Rackspace Elastic Engineering for AWS
Elastic Engineering (EE) is a managed support model that provides on-demand access to AWS 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, 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 AWS experts
- Connectivity options for HSCN, Janet, RLi and regional networks
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
- Increased flexibility & agility across IT services
- Design solutions with confidence that applications and services remain available
- AMR offers peace of mind for 24x7x365 monitoring and alerts
- Expert advice from MSP with 15 AWS competencies
- Help to implement changes towards more efficient, cloud-native operations
- Solutions will align with the NCSC 14 Cloud Security Principles
- Move to increasing mature DevOps model at your own speed
Pricing
£11,334.44 a unit a month
- Education pricing available
Service documents
Request an accessible format
Framework
G-Cloud 13
Service ID
6 2 7 6 7 0 8 9 3 3 7 3 2 2 1
Contact
Rackspace Ltd
UK Public Sector Sales
Telephone: +44 (0)208 734 8107
Email: 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
- None
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
- No
- 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
- 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 AWS related, customer retains full access to the cloud console to create new AWS accounts 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 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.
- Web interface accessibility testing
- No testing with users of assistive technology has been completed to date.
- 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
- SaltStack
- Terraform
- Puppet
- Other
- Other API automation tools
-
- Cloud SDKs for popular languages like Python, Ruby, PHP, Node.js.
- Automation technologies like Jenkins, CircleCI, etc.
- CloudFormation
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
-
- HTML
- Other
- Command line interface
- Yes
- Command line interface compatibility
-
- Linux or Unix
- Windows
- MacOS
- Using the command line interface
- All AWS functionality is available via the command line interface (CLI).
Scaling
- Scaling available
- Yes
- Scaling type
- Automatic
- Independence of resources
-
When the Rackspace AWS team architect and deploy solutions, we work with customers to understand the application requirements so that auto-scaling can be enabled (where it is allowed by the application).
AWS 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 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
-
- AWS resources: e.g. Amazon EC2/Amazon RDS DB instances, DynamoDB tables
- Custom metrics generated by customers’ applications and services
- Metrics associated with log files generated by the application
- Reporting types
-
- API access
- Real-time dashboards
- Regular reports
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Reseller providing extra support
- Organisation whose services are being resold
- Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Other security clearance
- Government security clearance
- Up to Baseline Personnel Security Standard (BPSS)
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
- Supplier-defined controls
- Penetration testing frequency
- Less than once a year
- Penetration testing approach
- ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
- Protecting data at rest
- Other
- Other data at rest protection approach
-
AWS adheres to independently validated privacy, data protection, security protections and control processes.
AWS is responsible for the security of the cloud; Rackspace provides guidance and resources to assist security in the cloud for the customers.
AWS enables customers to control their content (where it will be stored, how it will be secured in transit or at rest, how access to their AWS environment will be managed).
Wherever appropriate, we offer customers options to add additional security layers to data at rest, via scalable and efficient encryption features. AWS offers flexible key management options and dedicated hardware-based cryptographic key storage. - Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
-
- Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
- Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
- Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
- 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
-
- Machine image
- Volume / block volume
- Cross-region replication; bucket versioning, lifecycle rules
- Files on EFS
- Tables and data
- Directory snapshot
- Logs / config logs(to S3)
- Code download
- Any cloud service with native backup functionality.
- 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
- Scheduling backups
- Users schedule backups through a web interface
- Backup recovery
- Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
-
- Private network or public sector network
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
- Bonded fibre optic connections
- Data protection within supplier network
-
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- Other
- Other protection within supplier network
-
Customer environments are logically segregated to prevent users and customers from accessing resources not assigned to them. AWS gives customers ownership and control over their content by design through simple, but powerful tools that allow customers to determine how their content will be secured in transit.
AWS enables customers to open a secure, encrypted channel to AWS services using TLS, and/or IPsec or TLS VPN (if applicable), or other means of protection that customers wish to use.
API calls can be encrypted with TLS to maintain confidentiality; the AWS Console connection is encrypted with TLS.
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
-
AWS currently provides SLAs for several services. Due to the rapidly evolving nature of AWS’s product offerings, SLAs are best reviewed directly on our website via the links below:
• Amazon EC2 SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/ec2-sla/
• Amazon S3 SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/s3-sla
• Amazon CloudFront SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/cloudfront/sla/
• Amazon Route 53 SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/route53/sla/
• Amazon RDS SLA: http://aws.amazon.com/rds-sla/
• AWS Shield Advanced SLA: https://aws.amazon.com/shield/sla/
Well-architected solutions on AWS that leverage AWS Service SLAs and unique AWS capabilities, such as multiple Availability Zones, can ease the burden of achieving specific SLA requirements. - Approach to resilience
-
Rackspace will work with customers to understand their disaster recovery and resilience requirements and will architect a solution designed to meet the defined recovery objectives. The Azure platform is built on multiple redundant data centres, which have resilience at the core of the design.
