Services Description
Arcane Strategies Cloud Support Services Description
This page describes Arcane Strategies Cloud Support service in detail, including the services available to provide on the hosted system, how monitoring and maintenance is handles, the service level agreement, supplementary services, security measures, fees and fee periods, backup data retention, and loss mitigation via backups and restoration.
Hosted System Support Services
Arcane Strategies is a service provider of cloud support for Amazon AWS, Microsoft Azure, and Rackspace private cloud instances. Arcane provides services for these hosted system providers at minimum but may accept services for other providers at client’s request, if agreed upon by Arcane Strategies. Arcane’s service provides monitoring and maintenance of your server stack, to ensure uptime through downtime response services which will address your server and website downtime, as well as maintenance of your server stack, to ensure your system is regularly up-to-date with security updates and updated upon your confirmation of any non-critical upgrades.
Arcane’s supported platforms, platform services, and server stack services are defined on page 5 of Arcane’s Cloud Support Service Level Agreement, at https://www.arcanestrategies.com/cloud-services-sla/
As a provider of support for 3rd party systems, Arcane Strategies is not responsible for the relationship between client and hosted system provider, as defined by the Terms and Conditions of the website, found at https://www.arcanestrategies.com/terms-and-conditions/.
Monitoring and Maintenance
At the start of an agreement, Arcane Strategies will begin by setting up all security measures, defined below, inclusive of firewall management. Arcane will also set up monitoring services, to ensure engineers are informed of downtime or potential hazards.
Arcane Strategies monitors all servers through the available systems on each platform, such as AWS’s CloudWatch Alerts (monitoring) and Rules (backups). In addition, Arcane Strategies’s proprietary DevOps platform allows for integration with BitBucket for code depolyment management, JIRA for alerts and resource management, and custom bash scripts for monitoring codebase errors and server stack service versioning. This system will also notify Arcane’s support team in the event the server or supported applications, throw 400 or 500-level responses as defined by the number of servers or vhosts you choose to cover (see Arcane’s Cloud Support Service Level Agreement, at https://www.arcanestrategies.com/cloud-services-sla/). We will also scan for tags on your homepage, in the event that a 200 response code is incorrectly communicated. Additionally, services such as Nessus (security), Nagios (performance), and other services will be used to inform egineers of the status and performance of your server.
In the event of downtime, determined by the aforementioned services, Arcane support members will respond to remedy the error or restore the server, in the event that a remedy is not available within the contracted response time. Actions are guaranteed to initiate immediately but communications and resolution is guaranteed only within the agreement’s response time guarantee.
Throughout the course of the contract, engineers are made available to you by ticket system and your account manager is made available to you, by phone, dependent upon the service level which you select upon purchasing the services. These representatives guarantee a response time in accordance with your service level guarantee, to address any server-related or account-related service questions, which match those services defined by your Service Level Agreement. You are permitted an unlimited number of requests for service, with exception to contact or requests not covered by your agreement.
In addition to providing unlimited service requests, Arcane Strategies’s engineers will also provide recommendations to you on best practices or non-critical solutions to issues which are identified by our monitoring tools, in an effort to ensure continued up-time and security in the future. Your responses and approval or denial of said recommendations is appreciated and remains your responsibility to ensure your service level guarantee in coordination with our negligence policy defined on page 1 of the service level agreement.
Supplementary Services
As part of your monitoring and maintenance and/or DevOps licensing, you may be licensed software such as Nagios, Nessus, JIRA, BitBucket, MySQL, Apache, and so forth. Unless otherwise indicated, all services provided are offered under GNU or MIT licensing and therefore require no additional costs or license agreements. In the event that a paid service is applied, which requires additional licensing, you will be notified in advance and no action will be taken until you provide your written approval. You confirm that by providing written approval, whether by contract, email, or ticket system, any such charges discussed in the matter are to be applied to your account in turn.
Arcane Strategies is not responsible for the licensing of any services installed by anyone other than Arcane Strategies, inclusive of the hosted system provider, developer, client, or otherwise.
Security Measures
Arcane’s Security Protocol may be found here: https://www.arcanestrategies.com/security-practices/
Arcane Strategies guarantees only the minimum security services but makes no guarantee of the possibility of exploits occurring on your system. Arcane cannot ensure the security of any system which does not comply with all recommendations and may not guarantee that minimum guaranteed practices are capable on unsupported platforms, as defined by page 5 of the Cloud Services SLA found here: https://www.arcanestrategies.com/cloud-services-sla/
Payment Schedule and Fees
As a monthly service, payments are processed monthly. Arcane Strategies employs the use of Braintree by PayPal, to handle recurring subscription payments. By purchasing these services, you agree to provide your credit card information to be used for recurring payments. Payment is required to continue service, so any delays in payment may result in discontinued or non-responsive services.
Additional fees may apply for additional devices, conditions, websites and applications, platforms, client services, disaster recovery, or unsupported situations. All fees and conditions are defined on pages 4 and 5 of the Cloud Services SLA found here: https://www.arcanestrategies.com/cloud-services-sla/
Backup Data Retention and Loss Mitigation
As part of our services, Arcane Strategies will set up nightly backups within your account, to be retained no longer than 2 weeks (14 days) and no shorter than 1 week (7 days). In the event of downtime that cannot be remedied immediately, Arcane Strategies will restore the server from the most recent successful backup known to have occurred on a date/time of where the serer and application(s) were stable and operating properly. Arcane Strategies will attempt to restore any data that is lost as a result of downtime and restoration procedures, up to a maximum of 2 hours of effort but makes no guarantee of the results and maintains zero accountability for any financial or business losses resulting from said data loss.
As backups are retained within your hosted system provider and may impact your billing and agreements with said provider, you accept responsibility for ensuring that your account is capable of retaining backups as needed. In the event that your account fails to run backups due to either technical failures with your provider or account and billing limitations, Arcane Strategies accepts no responsibility for any financial or business related losses, stemming from the lack of backups.
Service Changes
Service upgrades may require 24 hours to be processed, at which point a representative will reach out to you by phone and email. Monthly fees are pro-rated from the date of request, due upon processing. Please note that service renewals may take up to 24 hours to complete and your first month’s payment is due upon initiation.
While service upgrades may be completed throughout the course of your contract, SLA downgrades and service termination may not be completed until contract expiration, except where permitted in Arcane’s Terms and Conditions. In the event of a terminated additional environment, device, server, platform, or app/vhost (see SLA “SysOps Additional Fees”), your account manager can remove these services and additional fees, beginning with your next month of servicing.
