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Service Level Agreement

Campus Network

Information Technology Services
The University of Texas at Austin
Effective Date: July 1, 2009

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Overview

The purpose of this document is to ensure customers have a clear understanding of the support Information Technology Services (ITS) provides for the Campus Network. This document defines the service, service delivery expectations, availability, maintenance windows, and the responsibilities of ITS support staff as well as customers.

Review Process

This document defines the practices that Information Technology Services (ITS) will use for the Campus Network service. The details of this document may be reviewed and amended annually, to accurately reflect business and service needs.

Time Conventions

Business hours are from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Friday, excluding holidays and reduced schedule days.

Scope

The following user communities at the university are the intended recipients for the Campus Network service: Students, Faculty, Staff, Other (official visitors).

Service Criticality

This service has been identified as Critical, based on the ITS Critical Services Assessment Criteria. Please refer to the Critical Services Assessment Criteria for more information on the assessment methodology.

Service Description

The Campus Network provides network connectivity across university facilities and to the worldwide Internet. This SLA refers to the portions of the Campus Network that provide 1) connections between buildings and the network core, defined as the backbone , 2) connectivity to a building, defined as a POP (Point of Presence), 3) connections outside of UT, defined as external connectivity, and 4) basic network services (DNS/DHCP). SLAs for networks inside a building are determined by local IT support organizations that cooperatively manage those networks with ITS, and are not the subject of this SLA.

Supported Computing Environment

The Campus Network presently supports TCP/IP version 4.

For the latest information on tested systems and a complete list of supported procedures, refer to the ITS Web site: http://www.utexas.edu/its/network.

Technical Support

End users communicate with Tier 1 support, which may escalate to Tier 2 support.

Tier 1 Support

Local IT support personnel, or if not known the ITS Help Desk at 512-475-9400 or by e-mail.

Tier 2 Support

Local IT support personnel and the ITS Help Desk escalate to ITS Networking.

Service Availability

This section provides information about the normal schedule of times when the service is available, the times specified for scheduled maintenance, and defines expectations for reporting service problems and changes.

Normal Service Availability

24 X 7 X 365

Scheduled Maintenance

Scheduled maintenance for the Campus Network is essential to ensure reliable, secure, and high performance operations.

Backbone, External Connectivity and Services Maintenance (impact is campus wide):

1. Regular maintenance is scheduled and announced five months in advance. It occurs on Sunday mornings from 8 to 11 a.m., during or close to semester inter-sessions (fall, winter, summer).
2. Emergency maintenance may be scheduled during a semester to repair failing services or address critical security vulnerabilities. When possible these are scheduled outside business hours.

Building POP Maintenance (impact is local to a specific building):

1. Regular maintenance will occur during the Backbone and External Connectivity Maintenance schedules specified above.
2. Maintenance will also be scheduled with local IT Support personnel.

Problem Reporting and Change Notification

Backbone, External Connectivity and Services Maintenance:

1. For regularly scheduled maintenance, ITS will notify customers using the ITS Services Status page of service availability and service delivery issues for the Campus Network. To the maximum extent possible, user-affecting installation of service, application, and security updates will be performed during scheduled maintenance.
2. For emergency maintenance, in addition to the ITS Services Status page, ITS will also notify the it-updates e-mail list as soon as it has been scheduled.

Building POP Maintenance:

1. For regularly scheduled Backbone maintenance times see above.
2. For specific building POP maintenance, ITS will notify local building IT support personnel, and rely on them to notify their building occupants.

Key Service Indicators

List of Metrics/Measures

Campus Network Backbone:

1. The backbone will be available 99.98% of the time (potentially up to 1.75 hours of downtime per year). Excludes: scheduled maintenance and campus-wide disasters.

External Connectivity:

1. Commodity Internet services will be available 99.95% of the time (potentially up to 4.5 hours of downtime per year). Excluding: scheduled maintenance and campus-wide or local/national/international disasters.
2. Commodity Internet busy hour (95th percentile) consumption will be equal to or less than our purchased bandwidth (a qualitative measure to ensure performance).

