Application Hosting

Application Hosting Services

rSmart provides professional software application hosting services for your rSmart Sakai CLE. Hosting for your CLE instance is included with your Enterprise Support Subscription at no additional charge. If you choose, you may add to our hosting package with various add-on options below, which includes options for buying dedicated servers, high availability configurations, extended back-ups of database and files and ability to maintain hot back-ups.

Click Here for Enterprise Support Subscription pricing.

Hosting Service Components	Included
Application and Server Monitoring	X
Full Nightly Backups of Database and System Files	X
Usage Statistics	X
Operating System Patches and Updates	X
Firewall and Intrusion Prevention	X
Virus scanning and spam filtering	X
Server Uptime Guarantee	99.99%
Network Uptime Guarantee	99.99%
Failed Hardware Replacement Guarantee	4 hours
Backup Retention	7 days
Disk Space per User	50 MB

Services Included with Hosting

Application and server monitoring:
Both the physical server that the CLE instance resides on as well as the CLE application itself are checked for availability at regular intervals; in the event that a server or instance becomes unreachable, or if a hardware-fail event is detected, email alerts are generated and sent to the appropriate rSmart personnel.

Nightly backups of database and files:
We maintain a minimum of seven days’ worth of data on a disk-based backup subsystem for ease of restoration should the need arise.

Usage statistics:
In addition to any in-CLE statistics tools that may be available, we also provide external usage statistics and graphs generated via the AWStats package.

Operating system patches and updates:
Non-security-related operating system software updates are applied to host machines automatically on a weekly basis; Critical security-related updates and patches are applied on an as-notified basis, usually within 24 hours.

Firewall and intrusion prevention:
All systems are maintained in a default-deny configuration, with public access provided only to the ports necessary to support the CLE instance. All non-essential network services are disabled by default. System maintenance port access, via SSH, is restricted by IP address and limited to key rSmart technical support personnel. We rely on multiple firewalls, avoiding the creation of single points of failure or attack.

Virus scanning and spam filtering:
Capability to use SpamAssassin, qmail-scanner, and ClamAV to scan all inbound email for viruses and spam.

Optional Add-on Services

These hosting services are available at additional cost. Please contact rSmart for a quote:
Dedicated Server(s)
You may choose to set up your rSmart Sakai CLE on dedicated hardware giving you more control and flexibility in your IT configuration.

Extended backups of database and files:
Fourteen (14) days’ worth of data on a disk-based backup subsystem for ease of restoration should the need arise.

High-availability:
Capability, via MySQL replication and server virtualization, to maintain hot backups of customer instances that we can automatically switch over to in the event of a primary server failure.

Remote ‘off-site’ storage of backups:
Backups are stored in a separate facility.

Data Center Overview

rSmart has developed a reliable, secure, and scalable hosting service to meet the needs of any size institution. We offer industry-leading Service Level Agreements that are designed to maximize your open source applications reliability and availability.

Physical Facility (power and cooling):

• Facility is 6000 sq. ft. of 12” raised flooring with forced air cooling/environment control
• 80 tons of cooling and humidity control provided by three fully redundant HVAC systems
• Dedicated city provided power transformer for the data center separate of the building
• Dual power distributions units feeding each server/device with redundant power feeds
• Power system protected by on-site load-balanced redundant generators and battery backup system. Battery backup / failover is tested once per week with a forced 50% load to simulate real-world failure conditions. There have been no power outages causing downtime within the facility for the last 5 years.

Physical Facility (security and fire control):

• Dry pipe fire suppression system with heat and smoke detectors in the sub-flooring
• Sub-flooring water detection system
• Physical access to servers is limited to authorized rSmart and data center personnel only, with access controlled by badge, biometric scan, and combination lock on the rack itself
• 24x7 CCTV monitoring and logging

Network Facility:

• Redundant separate fiber paths provided by tier-1 carriers into the facility
• Redundant Internet connectivity from tier-1 providers, including Qwest, AT&T, and GlobalCrossing (via Limelight)
• Redundant core, distribution, and access layer networking via gigabit fiber
• 99.9% network uptime guarantee
• 100mbps connection to the Internet backbone
• On-site technicians available 24x7x365 for expert-to-expert troubleshooting and problem resolution

Server Hardware:

• Dell server-class machines running 64-bit Linux on Intel Xeon quad-core CPUs
• Redundant power supplies
• RAID-1 or RAID-10 disk subsystems
• ECC/ChipKill RAM subsystems
• 99.9% hardware uptime guarantee
• Failed hardware is covered by a 24x7 replacement policy