Service Standards


Scope

This Service Standard establishes incident management and service management processes,  support hours, default service level targets, responsibilities, processes and metrics between the Customer and Intersect Australia Ltd (Intersect) in relation to the Intersect products and services to which the Customer subscribes.

Support Hours

Support hours are Business Hours Monday-Friday 9am-5pm.

Database of Records

Help.intersect.org.au is the definitive database of record for all Support Items including status and tracking information.


Incident Management

The following describes the general incident management process.

Step 1: Raising an Incident

You can report an incident at Help.intersect.org.au or by sending an email to help@intersect.org.au. We can also raise an incident on your behalf if we notice something is wrong with your service.

Minimum required information

To help us to resolve the incident as quickly as possible please supply the following minimum information (where known) when you raise an incident :

  • The Intersect Product and/or Service to which the incident applies and the related Plan.
  • Product details. For Space, this is the Space Product ID. For Time, this is the OpenStack project ID (How do I find out my OpenStack Project ID?) and virtual machine instance hostname and IP address.
  • Your name, organisation (institution, school, faculty or research centre) and email address.
  • The name, organisation and email address of the User, if different to you.
  • An overview of the issue.
  • Steps to reproduce the incident.
  • Information to assess Impact, Urgency and Priority (how much is this issue impacting you and/or your research group/your institution as a whole).
  • Any further information requested by us, for example “I recall another researcher had this issue last year”.

Step 2: Confirmation

Help.intersect.org.au will automatically send you an initial email confirming receipt of an Incident, including an Incident ID (INC-12345). The Incident ID should be used in all subsequent communication with us regarding this Incident.

Assign Priority (Low, Standard, High, Critical)

We will assign a priority to your incident based on your business needs

Step 3: Make an Initial Response

Once the incident has been prioritised, we will assign the incident to a support engineer and this person will make an initial response to you according to the following table:

Target Incident Response Times

PriorityResponse Time (Business Hours)
1 - Critical2
2 - High8
3 - Medium16
4 - Low40

Initial Response

The initial response will include the following; 

  1. Confirm with you that we understand the problem and can reproduce it.
  2. If the solution is immediately obvious, then a plan will be created outlining how the incident can be resolved, including what needs to be done to rectify it.
  3. If the solution is not immediately obvious, an estimate of the time needed to investigate will be given.

The Intersect support engineer will then work on rectifying the incident.

Progress Reports

Progress reports/updates will be provided regularly on the basis of the incident priority.

LowFortnightly
StandardWeekly
HighTwice Weekly
CriticalDaily

If the incident is widespread, we will provide updates via Twitter to @IntersectOps on a regular basis.

Step 4: Incident Resolution and Closure

Once the incident is rectified, we will mark is as Resolved in Help.intersect.org.au and we will notify you that we believe it is resolved. You will then have two business days to respond if the incident is not resolved to your satisfaction, otherwise it will be Closed automatically.

Resolution Due to Lack of Response

If we ask for further information from you or the user to help us to resolve an incident and we receive no response within five business days of making the request, the  incident will be marked as Resolved – no longer relevant.

Reopening an Incident

You can reopen a request by responding to the email notification advising you that the request is resolved or you can send an email to help@intersect.org.au mentioning the Incident ID in the Subject. Reopened incidents will be triaged and the incident management process will be recommenced.


Service Request Management

The following describes the general service request process.

Step 1: Raising a Service Request

Service requests must be raised via Help.intersect.org.au

Step 2: Confirmation

Help.intersect.org.au will automatically send you an initial email confirming receipt of the Service Request, including a service request ID. The Service Request ID should be used in all subsequent communication with us regarding the request.

Step 3: Approval

Prior to proceeding to fulfilment of a request, we will ensure that approval has been granted from an authorised person within your organisation and all preconditions for the service definition are met.

Step 4: Fulfilment

For approved Service Requests, we will proceed to implement it as per the process for the requested service. 

Target Fulfilment Times

For a particular Service Request, unless otherwise stated, we will aim to fulfil it  within 5 business days of the request being approved and all required information being supplied allowing us to process it.

Step 5: Closure

Once the Service Request is provisioned, we will mark is as Resolved in Help.intersect.org.au and notify you. You will then have two business days to respond to the request if it is not fulfilled to your satisfaction, otherwise is will be Closed automatically.

Lack of Response

If we require your input to fulfil a request and you don’t respond to our request for 5 business days, we will mark the Service Request as Resolved – no longer relevant.

Reopening a Request

You can reopen a Service Request by responding to the email notification advising you that the request is resolved or you can send an email to help@intersect.org.au mentioning the request id in the Subject.


Downtime Notification

For general operational notifications relating to our products and services, messages are sent via Twitter to @IntersectOps. This is a low volume feed providing alerts and status messages.

If your Product or Service is subject to a planned outage, where possible we will notify you by email in advance according to the following notification schedule:

Expected Downtime DurationTarget Downtime notification time
2 hours7 days
> 2 hours14 days

For unplanned outages, notification will be provided to you as soon as possible. Regular status updates will be provided for outages greater than four hours.

A final notification will be sent upon completion of the downtime and successful return to service.

Hint for long running workloads

To avoid the risk and impact of downtime and outages, it is recommended that you check-point your long-running analysis jobs at least once per week.


Service Reports

We will provide volume customers of Intersect products and services with the following reports:

Incident Summary ReportMonthly
Service Request Summary ReportMonthly
Cloud.Time DashboardDaily
VM Management ReportDaily
Research Cloud Computing Service ManagementFortnightly/Monthly
Owntime VM Creation ReportDaily
Owntime VM Project Expiry ReportDaily
Local Time Server Utilization ReportDaily

Contact Intersect to determine if you qualify for Service Reports or place your request by emailing help@intersect.org.au.

Service Meetings

Customers of Intersect products and services are entitled to regular service meetings with Intersect, fortnightly, monthly or quarterly depending on mutual agreement. Things that are discussed at these meetings include adherence of service limits, management of service limits and consumption of each product. 

Provision of Consumption Information

We will provide you with information so that you can monitor your consumption of Intersect Products and Services.


Customer Responsibilities

Capacity Management

The Customer is responsible for its consumption of Intersect’s products and services. Unless otherwise agreed, it is the Customer’s responsibility to manage its consumption of Intersect’s products and services within allocated resources.

Level 1 Helpdesk

Where the Customer has purchased a Wholesale Plan, in relation to that Plan, the Customer agrees to:

  • Maintain an internal-to-customer  Level 1 Help Desk support service for users.
  • Where possible, resolve support items (Service Request, Incident) relating to Intersect Products and Services without involving Intersect.
  • Provide all required information when escalating support Items to Intersect.
  • Act as intermediary between users and Intersect technical support staff.
  • Coordinate the resolution of support items between users and Intersect.
  • Maintain a cross-reference between Customer’s internal support ticketing system and help.intersect.org.au.
  • Inform help.intersect.org.au when a Customer support ticket is resolved.

Informed Service

To streamline the process customers are expected to inform themselves of Intersect’s Product and Service offerings in advance of raising a Support Item (Incident or Service Request).

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