Services:

1. DNS Caching Resolvers (Domain Name Services) will be available 99.98% of the time (potentially up to two hours of downtime per year). Excludes: scheduled maintenance and campus-wide disasters.
2. DNS Authoritative Records will be available 99.98% of the time (potentially up to two hours of downtime per year). Excludes: scheduled maintenance and campus-wide disasters.
3. DHCP Services (Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol) will be available 99.95% of the time (potentially up to four hours of downtime per year) Excludes: scheduled maintenance and campus-wide disasters.

Building POPs:

1. For on-campus buildings following network architectural specifications, the POP will be available 99.9% of the time (potentially up to 8 hours of downtime per year). Excludes: scheduled maintenance, power outages, campus media plant failures, and building or campus-wide disasters.
2. For off-campus buildings utilizing external services to connect to campus, and buildings that do not follow network specifications, the POP availability is best effort. Best effort response times are as soon as possible during business hours, and one hour to begin investigation outside business hours, after a monitored or reported site outage (if ITS has full site access). Off-campus sites are often dependent on external vendors for transport back to campus. ITS includes SLA requirements in agreements with external vendor contracts it negotiates, and enforces those SLAs (recourses include: discounts, refunds, and termination of the contract).
3. For temporary installations (for example, construction trailers) availability is best effort during business hours. Best effort response times are one hour on-site to begin investigation during business hours after a monitored or reported site outage (if ITS has full site access).

Dependencies

Campus Network Backbone:

1. Network Operations Centers (which require power/cooling).
2. Campus fiber optic media plant (which relies on the underground tunnel and duct bank systems).
3. For the Pickle Research Center campus, the Greater Austin Area Telecommunication Network fiber media system.
4. External carrier links to off-campus sites.

External Connectivity:

1. Network Operations Centers (which require power/cooling).
2. Campus fiber optic media plant (which relies on the underground tunnel and duct bank systems), and city-wide fiber optic media plants.
3. External Internet Service Providers.
4. External research network providers.

Building POPs:

1. Campus Network Backbone.
2. Local building facilities (telecommunications closets, power, and cooling).
3. Building fiber optic cabling plants.
4. External carriers for off-campus sites.

Services:

1. Campus Network Backbone (and associated facilities where services are co-located).
2. External carriers for off-campus DNS services.

Service Report Card

ITS will publish performance for this service in the public Campus Network Status Report. Local IT support personnel may view private availability reports through the ITS provided network utilities.

Other Party Responsibilities

In addition to the services provided by ITS, subscribers (users) of the service and identified owners/administrators agree to certain important responsibilities. All parties agree to be aware of and adhere to the university's Acceptable Use Policy.

User/Subscriber Responsibilities

Subscriber agrees to:

• Contact their local IT support staff to report network problems. If they do not know who their local support staff are, they should contact the ITS Help Desk.

Departmental IT Support Staff

• Will adhere to the Network Operations Manual [TBD]
• Will contact ITS Networking to report outages and seek assistance.

Cost of Service

ITS funds the backbone and external connectivity portions of the Campus Network, and all necessary operations, management, monitoring systems, and personnel. Departments wishing to consume large amounts of external bandwidth may be offered additional purchase arrangements by ITS.

Departments are responsible for funding all internal and external equipment required to install and maintain its building's POP connection to the Campus Network (typically procured by ITS using departmental accounts). These costs vary depending on size and performance requirements. Departments also pay ITS for all media systems required to connect the building through the campus media plant. POPs must meet minimal operational standards defined by ITS to ensure stable campus network operations. Recurring costs include: annual media maintenance fees and annual support and software licenses for POP devices. New POP related equipment purchases are required every 3-5 years depending on vendor support, changes in service requirements, and technology changes. Media replacement/upgrades are required every 10-15 years depending on changes in service requirement and technology changes. Off-campus sites will incur additional monthly charges from external vendors, or for a customized ITS solution, to transport their network to campus.