate the incident in accordance with the agreed service level. Rackspace support will carefully review instructions on your account, will communicate regularly with you throughout the incident and may escalate the incident at any time until resolution is achieved.

Secure development

• Approach to secure software development best practice: Independent review of processes (for example CESG CPA Build Standard, ISO/IEC 27034, ISO/IEC 27001 or CSA CCM v3.0)

Separation between users

• Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart: Yes
• Who implements virtualisation: Supplier
• Virtualisation technologies used: Other
• Other virtualisation technology used: KVM
• How shared infrastructure is kept separate: Google applications run in a multi-tenant, distributed environment. Rather than segregating each customer’s data onto a single machine or set of machines, data from all Google customers is distributed amongst a shared infrastructure. Data is broken into subfile “chunks”, which are stored on local disks and identified by unique chunk IDs. Google encrypts data as it is written to disk with a per-chunk encryption key that is associated with a specific customer access list. The ACL helps ensure that data in each chunk is only decrypted by services that were given permission at the time of encrypting the data.

Energy efficiency

• Energy-efficient datacentres: Yes
• Description of energy efficient datacentres: All data centre hosting is provided by the cloud vendor

Social Value

• Fighting climate change:

  Fighting climate change

  Rackspace has committed to achieving net zero carbon emissions by 2045. This is five years ahead of the UN Paris Agreement on Climate Change ambition to limit the global warming of the planet to 1.5 degrees Celsius, compared to pre-industrial levels. We have begun the process of automating our large facilities with smart, energy-saving features that, so far, have resulted in a 2,000-kilogram reduction of C02 in our main office in UK, in Hayes. We have assembled a cross-functional team to define our ESG-related goals more clearly so we can better measure our impact in the future. We have also invested in and are deploying smart building automation systems in five locations globally and three data centres, both including London. These systems will drive reduced energy consumption in each of these locations, through building control systems that provide the ability to efficiently manage light, heat and cooling zones based on operational demand.
• Covid-19 recovery:

  Covid-19 recovery

  We have evolved physical health programmes and developed new mental and emotional wellness programs to better serve and support our Rackers, as we recover from COVID. In addition, we began to look for ways we could help those organisations that support our communities. To that end, we initiated our first company-wide donation match program, matching Racker donations to COVID-19 relief organisations and other non-profit organisations that provide valuable services and support to local communities. During this two-week campaign, Rackspace and its employees donated more than £152,000 toward the COVID-19 relief efforts of over 360 organisations around the globe.
• Tackling economic inequality:

  Tackling economic inequality

  At the core of every Racker (Rackspace employee) is a drive to leave the world better than we found it and we are passionate about giving back to our communities across the globe. While Rackers can leverage paid volunteer time off for any cause, our Rack Gives Back programme creates opportunities for Rackers to give our time and talent to others. So far we have donated 27,000 hours to charity. ; One of the many examples of Rackspace tackling economic inequality is our head office location, which we call “The Castle”. The building was an abandoned shopping mall in a run-down neighbourhood. Rackspace took over the mall and converted it into our head office, bringing employment opportunities and much needed economic vibrancy to the area. Rackspace offers community support programs including big brother and big sister (a mentoring programme) and regular charity drives for local causes.
• Equal opportunity:

  Equal opportunity

  Having a diverse workforce – made up of team members who bring a wide variety of skills, abilities, experiences and perspectives – is essential to Rackspace’s success. We are committed to the principles of equal employment opportunity, inclusion and respect. We do not tolerate discrimination against anyone – team members, customers, business partners, or other stakeholders – on the basis of race, colour, religion, national origin, sex (including pregnancy), age, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, past or present military service, or any other status protected by the laws or regulations in the locations where we operate. We provide equal employment opportunity to everyone who is legally authorised to work in the applicable country. We provides reasonable accommodations to individuals with disabilities and removes any artificial barriers to success. ; Rackspace has also introduced a number of initiatives to help working parents and allow the sometimes disadvantaged to thrive in our workplace with flexible hours and other support specifically designed for working parents.
• Wellbeing:

  Wellbeing

  Rackspace has a number of wellbeing programs in place to keep our teams healthy. We have invested in this area additionally over the COVID period, since it is widely viewed that the isolation introduced through lockdown has introduced new challenges for some of our teams. We offer a comprehensive employee assistance programme (EAP) providing Rackers with access to confidential professional support with any of the following challenges: depression, anxiety and mental health, family or relationship problems, improving work life balance, financial or legal problems, child or elder care challenges. We have a monthly wellbeing challenge (The Racker Recharge), which is a fun competition with a small prize focused on a particular area of wellbeing. The purpose of the challenge is to build awareness of heathy practices and build good habits in our teams. As an example, March’s challenge was on nutrition, hydration and sleep. ; One of our core values is compassion – we are one team doing the right thing for our customers, communities and each other. In many of our locations we offer discounted membership to local gyms to allow Rackers to keep their bodies as fit as their brains.

Pricing

• Price: £11,334.44 a unit a month
• Discount for educational organisations: No
• Free trial available: No

Service documents

• Pricing document

  PDF

• Skills Framework for the Information Age rate card

  PDF

• Service definition document

  PDF

• Terms and conditions

  PDF

• Modern Slavery statement

  PDF

Request an accessible format

If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format, email the supplier at ukpublicsector@rackspace.com. Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.