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Pantheon Web Hosting

Pantheon Web Hosting is a commercial Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) website operations (WebOps) platform built on cloud infrastructure. In addition to cloud hosting, Pantheon provides a suite of tools for website development, deployment, and management.

Pantheon supports the Drupal and WordPress content management systems, and access to Pantheon through UT Austin includes availability of the UT Drupal Kit and WordPress for Texas custom distributions.

  • Request Developer Account

    Request a developer account in the University of Texas at Austin organization in order to start creating or managing websites on the Pantheon platform. Please refer to the Site Owner Responsibilities, under the Service Level Objectives section below, before making your request. 

    Use the “Request” button to request your developer account on Pantheon. 

    Available to:Faculty and Staff
    Features
    • Dev, Test, and Live environments for each site, with web-based user interface for syncing content and files between environments
    • Automated deployment tools for managing releases
    • Built-in version control using Git
    • Automated and on-demand backups via site dashboard
    • “Autopilot” feature to automatically detect, perform, and deploy updates for WordPress and Drupal, with integrated visual regression testing.
    • New Relic P erformance Monitoring tool integrated into site dashboard (Performance plans and above)
    • "Multidev"feature for creating ad-hoc environments to stage new features in development
    • Team management tools for developers
    • UT Drupal Kit distribution available, including a UT-branded, responsive theme
    • WordPress for Texas distribution available, including a UT-branded, responsive theme
    • EID authentication for content editors (currently only supported on the WordPress for Texas and UT Drupal Kit distributions)
    Cost

    There is no cost to request a developer account or for creating sandbox sites on Pantheon. Service fees are associated with the Go Live section below.

    Service Level Objectives

    Key Metrics

    • Content delivery availability: 99.9% according to Pantheon's elite SLA
    • Content editing availability: 99.491%, based on SLA for Enterprise Authentication

    Please note this SLA is dependent on other campus SLAs and is adjusted as those change.

    Intended Users

    • External users for Pantheon Web Hosting are students, faculty, staff, parents, the press, and the public at large. External users are able to view publicly accessible content at all times.
    • Internal users for Pantheon Web Hosting are staff, faculty, and personnel from university colleges, schools, and departments who act as web developers for the university.

    Technical Support

    Support for Pantheon hosting and the Pantheon dashboard is available directly to internal users from Pantheon’s support team via live chat or tickets, accessible from the “Support” tab of any individual site dashboard.

    For issues related specifically to the UT organization on Pantheon, such as developer account provisioning, billing questions, or site go-live requests, both Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support is available from ITS during normal business hours, 8am-5pm, Monday-Friday, to handle routine requests.

    All requests for technical support will be logged using the ITS centralized ticketing system or issue-tracking tool. External users should start with Tier 1 technical support. Internal users should start with Tier 2.

    • Tier 1: Any user can call the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400. External users should send an email message to the UT Service Desk at help@its.utexas.edu, which will create a support ticket. Routine requests are typically addressed within one business day. The UT Service Desk may escalate issues to Tier 2 staff.
    • Tier 2: Any user can call the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400. Internal users may send an email message to pantheon-support@utlists.utexas.edu to reach Tier 2 support directly for service requests that do not require immediate attention.

    Urgent Support for Internal Users

    For website outages and other issues requiring immediate attention (less than 4 hours), internal users should send an email message to pantheon-support@utlists.utexas.edu and follow up with a phone call to the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400 to ensure proper escalation of the ticket.

    Maintenance

    ITS will notify customers about both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance using the Alerts and Outages page or internal-user distribution lists. Services may not be available during maintenance periods. ITS will notify external users using a maintenance notification on the ITS website.

    • Scheduled Maintenance: There is no regularly scheduled maintenance window for this service.
    • Unscheduled Maintenance: Tasks that require service downtime will be announced as soon as possible on the Alerts and Outages page and to internal users via internal-user distribution lists.
    • Change Notification: ITS will notify the university community of service availability and service delivery issues via the Alerts and Outages page.

