Rackspace Ltd

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
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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
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 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
  • PDF
  • 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
  • Email
  • 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

Service documents

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.