Rackspace Elastic Engineering for Azure
Elastic Engineering (EE) is a managed support model that provides on-demand access to Azure 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 Azure experts
- Rackspace is a certified Azure Expert MSP
Benefits
- On-demand access to a team (Pod) of cloud experts
- Support for broad range of projects to meet evolving needs
- Flexibility via engineering throughput scaling up and down
- 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 five-time Microsoft Hosting Partner of the Year
- 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
7 7 1 6 1 3 7 9 3 1 0 4 3 7 0
Contact
Rackspace Ltd
UK Public Sector Sales
Telephone: +44 (0)208 734 8107
Email: ukpublicsector@rackspace.com
Service scope
- Service constraints
-
System constraints will be dependent on customer requirements. Rackspace solution architects will work with the customer to provide a design to meet requirements and highlight any limitations that may exist.
Please see https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/ for further information and to review applicable constraints. - System requirements
- See https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/
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
- WCAG 2.1 AA or EN 301 549
- 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
-
- HTML
- 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 Azure related, customer retains full access to the cloud console to create new Azure subscriptions 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
- Users are able to utilise the Azure API Management service to create their own APIs for the solutions they deploy on to the platform. Additionally, we support the Azure Service Management API, which provides programmatic access to much of the functionality available through the Management Portal. For more information, please see: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee460799.aspx
- API automation tools
-
- Ansible
- SaltStack
- Terraform
- Puppet
- Other
- Other API automation tools
-
- Wide range of 3rd party services hook into Azure APIs
- Offer SDKs for Python, Ruby, PHP, JavaScript, Java, .NET, Node.js.
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
-
- HTML
- Command line interface
- Yes
- Command line interface compatibility
-
- Linux or Unix
- Windows
- MacOS
- Other
- Using the command line interface
- Users are able to utilise the Azure API Management service to create their own APIs for the solutions they deploy on to the platform. Additionally, we support the Azure Service Management API, which provides programmatic access to much of the functionality available through the Management Portal. For more information, please see: https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/azure/ee460799.aspx
Scaling
- Scaling available
- Yes
- Scaling type
- Automatic
- Independence of resources
-
"When the Rackspace Azure team architect and deploy solutions, we work with customers to understand the application requirements so that autoscaling can be enabled (where it is allowed by the application).
Azure 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
-
- API
- SMS
Analytics
- Infrastructure or application metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
-
- CPU
- Disk
- HTTP request and response status
- Memory
- Network
- Number of active instances
- Other
- Other metrics
- Monetary consumption metrics
- Reporting types
-
- API access
- Real-time dashboards
- Regular reports
- Reports on request
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Reseller providing extra support
- Organisation whose services are being resold
- Microsoft (Azure)
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)
- 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
- At least once a year
- Penetration testing approach
- ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a CHECK service provider
- Protecting data at rest
-
- Physical access control, complying with CSA CCM v3.0
- Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Encryption of all physical media
- Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
- Other
- Other data at rest protection approach
- http://download.microsoft.com/download/0/D/D/0DD8FB12-6343-4A50-80B2-545F2951D7AE/MicrosoftAzureDataProtection_Aug2014.pdf , https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/storage/storage-service-encryption
- Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
-
- Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
- Deleted data can’t be directly accessed
- 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
-
- Rackspace will define backups to meet customer requirements
- Www.microsoft.com/en-us/cloud-platform/global-datacenters
- Docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/azure/best-practices-availability-paired-regions
- 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
- 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
- Data protection within supplier network
-
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
- See Microsoft's Online Service Terms at: http://www.microsoftvolumelicensing.com/Downloader.aspx?DocumentId=11745
- 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 risilience 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
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
- Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
-
Azure-AD designates separate administrators to serve different functions. These administrators will have access to features in the Azure portal and, depending on their role, will be able to create or edit users, assign administrative roles to others, reset user passwords, manage user-licenses, and manage domains, among other things. A user who is assigned an admin role will have the same permissions across all of the cloud services that your organization has subscribed to, regardless of whether you assign the role in the Office 365 portal, or in the Azure classic-portal, or by using the Azure-AD module for Windows PowerShell.
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/active-directory/active-directory-assign-admin-roles" - 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)
- Dedicated device on a government network (for example PSN)
- Dedicated device over multiple services or networks
- Any device but through a bastion host (a bastion host is a server that provides access to a private network from an external network such as the internet)
- Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)
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
- Between 6 months and 12 months
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users receive audit information on a regular basis
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- Between 6 months and 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- Between 6 months and 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
- No
- 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
-
- CSA CCM version 3.0
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Other
- Other security governance standards
- 14 Cloud Security Principles - See https://gallery.technet.microsoft.com/14-Cloud-Security-Controls-670292c1 . Also FACT, NHS IG Toolkit, FedRamp, NIST 800-171, EU Model Clauses.
- Information security policies and processes
-
An Information Security Management Program has been established to enable Microsoft Azure to maintain and improve its management system for information security. Through establishment of the ISMS, Azure plans for and manages protection of its assets to acceptable security levels based on defined risk management processes. In addition, Azure monitors the ISMS and the effectiveness of controls in maintaining the confidentiality, integrity and availability of assets to continuously improve information security.
The ISMS framework encompasses industry best-practices for information security and privacy. The ISMS has been documented and communicated in a customer-facing Information Security Policy, which can be made available upon request (customers and prospective customers must have a signed NDA or equivalent in place to receive a copy).
Microsoft Azure performs annual ISMS reviews, the results of which are reviewed by management. This involves monitoring ongoing effectiveness and improvement of the ISMS control environment by reviewing security issues, audit results, and monitoring status, and by planning and tracking necessary corrective actions.
Also see https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/TrustCenter/Compliance/ISO-IEC-27001 and The Microsoft Cloud Security Policy is available via the Service Trust Platform aka.ms/stpescription
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
-
When providing the antimalware solution for virtual machines, Azure is responsible for ensuring the service is highly available, definitions are updated regularly, that configuration through the Azure Management Portal is effective and that the software detects and protects against known types of malicious software. MCIO-managed hosts in the scope boundary are scanned to validate antivirus clients are installed and current signature-definition files exist.
Vulnerability scans are performed on a quarterly basis at a minimum. Microsoft Azure contracts with independent assessors to perform penetration testing of the Microsoft Azure boundary. - 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
- Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- 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. Azure Operational Insights). All incidents are logged tickets, accessible via the Microsoft Azure 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
- Hyper-V
- How shared infrastructure is kept separate
- Azure is a multi-tenant service, which means that multiple customer deployments and VMs are stored on the same physical hardware. Azure uses logical isolation to segregate each customer’s data from the data of others. Segregation provides the scale and economic benefits of multi-tenant services while rigorously preventing customers from accessing one another’s data. Customers are responsible for ensuring that data stored in Azure is encrypted in accordance with their standards. Azure offers a wide range of encryption capabilities, giving customers the flexibility to choose the solution that best meets their needs.
Energy efficiency
- Energy-efficient datacentres
- Yes
- Description of energy efficient datacentres
- All data centre hosting is provided by the cloud vendor. Microsoft is committed to having 70% of all data centres powered by renewable energy by 2023 and is working with the EU to ensure that all power usage is within guidelines for targeted energy efficiency.
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