    Site Owner Responsibilities

    All users agree to be aware of and adhere to the university's Acceptable Use Policy.

    Site owner responsibilities:

    1. Assign and maintain an on-site departmental technical contact (liaison) for ITS. This contact is the person to which questions and issues will be raised about technical and functional requirements. This person is also responsible for ongoing maintenance and support for the website, including (but not limited to) updates to Drupal or WordPress and modules/plugins. Note that this responsibility may be delegated to ITS Contract Services under the scope of a separate agreement, or an external vendor.
    2. Develop websites using the Drupal or WordPress CMS on Pantheon's website management platform.
    3. Build site content (text, images, etc.) using the CMS administrative interface.
    4. CMS Hosting Platform is approved for hosting Controlled data and Confidential (FERPA) data by the University Information Security Office. See the University ISO Policies on Cloud Services for details. For more information on University Data Classifications, see https://security.utexas.edu/policies/data_classification.
    5. Communicate with UTNIC as needed to request Domain Name Service (DNS) changes for the website.
    6. At least once per quarter, review authorized users for the site and de-authorize or remove accounts for users who no longer require access to the site.
    7. Agree to comply with the following UT Austin standards and policies:
  • Go Live Request

    Launch a live site on Pantheon. This requires setting up billing for a paid site plan. See the KB article "How to convert a Pantheon sandbox to a live site" for more details.

    Available to:Faculty and Staff
    Features
    • Dev, Test, and Live environments for each site, with web-based user interface for syncing content and files between environments
    • Automated deployment tools for managing releases
    • Built-in version control using Git
    • Automated and on-demand backups via site dashboard
    • “Autopilot” feature to automatically detect, perform, and deploy updates for WordPress and Drupal, with integrated visual regression testing.
    • New Relic P erformance Monitoring tool integrated into site dashboard (Performance plans and above)
    • "Multidev"feature for creating ad-hoc environments to stage new features in development
    • Team management tools for developers
    • UT Drupal Kit distribution available, including a UT-branded, responsive theme
    • WordPress for Texas distribution available, including a UT-branded, responsive theme
    • EID authentication for content editors (currently only supported on the WordPress for Texas and UT Drupal Kit distributions)
    Cost

    There are fees associated with this service:

    Required Fees

    The Pantheon site hosting fee is determined by the selection of a hosting plan, and is based on estimated monthly traffic. Please see the KB article “Pantheon Hosting Plans” for current rates.

    Site hosting fees are prorated for the current fiscal year, and are charged via an Internal Direct Transfer (IDT) transaction at the time that a Pantheon sandbox is converted to a live site. Sites will be automatically renewed into the same service plan at the beginning of each fiscal year unless ITS is notified.

    The selected service plan will remain in effect until either:

    • The site’s owner requests that ITS change the plan
    • Pantheon determines that the site is exceeding the monthly limit for the selected plan

    In the case that the service plan is upsized for any reason, there will be an additional IDT to recover the prorated balance of the increased cost for the remainder of the fiscal year.

    Site plans may be canceled in the middle of a fiscal year, but no reimbursements will be made, and monthly charges will not be prorated.

    Optional Fees

    The following optional services are available from ITS Campus Solutions on an hourly basis using the current hourly rate:

    • Site Migration – If a site needs to be migrated from an existing platform to Pantheon, the hours for ITS team to perform the migration are billed using the current hourly rate of $115 hour for Fiscal Year 2021-22. An estimate outlining a range of hours will be provided to the site owner and must be approved in writing before work on this task begins. 
    • Site Maintenance – Hours for updating Drupal and WordPress sites are billed monthly as work is performed. 
    • Site Development – At the discretion of ITS Campus Solutions, development services such as new feature development or bugfixes may be provided for Drupal and WordPress sites hosted on Pantheon.  


