Updated Nov. 23, 2022
Background
This Service Level Agreement (SLA) defines the support that CyVerse will provide to users of CyVerse cyberinfrastructure (CI), services, and resources. Service definitions include availability, support levels, or duration and restrictions on support provided by CyVerse based on compliance with the CyVerse Acceptable Use Policy (AUP). The objective of this SLA is to clarify the responsibilities and procedures to be undertaken to ensure the needs are met by all parties to the SLA. System Services defines CyVerse's general support services; the additional level of service, e.g., for cloud compute resources, that will be provided to users of specific CyVerse tools, resources, or services are defined in a subsection for that service.
Parties to this SLA. By requesting and accepting a user account with CyVerse, a user becomes party to this SLA, along with CyVerse, also called the Service Provider.
Commencement Date and Duration of this SLA. This SLA is effective between all Parties on the date the user begins using any of CyVerse's cyberinfrastructure, services, and resources. This SLA, and any subsequent modifications to it, are in effect for the duration that the user maintains an account with CyVerse or until the account is otherwise terminated.
Definitions
- "Project" means CyVerse, together with its successors and assigns.
- "Service Provider" means CyVerse.
- "User" means any person or entity who requests, registers, and activates a CyVerse user account, including Third-Party Users.
- "VM" means virtual machine services as provided by CyVerse.
- "Failure" means failure by CyVerse to comply with its responsibilities under this SLA.
- “Collaborator” means a user who has entered into a formal (Memorandum of Understanding) or informal (Letter of Collaboration or External Collaborative Partnership Agreement) relationship with CyVerse.
System Services
The services provided by the Service Provider, including incident response, are in effect 24 hours a day, seven days a week, every week of the year. Incident response will be within 24 hours for urgent issues (see below), or within 7 business day for normal priority issues, service requests, or business inquiry. The following services are provided to the registered users of CyVerse cyberinfrastructure resources:
- Maintenance: Regularly scheduled maintenance of the site may occur monthly on Tuesdays between 8 AM to 11 PM MST. Most planned outages will occur during this window. Any other planned outages will be scheduled during nights and weekends following at least 24-hours prior notification of Users via email. Unscheduled outages may occur at any time and CyVerse Cloud Native Services staff will strive to communicate such outages to the affected users or designated alternative contacts within 6 hours. "Emergency Maintenance" refers to any corrective action intended to remedy conditions likely to cause severe Service degradation, as determined by CyVerse in its sole discretion. CyVerse will make reasonable efforts to inform users in advance before interrupting service for emergency maintenance but such notice is not guaranteed.
- Operation Support: Ongoing support includes systems performance tuning, software patches, software installation, systems automation, and server configuration.
- Monitoring: Monitoring is provided for data services 24 hours/day, 7 days/week. CyVerse staff monitor on a daily basis vital data center and server information.
- Network Connectivity: CyVerse Systems Administrators complete the installation and set up of the VM with an operating system. This includes the creation and configuration of the VM with the requested services, network address, back-up system software, security administration, monitoring, and account management.
- Backup Services: CyVerse will back up persistent virtual machines and data stored within iRODS nightly and preserved for one month. S3 data will be backed up weekly and preserved for one month.
- Notification: Users will be notified of planned outages affecting services. An email notification will be sent to the contact email address provided by the user at least 24 hours prior to the planned outage.
Failure
The following service outages do not constitute Failures under this SLA:
- Scheduled maintenance or emergency maintenance periods
- Outages caused by acts or omissions of the user, including user-installed software or server mis-configurations
- Outages caused by hackers, sabotage, viruses, worms, or other third-party wrongful actions
- DNS issues outside of CyVerse's control
- Outages resulting from Internet anomalies outside of CyVerse's control
- Outages resulting from fire, explosion, or force majeure; outages to the user's portal
Service Constraints
- All CyVerse account holders should keep their account information current, including email address(es), institution, occupation, preferences, and other settings. An annual update reminder is sent to all account holders, with a 30-day grace period to update, after which access to CyVerse services may be blocked until the account has been updated. See CyVerse Security and Privacy Policy for how we treat your account information.
