This page provides basic information concerning the service and support targets that client departments can expect while using the SSC Science Program Collaboration and Emerging Technologies Cloud Tenants. The intent is to ensure there is no degradation of service and that support is transparent to the end-user community. The intended audience for this page is Science community representatives (project managers, scientists, technical resources, single points of contact (SPOCs) and system administrators). Science community representatives can share the information within this page with their internal help desk representatives as needed.
The following is a list of support emails offered by the cloud team for general questions and support requests.
Emails will be monitored between 8am and 5pm Eastern Time (EST) and we will strive to reply within one business day. Urgent items should be flagged so they can take priority. Note the email boxes will not be monitored on holidays or weekends.
| Role | Responsibility |
| Science User |
Clients are expected to support their own applications and environments within the cloud tenants unless the solution is offered as a managed product through the Collaboration and Emerging Technologies Technical Team. Clients are expected to only run applications for the data classification they are approved for and are not to run production or critical workloads in the environment. Breaking this rule will be an immediate removal from the cloud tenant. |
| Collaboration and Emerging Technologies Technical Team | The Collaboration and Emerging Technologies Technical Team is expected to secure the cloud environments to the expected workload profiles; monitor the environments for security issues; procure cloud credits and licenses require; provide tier 1 & 2 support to scientists; and commutate with other SSC and CCCS cloud groups. |
| Cloud Provider | The cloud provider is expected to provide the core cloud infrastructure services and provide tier 3 support as needed. |
For a detailed RACI chart see the Roles and Responsibilities page.
| Event | Description |
| Availability Targets | Although the cloud environments are accessible 24/7, the SSC Science Cloud tenants currently do not guarantee any level of availability. Environments are meant for experimentation and may be shutdown or stopped at any time. |
| Scheduled Maintenance Windows |
Scheduled maintenance activities are defined as any ongoing work that maintains a system in its current operational state. These activities are planned to occur during an agreed upon period (maintenance windows). Although the team will strive for zero down time some times it is not possible due to technology or cost constraints. Maintenance that could impact clients will occur on the Wednesday of each month from 8am-12pm EST. Any activates that are expected to fall out side this window will be communicated to the clients. |
| Unscheduled Maintenance Activities |
Unscheduled maintenance activities are defined as any unplanned work aimed at returning a failed or faulting system to its properly functioning operational state. Such activities are usually reactive in nature and are therefore normally unplanned. Although the Collaboration and Emerging Technologies Technical Team continues to improve the environments and to verify that everything is running as it should, unexpected issues may arise that require attention. Some of these issues may stem from external factors, such as a need to apply a security patch from a vendor, or from connectivity issues related to the environment’s infrastructure. If such an issue occurs, the SSC team will communicate with its clients as quickly as possible, with as much information as possible. When an issue requires maintenance on the entire system or a specific environment, the SSC team will communicate all information concerning the maintenance, including periods of inactivity, to affected client departments. Communications will be done via email, and information will be communicated to designated client department contacts only. |
The Collaboration and Emerging Technologies Technical Team will backup all core infrastructure maintained by SSC.
It is up to each client to backup their own data and solutions unless it has been negotiated as a service the Collaboration and Emerging Technologies Technical Team will take on. In AWS clients can opt-in to a daily backup by adding the following tags:
The following describes the flow and communications required throughout the resolution of an incident identified by an end-user and/or a client department.
Need decision if we are tracking tickets and where.