Rackspace Ltd

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
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

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
  • 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 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
  • PDF
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
  • Email
  • 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

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.