- Timely service notifications rely on current and accurate contact information for users. CyVerse is not responsible for untimely outage notifications if a user fails to update or correct their account contact information on file with CyVerse.
- CyVerse shall not be liable for the failure or delay in performing its obligations under this SLA if such failure or delay is due to external circumstances beyond its reasonable control, including without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, embargo, fire, strike or other labor disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability or interruption or delay in telecommunications, failure of third-party software or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of CyVerse's Co-Located Services and Products (each, a Force Majeure Event).
Service Deprecation
CyVerse may deprecate (retire) a service, feature, or capability based on the need to prioritize our investment in services that most benefit our users. CyVerse will take proactive steps to notify affected users in a timely manner.
- Advanced notice: users will be notified via multiple means, not limited to email and other media, at least 60 days before the service is deprecated. The notification(s) will provide a timeline for the service to be deprecated, actions users should take if any, and contact information for questions.
- Viable alternatives: CyVerse will identify functionally comparable, alternative source(s), if any, for the service, whether free or for a fee.
- Continued support: CyVerse will provide support (e.g., FAQs, documentation, tutorials, videos, contact email, etc.) to assist users in migrating their resources off the service to be deprecated. Additionally, CyVerse will create and explain the process and time limitation for retrieving any data or apps that remain unclaimed on the service at the time it is removed.
Should CyVerse need to accelerate the timeline for deprecation due to circumstances beyond our control, we will strive to notify all affected users as quickly as possible of the change.
Incident Management
The services provided by the Service Provider, including incident response, are in effect 24-hours a day, seven days a week, every week of the year. Incident response will be within 24 hours for urgent issues (see below), or within 7 business days for normal priority issues, service requests, or business inquiry. In response to a support ticket, a CyVerse staff member will respond by Type of Incident (see criteria below).
| Type of Incident | Contact Info |
|---|---|
|
Urgent A component, application or critical feature is down, and as a result no work can be performed |
CyVerse Support (support@cyverse.org). |
|
Non-urgent Questions about using CyVerse |
|
Service Level Support (Centers, Institutions, and Awards)
Powered by CyVerse:
- Please refer to your contract with CyVerse for specifics on support. This usually contains a specified number of hours for staff training, technical support, and general questions.
Professional Services:
- Please refer to your contract with CyVerse for specifics on support. This usually contains a specified number of hours for staff training, technical support, and general questions.
Subscriptions:
- Free tier: no direct support from CyVerse staff. Please refer to FAQ for commonly asked subscriptions questions
- Regular tier: In app chat. Answered in 10 business days.
- Pro tier: In app chat with share screen: Answered in 5 business days. Opportunity to schedule 30 min video/audio meeting with CyVerse Staff (60 min per year, total)
- Commercial tier: In app chat with share screen: Answered in 2 business days. Opportunity to schedule 30 min video/audio meeting (4 hours per year, total)
- Multi-year subscriptions (see also subscription FAQ):
- Multi-year subscriptions (2 year maximum) are to be fully paid at the start of the subscription
- Users will get total storage for the tier with an expiration date at the end of the multi-year subscription
- Users will get the full compute allocation for 2 years at the beginning of the subscription with an expiration date at the end of the multi-year subscription
- If features change during the multi-year term (e.g., more compute hours for a tier), the user may contact CyVerse to request the increase be added to their subscription at the time of the change. Multi-year subscribers' allocations will not decrease if changes result in fewer features.
- Multi-year subscriptions are portable with the account username and may not be transferred to another account username
Teach with CyVerse:
- Please refer to your contract with CyVerse for specifics on support. This usually contains a specified number of hours for staff training, technical support, and general questions.
Exclusions
CyVerse cannot guarantee time frames for the following situations:
- Issues referred to a Third-Party Service Providers
- Issues due to third-party tools/applications integrated in CyVerse (e.g., Discovery Environment Apps, VICE Apps, CACAO Templates)
- Systems in a disaster recovery state
- Issues that involve troubleshooting issues that do not involve the operating system, applications, or content on the physically co-located VM
Contact Information
- General Support: support@cyverse.org
Compensation
CyVerse will not compensate for failure or a user's loss of service, data, results, images, etc. that may occur during any scheduled or unscheduled outage of its servers and services.