DEDICATED SERVER SERVICE LEVEL AGREEMENT.
1 GENERAL
1.1 This document is a service level agreement (SLA) setting out the levels of services to be provided by BingHosting. to the Customer under this agreement and compensation for failure to meet those service levels.
1.2 In this SLA a reference to a paragraph, unless stated otherwise is a reference to a paragraph of this SLA.
1.3 In this SLA words, abbreviations and expressions have the meanings given in the BingHosting. Master Service Agreement General Terms and Conditions except as set out below:
(a) Availability All the time in any calendar month for which the network and any service equipment is not subject to any service affecting faults, and is therefore available.
(b) Business Day Shall mean every day excluding Saturdays and Sunday and national holidays in England
(c) CDR Means the committed data rate for each port set out in the Service Order Form and provided as part of a service.
(d) Fault Shall mean a material defect, fault or impairment in a service, which causes an interruption in the provision of the service
(e) Non-Service Affecting Means not materially affecting the performance or quality of the service
(f) Service Affecting Means causing full or partial loss of the ability to transmit or convey Data
(g) Third Party System Means a telecommunication system that is neither owned nor operated on behalf of BingHosting.
1.4 This SLA only applies to the service to the extent that it is provided by means of systems and equipment that are either owned or operated by or on behalf of BingHosting.. All references in this SLA to network and service equipment shall be construed as references to such systems and equipment.
1.5 BingHosting. shall not be liable to pay compensation under this SLA where its failure to meet any of its obligations under this SLA is a caused by a force majeure event, by a failure in the customer equipment, or by any act or omission of the customer, or third party acting on its behalf.
1.6 Credits or other compensation under this SLA shall only be payable where.
(a) The Customer has submitted to BingHosting. a claim in writing identifying the circumstances in which the customer claims that the credit or compensation arose, within five working days of the date the aforementioned circumstances arose, and
(b) BingHosting. has agreed in writing, acting reasonably and without undue delay, to that claim.
(c) TheCustomers is within credit terms at the time of the claim.
1.7 All credits so payable shall be applied to the customer s account to be reconciled at an agreed time following BingHosting. s agreement to the claim. All claims for credits or compensation must be submitted promptly and in any event within 10 business days, after the circumstances giving rise to the claim.
(a) The maximum monthly credit available under this SLA is limited to an amount not greater than one month’s fees; furthermore residual credits will not be carried over to subsequent 12 month periods.
1.8 The service credit shall be the customers sole and exclusive remedy for any BingHosting. service outage or any failure to meet the service objectives.
(a) BingHosting. reserves the right to amend the SLA from time to time. BingHosting. shall give the customer not less than 1 month s notice of any changes in the SLA. Customers will be notified by email and details of the SLA will be posted in the NOC portal. 2
PROVISIONING OF SERVICE
2.1 BingHosting. shall provide the service by the service commencement date set out in the service order form. If BingHosting. is unable to commence provisioning of the service by the service commencement date, it shall credit the customer with 10% of the activation charge set out in the service order form.
2.2 For every further business day that BingHosting. is unable to commence provisioning of the service, it shall credit the customer with an additional 5% of the connection charge, up to a maximum of 25%.
3 NETWORK AVAILABILITY
3.1 BingHosting. guarantees that the network shall have 100% Availability. If the availability falls below 100% in any month, BingHosting. will credit the customer with one day’s free service for each accumulated hour when the network is not available, subject to the maximum of the standard monthly service charge for that service.
3.2 BingHosting. shall not be obliged to pay compensation in accordance with this paragraph 3 where availability falls below 100% because of routine or emergency maintenance on the network or the service equipment pursuant to paragraph 7.
4 INFRASTRUCTURE GUARANTEE
4.1 BingHosting. guarantees that the critical infrastructure systems, including power and HVAC, will be available 100% of the time in a given month, excluding scheduled maintenance. BingHosting. will refund the customer 5% of the monthly fee for each 30 minutes of downtime (up to 100% of customer’s monthly fee).
4.2 Critical infrastructure includes functioning of all power and HVAC infrastructure including UPSs, PDUs and cabling, which form part of the co-location facility.
4.3 Infrastructure downtime exists when a particular server is shut down due to power or heat problems and BingHosting. records such failure in the BingHosting. monitoring system.
5 HARDWARE GUARANTEE
5.1 The hardware guarantee covers hardware provided by BingHosting. on a rental basis.
5.2 BingHosting. guarantees the functioning of all rented hardware components and will replace any failed component at no cost to the customer. Hardware replacement will begin once BingHosting. identifies the cause of the problem. Hardware replacement is guaranteed to be complete within 4 hours of problem identification. In the event that it takes us more than 4 hours to replace faulty hardware, BingHosting. will refund the customer 5% of the monthly fee per additional hour of down time (up to 25% of customer’s monthly fee). Hardware is defined as the Processor(s), RAM, hard disk(s), motherboard, NIC card and other related hardware included under the server lease. This guarantee excludes the time required to rebuild a RAID array.
