Designing SLA’s that work for your business
Web Applications developed by Armour Interactive and deployed on our Cloud Infrastructure have been designed to protect our clients Business Continuity and provide a secure and resilient environment for the application to perform.
The continued service performance throughout the lifetime of an application requires a proactive approach to maintenance throughout the Application Stack.
From our WordPress SLAs for SMEs, right through to Enterprise Level Scalable Platforms, each document outlines our approach to protecting the health of the Infrastructure and Application. It also describes our approaches to mitigating risks and our mechanisms and response times for dealing with issues as they arise.
The Core Principles of the Armour Cloud Infrastructure
- Business Continuity & High Availability throughout Infrastructure
- Security First Approach from Cloud Entry through to Code Architecture
- Both Vertical & Horizontal Scalable Performance
- Professional Response
- Actively Managed Change Control
- Built-In Active Disaster Recovery
Business Continuity & High Availability throughout Infrastructure
With each application deployed by Armour Interactive, the Application’s Architecture, Expected Loads, Code Performance, Availability Requirements and Geographical Audience are analysed by our Systems Architects to determine an optimal hosting design for quality, service and reliability.
The Armour approach High Availability of an application is multi-tiered and incorporates points of failure, application performance, change management and disaster recovery. All the hosting solutions provided by Armour have High Availability at the core of their design.
Security First Approach from Cloud Entry through to Code Architecture
Armour’s security-first approach requires on-going active monitoring and maintenance of deployed applications. The architecture of our hosting solutions allows for controlled deployment of changes to ensure the High Availability and managed change control during updates. As part of Armour’s approach to security; the management of the OS and root level privileged controls are maintained independently of the development team. This ensures root privileged changes can only be authorised and made by system administrators.
Both Vertical & Horizontal Scalable Performance
All Server nodes within Armour’s Infrastructure are built as discrete Virtual Machines that support Vertical Scaling & Migration. Vertical Scaling allows for the addition or removal of CPUs, RAM, Fast Disk Storage, Block Disk Storage & Network Bandwidth.
Layers within an Application may be resource intensive (a common example is an application’s Database) where the optimal deployment configuration calls for a cluster of servers to deliver the required performance. The primary use of a cluster in system design is for application performance and supporting Horizonal scaling of an application.
Professional Response
Armour defines SLA response times based on priority levels. Support issues are submitted by the client to a designated email address, which feeds into our Freshdesk support tool. Here it is assigned to the relevant staff member, along with a priority level. All support issues are assigned a unique reference number. There are multiple members of the Customer Support team who can address and resolve technical issues. Additional senior members of staff are available for escalations if required.
Actively Managed Change Control
A comprehensive scheduled maintenance programme is provided through the SLA. The key highlights include monitoring:
- Server Node OS and Core Application Security Updates – Daily Check & Updates
- WordPress Core, Plugins, Framework – Weekly Checks & Change Controlled Updates
- PHP Engine & MySQL Engine – Quarterly Managed Change Control
- Web Application – Weekly Checks & with Change Control Tied to CMS/PHP Engine
Built-In Active Disaster Recovery
Armour’s Cloud Infrastructure provides a three-tiered approach to application and data backup and disaster recovery. The disaster recovery procedures are tested on a quarterly basis on a cloned server node to ensure the integrity of the recovery process.
