Site trail: Home ⇒ Service Level Agreements ⇒ Federation Gateways
Federation Gateway Services SLD 2006-08
Contents
| 4. | DEFINITIONS | |
| 4.1 | The Athens to Shibboleth (ASh) Gateway | |
| 4.2 | The Shibboleth to (ShA) Gateway | |
| 4.3 | Maintenance & Development Programme | |
| 4.4 | Service Support | |
| 4.5 | Disaster Recovery | |
4. Service Levels
DEFINITIONS
Eligible Institutions include:
Those UK Higher and Further Education and Research Council institutions supported by the JISC, a list of these institutions is maintained by the JISC Executive on its web site at:
http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/jisc_banding.aspx
Changes made to this list will be reported to Eduserv before each change is made.
AND
The employees or registered students of the organisations known as Friends of JISC.
Friends of the JISC are those UK organisations listed in Appendix 3 of Schedule 3. Inclusion of these organisations is on the basis of their importance to the operations of JISC or as information providers to the academic community; the addition of sites in Appendix 3 of Schedule 3 is subject to change control procedures.
Queries on the eligibility of an institution or organisation may be made to the JISC Collections Help Desk details of which are available at:-
http://www.jisc-collections.ac.uk/jisc_banding.aspx
Licensed Institutions are those Eligible Institutions who hold a licence issued by Eduserv for the use of Athens account management facilities or Athens Agent Technology.
Performance Indicators will be calculated monthly or quarterly, depending on the period the individual data items cover, but satisfactory performance will be assessed on the basis of comparison of the service level with a twelve month rolling average of the calculated values.
Note: Where a service has not yet been in operation for twelve months, or where the definition of the service level has been changed within the previous twelve months, the service cannot be said to have failed to meet the SLA. However, analysis of trends may lead to review and negotiation before 12 months have passed in cases where it becomes clear that failure can be foreseen.
All reports shall be delivered in machine readable form in a format agreed between Eduserv and the JISC Monitoring Unit.
Scheduled Service Time - All services shall be scheduled to be available 365 days a year and 24 hours a day, apart from planned maintenance times.
Service Affecting Maintenance is defined as planned maintenance which causes a service to be unavailable. As far as possible, planned maintenance activities shall be synchronized and shall fall during the period from 0700-0900 on Tuesdays.
Service Availability shall therefore be calculated on the basis of:
(Scheduled Service Time – Total period of unavailability) / Scheduled Service Time
Service Availability is defined as a percentage however, monthly reporting shall be made in terms of time lost and number of incidents, from which the availability can be calculated directly.
For certain services, it is useful to define Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) as one of the Service Level parameters. In such cases, a failure, or incident, is defined as any interruption in the operation of the service which causes a period of unavailability. Eduserv may opt to have a number of successive failures considered as a single failure for the complete period, so long as the same aggregation is applied both to availability and mean time between failures. The MTBF figure for a twelve-month period is produced by averaging the rates observed in each of the constituent months of the period.
Working Hours are the periods on weekdays from 0900-1700 UK time except on English Bank Holidays and the period between Christmas and New Year plus up to one day either side of Christmas and New Year.
4.1. The Athens to Shibboleth (ASh) Gateway
Specification:
The ASh Gateway allows existing Athens users (Classic or DA) to access Shibboleth protected resources using their Athens credentials.
The gateway is implemented as part of the core Athens infrastructure but on a dedicated server cluster (shared with the ShA Gateway).
The ASh Gateway is registered as a Virtual Identity Provider within the UK Access Management Federation and operates according to the membership policies for Virtual Identity Providers set by this federation.:
http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/library/uploads/Documents/technical-recommendations-for-participants.pdf
Service Levels and Performance Indicators:
4.1.1. Eduserv shall provide an ASh Gateway service that is available 99% of the time, other than as caused by factors outside Eduserv’s control;
4.1.2. Service Affecting Maintenance is not to exceed 10% of the total ‘At Risk’ hours;
4.1.3. Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) averaged over a 12 month period to be at least 1000 hours;
Reporting:
- In addition to the quarterly reporting requirement detailed below Eduserv shall notify an agreed named contact at the JISC Executive of any event causing the Ash Gateway service provision to be unavailable for more than 4 hours.
On a quarterly basis, Eduserv shall provide:
- the nature, start and finish, date and time event causing the ASh Gateway service provision to be unavailable;
- number, start and finish, date and time of each Service Affecting Maintenance period and whether publicised in advance;
- the total number of authentications per month;
4.2. The Shibboleth to Athens (ShA) Gateway
Specification:
The ShA Gateway enables Shibboleth Identity Providers (IdPs) to access Athens resources using Shibboleth for message exchange. The gateway exposes the Athens service as a Shibboleth Service Provider , which is treated by an IdP in the same way as a conventional Shibboleth Service Provider.
