• Modern, standardized platform using industry-recognized container-based technologies and components, including Kubernetes, Rancher, GitHub Actions, Harbor, and Backstage
• Secure architecture and processes, including approved images, scanning, and auditing to enforce secure deployments
• Containerization that enables developers to easily take advantage of modern development processes and technologies
• Automation that allows for a well-supported and easily maintained infrastructure
• DevOps processes that allow developers to create iteratively, using a continuous build/deploy pipeline and automated processes to create and test code with higher quality, speed, and security

The UT CMP Service is provided at no additional cost to the customer.

Service Level Objectives

Note: ITS expects these objectives to be updated during the early phases of the UT CMP to reflect the realities that become apparent as the UT CMP matures as a production environment. Changes will be reviewed and approved according to the Governance section below.

This document describes the service level objectives for The University of Texas at Austin Container Management Platform (UT CMP) and defines what you should expect as a customer of the service. This document also describes your responsibilities as a customer of the service and what we need from you to ensure that the environment is a secure and reliable hosting platform for your sites.

Service Description

The UT CMP service refers to the collective set of components that make up the entirety of the environment, and includes the on-premise Kubernetes-based platform, Rancher, as well as Harbor, GitHub Actions, and Backstage.

It does not include underpinning services such as networking, virtual machines, or databases that have their own Service Level Objectives, and other independent services to which you as the customer may connect.

Governance

The UT CMP service is governed by the Business and Administrative IT Leadership Council (BAITLC). Substantive technology and funding allocation changes are reviewed by the BAITLC Critical Production Infrastructure Committee (CPIC).

Major changes to the service or to these objectives must be approved by BAITLC, ISO, and the service owner, ITS. Approved changes will be communicated to the Information Technology Leadership Council (ITLC) and to customers. Minor changes such as spelling and punctuation corrections do not require approval. Both minor and major changes to these objectives will be captured in the Revision History section below.

Key Metrics

• 99% service availability, including service dependencies, excluding defined maintenance windows

Responsibilities

Service Providers

• Maintain support hours during normal business hours, Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.
• Respond to all questions submitted via ServiceNow within 4 business hours
• Respond to reports of outages within 15 minutes during business hours
• Establish, maintain, and manage an application hosting service for university public, controlled, and confidential data in compliance with university systems, data, application development, and security policies and procedures, such as:
  
  • Perform regular maintenance, upgrades, and security patching of the service software
  • Manage service authorization and access
  • Implement service monitoring 24-7-365
  • Log service and application activity and send to Splunk
  • Perform regular infrastructure backups
  • Maintain internal and customer-facing service documentation
  • Maintain a disaster recovery plan

• Establish, maintain, and manage developer tools
• Establish, maintain, and manage communication channels and customer contact information for service notifications and customer support requests

Customers

• Build, manage, and maintain applications hosted on the platform that comply with university data, application development, and security policies and procedures, such as:
  
  • Perform regular maintenance, upgrades, and security patching of the application software
  • Manage application authorization and data access
  • Establish and maintain application monitoring
  • Maintain application documentation
  • Maintain a disaster recovery plan
• Maintain current departmental contact information with the service provider
• Adhere to published communication channels when communicating with the team 
• Monitor and respond to service notifications or questions, including notifying application end users of service interruptions or outages that result from scheduled or unscheduled maintenance

Service Availability

The UT CMP environment was designed and implemented with the expectation of being available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days per year (24-7-365), barring scheduled maintenance.

The service is monitored via automated tools and our staff receives notification of outages 24-7-365. We do our best to respond to and resolve all outages within 4 hours of notification, but there is no guarantee of resolution times, particularly when outside of our defined business hours.

The UT CMP service team reserves the right to suspend or terminate customer applications that cause unexpected major performance or critical security issues for the platform or other customers and expects customers to do the same for their applications.

Maintenance and Service Changes

Planned Maintenance

To the maximum extent possible, installation of UT CMP service, application, and security updates will be performed during periodic scheduled maintenance windows:

• Disruptive: Monday - Thursday, from 8pm - midnight CST
  • The UT CMP service team will attempt to limit disruptive maintenance.
• Non -Disruptive: Monday - Thursday, from 8am - 5pm CST
  
  • The UT CMP service team will attempt to limit non-disruptive maintenance to mid-day hours

Unplanned Maintenance

Additional maintenance for specific needs may need to be scheduled outside the periodic maintenance windows, and we will do our best to coordinate with the community and provide notice.

Maintenance Notifications

The UT CMP service team will notify customers about scheduled maintenance using the IT Maintenance Calendar and about unscheduled maintenance and outages using the Alerts and Outages page.

The team will announce all maintenance and reported outages to customers via the utcmp-users@utlists.utexas.edu distribution list and a posting in the maintenance channel of the UT CMP Developers Team.

Customers are responsible for notifying their application end users of any service interruptions or outages that result from scheduled or unscheduled maintenance.

Service Change Reviews

All service change requests are reviewed by the ITS Change Advisory Board (CAB). In some cases where critical service security or stability events require a rush to production, the ITS CAB will review changes post implementation.

Communicating with the Service Team

Service and technical support is available Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m.

All communication with the team should start with a ServiceNow ticket. When you create a ticket with the service team, the team will:

• respond to all questions submitted via ServiceNow within 4 business hours.
• respond to reports of critical platform outages within 15 minutes during normal business hours.
• respond to outages outside of normal business hours to the best of our abilities.

Service Requests and Technical Support

Create a ServiceNow ticket for customer service requests or general technical support, e.g., questions about service setup, documentation, deployments, etc. 

Be prepared to share service or application logs with the service team upon request.

Critical Technical Support

For platform outages and other issues requiring immediate attention (less than 4 business hours), customers may send an email message to utcmp-help@austin.utexas.edu with the ticket ID and follow up with a phone call to the UT Service Desk at 512-475-9400 to ensure proper escalation of the ticket.

After-Hours Support

For urgent after-hours support, customers may call the University Data Center (UDC) Operators at 512-471-0007 for escalation of the ticket to the appropriate staff.

Proactive Communication

Please provide advance notification to the UT CMP Service Team via utcmp-help@austin.utexas.edu for anticipated high performance loads as soon as possible and with at least 72 hours’ notice in order to allow the service team time to prepare and help stabilize the platform.

Disaster Recovery

UT CMP follows the recommended business continuity plans of the underpinning infrastructure dependencies. 

Application and Data Records Retention

Records retention for an application deployed on UT CMP and all related code or data is the responsibility of the application business owner.

Refer to the UTRRS for record series that may be used.

Application and User Account Management

If an application is no longer needed or has been transferred to another platform or service, customers must delete the application and all related code or data hosted on UT CMP, following proper records retention guidelines.

User access to UT CMP is managed by customers’ Active Directory (AD) groups. Customers are responsible for managing their AD groups and should remove users who are no longer active contributors as soon as possible.

Revision History