Service Level Agreement
The University of Texas at Austin
Effective Date: 6/22/2009
Last Edited:
Score
Overview
Web Central is the university's primary Web server and publishing environment. It is the face of the university to the world. In partnership with the Office of Public Affairs, ITS provides the templates that shape the look-and-feel of the Web pages on the UT Web site. ITS also implements and maintains the servers, search engines, and technical environment.
Review Process
This document defines the practices that Information Technology Services (ITS) will use for the Web Central service. The details of this document may be reviewed and amended as required, or at least annually, to accurately reflect business and service needs.
Time Conventions
Unless otherwise indicated, 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 Web Central service: Students, Faculty, Staff, Other.
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
Web Central services include the following:
- Public access to information and data located within the www.utexas.edu domain.
- Web publishing services for university departments, faculty, and student organizations.
- Web-based information on the services and organization of The University of Texas at Austin, published by constituents distributed across campus.
Web Central files are stored on high performance file storage devices employing RAID technology and redundant server hardware for enterprise class storage reliability and management features.
Disaster recovery snapshots of Web Central files are periodically transmitted to a separate storage device. Disaster recovery snapshots are retained for a period of 8 weeks.
Files can be recovered from weekly snapshots upon request to the Web Technologies Team.
Supported Computing Environment
The Web Guidelines - Recommended Browsers and Development Guidelines outline the supported computing environment for Web Central end-users. Web Central is a secured Unix environment, and publisher or developer access to the system requires a client that supports SSH or SFTP.
Technical Support
Web Central end-users and administrators should report issues with Web Central services to the ITS Help Desk, which provides Tier 1 (basic) support for the service. The ITS Help Desk will escalate issues as appropriate to the ITS Applications Web Technologies Team or to ITS Unix Systems Staff.
Tier 1 Support
The ITS Help Desk will provide Tier 1 support for end-user and publisher problems to the greatest extent possible. The ITS Help Desk can be contacted during business hours:
- Online Contact Form
- 512-475-9400
Tier 2 Support
- The ITS Help Desk may escalate issues to Tier 2 support - the Web Technologies Team at ITS-Applications.
- Routine requests are typically responded to within one business day. Routine requests are typically resolved within three business days.
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
Web Central services are expected to be 99.95% available to end users 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. This percentage averages to approximately 4.4 hours unplanned downtime per year.
Scheduled Maintenance
Scheduled maintenance for the Web Central service is essential for upgrades and to maintain security, and may occur within the following protocols:
- Major, user-visible software upgrades that are expected to significantly change behavior of Web server functionality (Apache, PHP) are announced at least two weeks ahead of time, and coordinated with the Web Central publishing community by the Web Technologies Team.
- Minor, less visible upgrades are announced at least 5 days ahead of time, again in coordination with the WTT.
- Emergency reboots and security patches are announced as soon as possible.
- Server hardware maintenance is scheduled at least 5 days in advance. We typically schedule such maintenance in the 7-9 a.m. timeframe during weekdays in order to have sufficient staff and vendor support available for any unexpected hardware problems.
- Server storage maintenance requiring Web Central content to become largely unavailable (such as the extensive data copying required for storage consolidation) is announced at least a week in advance.
- During scheduled maintenance, all efforts will be made to maintain a usable Web presence at www.utexas.edu. Depending on the nature of that maintenance, that Web presence may be a limited or "light" version of the standard site presence.
Problem Reporting and Change Notification
ITS will notify customers using the ITS Services Status page of service availability and service delivery issues for the Web Central. To the maximum extent possible, installation of service, application, and security updates will be performed during scheduled maintenance.
Key Service Indicators
List of Metrics/Measures
Web Central is automatically monitored, and ITS staff is automatically notified in the case of an outage.
Dependencies
Portions of Web Central are dependent upon ITS MySQL Services and Oracle Services, and resolution of Web Central addresses is dependent on ITS DNS Services. Web Central publishing is dependent on the Unix Timesharing Service (UTS). The availability of these services will have a direct impact on Web Central availability.
Service Report Card
ITS will publish performance for this service in the public ITS Services Report Card.
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
All users developing Web applications on Web Central should be familiar with university Web application security standards, and with guidelines for secure Web application development.
Departmental IT Support Staff
Departmental Web publishers should be aware of the publishing directions.
Cost of Service
Web Central is available at no cost to UT students, faculty, staff, and departments. Publishers have some costs, depending on the service required.