The gateway is implemented as part of the core Athens infrastructure but on a dedicated server cluster (shared with the ASh Gateway).
The ShA Gateway is registered as a Virtual Service Provider within the UK Access Management Federation and operates according to the membership policies for Virtual Service Providers set by this federation:
http://www.ukfederation.org.uk/library/uploads/Documents/technical-recommendations-for-participants.pdf
The ShA gateway implements a high-availability WAYF service to enable easy discovery of a user’s home organisation though a user-friendly web interface. This interface incorporates a full-text search engine to search for an organisation, as well as a tree-based visual representation of organisations, based on categorisation by type and geographical location.
Service Levels and Performance Indicators:
4.2.1. Eduserv shall provide a ShA Gateway service that is available 99% of the time, other than as caused by factors outside Eduserv’s control;
4.2.2. Eduserv shall provide a WAYF service that is available 99% of the time, other than as caused by factors outside Eduserv’s control;
4.2.3. Service Affecting Maintenance is not to exceed 10% of the total ‘At Risk’ hours;
4.2.4. Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) averaged over a 12 month period to be at least 1000 hours;
Reporting:
- In addition to the quarterly reporting requirement detailed below Eduserv shall notify an agreed named contact at the JISC Executive of any event causing the ShA Gateway service provision or the WAYF service provision to be unavailable for more than 4 hours.
On a quarterly basis, Eduserv shall provide:
- the nature, start and finish, date and time event causing the ShA Gateway service provision to be unavailable;
- the nature, start and finish, date and time event causing the WAYF service provision to be unavailable;
- number, start and finish, date and time of each Service Affecting Maintenance period and whether publicised in advance;
- the total number of authentications per month;
4.3. Maintenance & Development Programme
Specification:
The Development programme for the ASh and ShA Gateway services will develop the services in appropriate directions in order to meet the requirements of JISC. Eduserv will liaise quarterly or as otherwise agreed with a named JISC contact to allow the JISC to inform the development programme, both in terms of the content and the timing of new releases.
Eduserv will conduct security evaluations of major new developments to ensure that the security of both the ASh and ShA Gateway services are not compromised. In addition, Eduserv will conduct annual reviews of the security of all aspects of the services. The extent of these reviews is to be agreed with JISC.
Service Levels and Performance Indicators:
4.3.1 An Annual Development Work Programme to be set at an annual development meeting between JISC and Eduserv and reviewed by both parties at the end of each 6 month period;
Reporting:
On an annual basis, Eduserv shall commit to:
- An Annual Development Work Programme. Outline proposals with estimated costs will be produced in response to requests for new developments above that included within the agreed service scope. Detailed proposals and quotations for development will be carried out as consultancy at the prevailing Eduserv daily rate;
- An audit of the security of the Gateways Services carried out by the UK Access Management Federation. Where significant effort is required to support this audit then Eduserv will submit a costed proposal for approval by JISC.
On a quarterly basis, Eduserv shall provide:
- Quarterly review of the Annual Development Work Programme including all revisions made;
- Description and date of implementation of each new development;
- Security Review of each major development.
4.4. Service Support
Specification:
Gateway Service Support is provided through the Eduserv Service Desk, dealing with enquiries from Athens administrators by telephone and email.
Service Support includes:
- Diagnosing access problems
- Providing advice and assistance for new sites and sites changing their local procedures
- Maintenance of administrator’s documentation
- Support of the Athens agent technology within institutions for authenticating access to local resources.
Service Levels and Performance Indicators:
4.4.1. The telephone help-line will be available continuously during Working Hours. Eduserv will provide a recorded answer-phone service at other times;
4.4.2. Athens administrators able to log enquiries at any time;
4.4.3. Initial responses to enquiries within 4 working hours;
4.4.4. Enquiries closed: 80% within 1 working day and 90% within 5 working days;
4.4.5. Athens administrators to be informed in advance of Service Affecting Maintenance;
4.4.6. Athens administrators to be kept informed of the status of unscheduled breaks in service greater than 60 minutes duration during Working Hours;
Reporting:
Reported through the Athens service schedule
4.5. Disaster recovery
Specification:
Eduserv will include the Athens Gateway Services in their Disaster Recovery Plan. This will define how the Athens Gateway Services will continue to be provided in the event of a major disaster affecting Eduserv facilities. A copy of the relevant section(s) of the plan will be provided to the JISC on request.
Service Levels and Performance Indicators:
The Disaster Recovery Plan will be reviewed no less than annually.
Reporting
On an annual basis, Eduserv shall provide:
- An outline of the relevant details of the Disaster Recovery plan will be provided to the JISC on request.