Please see: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/global-datacenters and https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/TrustCenter/ - 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
- Identity federation with existing provider (for example Google apps)
- Username or password
- Other
- Other user authentication
-
AWS controls access via unique user ID / password authentication. No actions are permissible without authentication. Remote access is multi-factor, login attempts are limited, remote administrative access attempts are logged and reviewed by Security. Suspicious activity initiates incident response procedures.
A session lock out policy that is systematically enforced: locks are retained until identification/authentication procedures are concluded.
AWS’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) system controls access to AWS services/resources. IAM facilitates the issuance of access permissions per user/group. Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is available at no extra cost. - Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
-
IAM provides user access control to AWS services, APIs and specific resources. Other controls include time, originating IP address, TLS use and whether users authenticated via MFA devices.
API calls to launch/terminate instances, change firewalls, and perform other functions are signed by customers’ Amazon Secret Access Key (either the root AWS Account’s Secret Access Key or the Secret Access Key of a user created with AWS IAM). Amazon EC2 API calls cannot be made on customers’ behalf without access to customers’ Secret Access Key.
API calls can be encrypted with TLS for confidentiality and customers can use TLS-protected API endpoints. - Access restriction testing frequency
- At least every 6 months
- 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 have access to real-time audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- At least 12 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
- Yes
- Who accredited the PCI DSS certification
- Protiviti
- PCI DSS accreditation date
- 31/07/2021
- What the PCI DSS doesn’t cover
- Services outside the scope of our managed dedicated cloud, managed public cloud and managed security. Rackspace managed support service for AWS is PCI certified.
- Cyber essentials
- No
- Cyber essentials plus
- Yes
- Other security certifications
- Yes
- Any other security certifications
- SOC 1/2/3
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
-
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Other
- Other security governance standards
- Cyber Essentials Plus; ISO 27017; ISO 27018; SOC 1/2/3
- Information security policies and processes
-
AWS implements formal, documented policies and procedures that provide guidance for operations and information security within the organisation. Policies address purpose, scope, roles, responsibilities and management commitment.
Employees maintain policies in a centralised and accessible location. AWS Security Assurance is responsible for familiarizing employees with the AWS security policies.
AWS has established information security functions that are aligned with defined structure, reporting lines, and responsibilities. Leadership involvement provides clear direction and visible support for security initiatives.
The output of AWS Leadership reviews include any decisions or actions related to:
• Improvement of the effectiveness of the ISMS
• Update of the risk assessment and treatment plan
• Modification of procedures and controls that affect information security to respond to internal or external events that may impact the ISMS
• Resource needs
• Improvement in how the effectiveness of controls is measured.
Policies are approved by AWS leadership at least annually or following a significant change to the AWS environment.
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
-
AWS Security performs vulnerability scans on the host operating system, web applications and databases in the AWS environment. Approved 3rd party vendors conduct external assessments (minimum quarterly). Identified vulnerabilities are monitored and evaluated. Countermeasures are designed and implemented to neutralise known / newly identified vulnerabilities.
AWS Security monitors newsfeeds / vendor sites for patches and receives customer intelligence via http://aws.amazon.com/security/vulnerability-reporting/.
AWS customers are responsible for all scanning, penetration testing, file integrity monitoring and intrusion detection for their instances / applications. Scans should include customer IP addresses (not AWS endpoints). AWS endpoint testing is part of AWS compliance vulnerability scans. - 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. All incident management processes are documented within a customer runbook which is the basis for incident management invocation and execution. Incidents can be initiated by either customer contacts, Rackspace, event management tools (e.g. Rackspace Watchman). All incidents are logged tickets, accessible via the AWS 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
- Different instances running on the same physical machine are isolated from each other via the Xen hypervisor. AWS is active in the Xen community, which provides awareness of the latest developments. In addition, the AWS firewall resides within the hypervisor layer, between the physical network interface and the instance's virtual interface. All packets must pass through this layer, thus an instance’s neighbours have no more access to that instance than any other host on the Internet and can be treated as if they are on separate physical hosts. The physical RAM is separated using similar mechanisms.
- How shared infrastructure is kept separate
-
Customer environments are logically segregated, preventing users and customers from accessing unassigned resources. Customers maintain full control over their data access. Services which provide virtualised operational environments to customers, ensure that customers are segregated and prevent cross-tenant privilege escalation and information disclosure via hypervisors and instance isolation.
Different instances running on the same physical machine are isolated from each other via the Xen hypervisor. The Amazon EC2 firewall resides within the hypervisor layer, between the physical network interface and the instance's virtual interface. All packets pass through this layer. The physical random-access memory (RAM) is separated using similar mechanisms.
Energy efficiency
- Energy-efficient datacentres
- Yes
- Description of energy efficient datacentres
- All data centre hosting is provided by the cloud vendor. Customer environments will be hosted in AWS data centres and so will meet EU energy efficiency standards.
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
- Yes
- Free trial available
- No