    Service Level Objectives

    Key Metrics

    • Content delivery availability: 99.9% according to Pantheon's elite SLA
    • Content editing availability: 99.491%, based on SLA for Enterprise Authentication

    Please note this SLA is dependent on other campus SLAs and is adjusted as those change.

    Intended Users

    • External users for Pantheon Web Hosting are students, faculty, staff, parents, the press, and the public at large. External users are able to view publicly accessible content at all times.
    • Internal users for Pantheon Web Hosting are staff, faculty, and personnel from university colleges, schools, and departments who act as web developers for the university.

    Technical Support

    Support for Pantheon hosting and the Pantheon dashboard is available directly to internal users from Pantheon's support team via live chat or tickets, accessible from the "Support" tab of any individual site dashboard.

    For issues related specifically to the UT organization on Pantheon, such as developer account provisioning, billing questions, or site go-live requests, both Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support is available from ITS during normal business hours, 8am-5pm, Monday-Friday, to handle routine requests.

    All requests for technical support will be logged using the ITS centralized ticketing system or issue-tracking tool. External users should start with Tier 1 technical support. Internal users should start with Tier 2.

    • Tier 1: Any user can call the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400. External users should send an email message to the UT Service Desk at help@its.utexas.edu, which will create a support ticket. Routine requests are typically addressed within one business day. The UT Service Desk may escalate issues to Tier 2 staff.
    • Tier 2: Any user can call the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400. Internal users may send an email message to pantheon-support@utlists.utexas.edu to reach Tier 2 support directly for service requests that do not require immediate attention.

    Urgent Support for Internal Users

    For website outages and other issues requiring immediate attention (less than 4 hours), internal users should send an email message to pantheon-support@utlists.utexas.edu and follow up with a phone call to the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400 to ensure proper escalation of the ticket.

    Maintenance

    ITS will notify customers about both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance using the Alerts and Outages page or internal-user distribution lists. Services may not be available during maintenance periods. ITS will notify external users using a maintenance notification on the ITS website.

    • Scheduled Maintenance: There is no regularly scheduled maintenance window for this service.
    • Unscheduled Maintenance: Tasks that require service downtime will be announced as soon as possible on the Alerts and Outages page and to internal users via internal-user distribution lists.
    • Change Notification: ITS will notify the university community of service availability and service delivery issues via the Alerts and Outages page.

    Site Owner Responsibilities

    All users agree to be aware of and adhere to the university's Acceptable Use Policy.

    Site owner responsibilities:

    1. Assign and maintain an on-site departmental technical contact (liaison) for ITS. This contact is the person to which questions and issues will be raised about technical and functional requirements. This person is also responsible for ongoing maintenance and support for the website, including (but not limited to) updates to Drupal or WordPress and modules/plugins. Note that this responsibility may be delegated to ITS Contract Services under the scope of a separate agreement, or an external vendor.
    2. Develop websites using the Drupal or WordPress CMS on Pantheon's website management platform.
    3. Build site content (text, images, etc.) using the CMS administrative interface.
    4. Pantheon Web Hosting is approved for hosting Controlled data and Confidential (FERPA) data by the University Information Security Office. See the University ISO Policies on Cloud Services for details. For more information on University Data Classifications, see https://security.utexas.edu/policies/data_classification.
    5. Communicate with UTNIC as needed to request Domain Name Service (DNS) changes for the website.
    6. At least once per quarter, review authorized users for the site and de-authorize or remove accounts for users who no longer require access to the site.
    7. Agree to comply with the following UT Austin standards and policies:
  • Site Retirement

    Retire a live site on Pantheon. See KB article "How to remove a site from the Pantheon Web Hosting service" for more details.

    Available to:Faculty and Staff
    Features

    n/a

    Cost

    n/a

    Service Level Objectives

    n/a

  • Pantheon SAML Integration

    Request configuration required for using UT EID authentication on a Pantheon-hosted site.

    Available to:Faculty and Staff
    Features

    n/a

    Cost

    n/a

    Service Level Objectives

    n/a