SCS Critical Computing Services Support

Last Update: June 11, 1996

Critical Computing Services

Certain computing services provided by SCS are deemed critical. Such critical computing services receive 24 hours by 7 day/week First Line coverage via the SCS Help desk. In some cases the service is automatically monitored and if problems are detected the responsible person may be paged directly. By "critical" we mean a service whose denial has a critical impact on the Lab. First Line support will ascertain whether the service appears critical and if unable to fix or provide a by-pass will call SCS's second line support (the Coordinators) if it is an SCS responsibility. Second line support will escalate to third line support (programmers, engineers, analysts etc.) if they need help. {What should we say about second line coverage in terms of hours covered}

Third line support is on a best effort basis for 24 hours by 7 days on the select set of services defined below. Other services not mentioned below (e.g. building network switches, mail, www, news, print) are not designated critical and receive First and Second Line coverage during normal business working hours and limited support outside that. {Do we want to say more about escalation?}

The following comprise the Critical Computing Services for Third Line Support:

The NFS file service.
The AFS file service.
The tape Silo.
The Unix farm.
Critical system underpinnings limited to NIS, Name Service, Kerberos and some license servers.
The network core switches including the Gigaswitch.
The network core routers.
The SLACVX cluster.

Adding extra services to the critical list for Third Line support will require a support plan to ensure the right resources and procedures are in place to meet the needs.

In some cases, such as MCC and SLD, a group outside SCS will have the responsibility for providing some of the critical service support (e.g. system software and applications) and/or response.

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Les Cottrell