Dedicated Hardware

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1. Description of Service

The Information Technology Division (ITD) provides reliable and secure centrally managed Dedicated Distributed Hardware Hosting Services for Commonwealth IT Services. This service does not include the operating system; customers must choose a Windows OS or Linux OS for fully managed distributed hosting services.

Customers pay the initial infrastructure (hardware) costs for ITD to procure the necessary equipment to host a customer's IT Service on dedicated distributed hardware. These costs are included in the BAR (Business Application Request form) and identified as "one time" costs and agreed to by both the customer and ITD.

The Dedicated Distributed Hosting Service includes:

• Dedicated Physical Hardware
• Data Center Network Connectivity
• MAGNet Security Protection

Facilities Management:

• Physical security, cooling, environment and redundant power

Systems Engineering:

• Set-up of hardware in accordance with ITD Infrastructure Planning Group standards and best practices and Commonwealth of Massachusetts IT Technology and Security Policies
• Evaluate and/or recommend hardware enhancements
• Upgrades of hardware components

Systems Maintenance:

• Administration and maintenance of hardware to ensure that each hosted operating system server is reliable, is performing adequately, and is providing overall service availability
• Utilization of vendor hardware services for maintaining hardware at recommended patch and release levels following standard change management procedures, firmware and bios.
• Maintain current inventory/asset information and support history for each managed host that can be made available to customers
• Standard capacity and performance analysis reporting capabilities for customers to review utilization, performance and trending information for CPU, system processes (as defined by customer), memory, and storage
• Systems engineer's participation as needed in ongoing customer service delivery reviews (coordinated by ITD Service Account Managers).

Systems Support & Monitoring:

• 24 x 7 proactive monitoring, identification, and resolution of technical issues for hosted servers
• Ongoing security intrusion testing and monitoring
• Responsive support to incidents based on severity levels
• Responsive support to unscheduled service outages in a timely manner
• Provision of diagnostic information to assist with customer application support needs
• Repair or replacement failing hardware components
• Access to technical Change Control information

This service does not include coverage for Disaster Recovery. This can be procured separately.

Support services include:

• A Service Account Manager to answer any questions or concerns regarding ITD Services.
• Services offered through our Operations Office; including Change Management and customer access to incident management via email, phone (CommonHelp)
• The online COMiT service management portal

ITD Refresh Policy:

When a customer agrees to fully managed hosting services at ITD, ITD commits to maintaining infrastructure per defined service level objectives. For purchased (non-leased) equipment ITD will fund the equivalent replacement of customer-specific hosted hardware that costs $25,000/per item or more, within five years. ITD does not incorporate into chargeback rates the funding to replace customer-specific hosted infrastructure components that cost less than $25,000/per item. As such customers are responsible to fund replacement of such infrastructure. Additionally maintenance costs that are incurred for supporting end-of-life customer-specific hosted infrastructure or upgrading software that is not covered by subscription may be direct charged to customers.

ITD Asset and Equipment Policy:

When a customer requests fully managed services at ITD, a BAR (Business Application Request) listing all one-time equipment and ongoing chargeback support costs must be approved and processed. Equipment to support a customer's request is then procured as an ITD owned and managed asset.

When a customer no longer requires ITD services, ITD decommissions the equipment and chargeback costs are discontinued. If a customer wants to reuse the equipment for a different ITD supported solution, the equipment remains active and chargeback costs continue. ITD determines future use of all decommissioned equipment .


 

2. Service Targets/Hours of Availability

*Incidents, requests, or changes that are outside the scope of the defined service description or normal service hours will be direct charged to the customer.

Note: System availability for a customer solution is dependent on the architecture design.

3. Service Reporting

The following reporting information is provided to customers as part of this service:

4. Service Requests

*For new service requests only. To manage existing requests, please log into COMiT.
Requests related to projects are initiated through the Request Project Services process.

5. Customer Responsibilities

The customer will use hardware capacity planning and management tools, recommend corrective action when needed, develop growth forecasts and develop hardware capacity plans based on ensuring service level attainment.

For your convenience, you may view a detailed list of customer responsibilities  .

6. Chargeback Rate Information

For more information on Chargeback, including an overview of the program as well as current and previous fiscal year rates, please visit our Chargeback Services webpage

Cost Framework: Dedicated Platforms

Direct Costs:

Indirect Costs:

Allocated Costs:

Adjustments:

Rates pertaining to this service offering include:

Download the cost framework for Dedicated Platform Support 

Download a complete listing of all chargeback rates 

Updated December 13, 2011
Published September 1, 2011
Created August 26, 2011: Information provided by the Hosting Services Team