5.3 In the event of a hard disk or fatal operating system failure BingHosting. will perform an initial install of standard operating system distributions and supported preinstalled software only in order to restore the server to the state that we supplied the server in originally. Any additional work required by the customer by our engineers may be chargeable.
5.4 In the event that replacement of a failed hardware component is unavailable BingHosting. reserves the right to opt to substitute the entire customer server with a similar replacement either as a temporary replacement while replacement hardware is being sourced, or if deemed appropriate by BingHosting. as a permanent replacement.
5.5 The security of the Dedicated Server and customer data remain the sole responsibility of the customer, who should perform such backups and maintenance to software running on the Server to maintain its integrity. BingHosting. will perform upgrades of Dedicated server software if we deem necessary to provide continued service, we accept no responsibility for damage to data or loss of service however caused (for instance, as a result of hardware failure or malicious “hacking”).
6 SOFTWARE
6.1 Except where a maintenance contract is in place for software maintenance and/or management clearly detailing the software managed or maintained BingHosting. are in no way responsible for either the operating or any software installed on a dedicated server once the server has been handed over to the customer at commission time.
6.2 In the event of a fatal operating system failure BingHosting. will only carry out remedial work once an instruction to do so has been issued by the Customer and any such work may be chargeable.
6.3 Any work performed in connection with clause 6.2 above will be on a best endeavour basis only and then only within the time and price limits agreed with the Customer. If it is deemed not possible to repair the operating system BingHosting. will perform an initial install of standard operating system distributions and supported preinstalled software only in order to restore the server to the state that we supplied the server in originally. Any additional work required by the customer by our engineers may be chargeable.
7 FAULT HANDLING / RESPONSE TIME AGREEMENTS
7.1 BingHosting. offers response time agreements, during the business day (9:00am to 5:30pm, Monday to Friday) as follows: (a) You can call us on 0800 802 1206 and expect a prompt answer, you will be able to speak to a member of the Technical Support team who will be familiar with your account and services. You can expect to be able to speak to a network engineer normally straight away and always within 4 hours. You can expect an initial response within four hours of a logged service interruption call.
7.2 BingHosting. offers response time agreements, outside of the business day 24×7 as follows:
7.3 Outside of our normal business hours you can call our VIP support line on 0800 802 1206. After listening to the pre-recorded messages you will be be transferred to a duty support engineer who will take contact and problem details.
7.4 If the duty support engineer is unable to resolve your problem immediately, a network engineer will call you normally straight away and always within 2 hours.
7.5 You can expect an initial response within two hours of a logged service interruption call.
7.6 Third party Interconnects – Any connections provided by a 3rd party supplier in order to complete the solution will be governed by the SLA offered by that supplier. BingHosting. has carefully chosen our preferred suppliers based on their ability and track record, in order to provide a good quality, reliable solution.
7.7 Where the whole or any part of any Service is provided by means of a third party system, BingHosting. shall, to the extent that it is able to do so, pass on the benefit of any service levels to which it is entitled from that provider of that third party system in accordance with paragraph 1.6 but shall not otherwise be liable to meet the service levels set out in this SLA in respect of that Service (or the relevant part thereof).
8 NETWORK AND SERVICE EQUIPMENT MAINTENANCE
8.1 BingHosting. may suspend the Service to carry out Periodic maintenance or upgrade work on the Network or Service Equipment; this will be carried out during the maintenance windows as defined in paragraph 8.4.
8.2 Except in the case of an emergency BingHosting. shall provide the Customer with 5 business days’ notice of any suspension of the service under paragraph 8.1. If it fails to provide the appropriate notice, the customer shall be entitled to a credit of one day s free Service.
8.3 As far as possible BingHosting. shall endeavour to ensure that any disruption or interruption to the service is kept to a minimum. BingHosting. shall endeavour not to suspend the service for planned maintenance or upgrade work more than 12 times in any calendar year and the Customer shall be entitled to one day of free service for each additional service suspension for such work. BingHosting. shall endeavour to ensure that planned maintenance or upgrade work does not exceed a total of 24 hours in any calendar year and the customer shall be entitled to a credit of one day s free service for each additional hour of service suspension for such work.
8.4 The standard for the BingHosting. maintenance window for planned outages is between 22.00 and 07.00, local time as at node location in question. BingHosting. will try to accommodate the customer requirements in terms of outage times; however, depending on the circumstances this may not always be possible. Outage times will be quoted in GMT/BST to prevent mistakes being made over the various time zones.
9 REPORTING
9.1 BingHosting. will provide the Customer with near real-time Performance and status reports via an online statistics portal.
9.2 The items reported upon are: (a) Availability of the Service (b) Throughput and utilization of the Customers ports or VLAN
9.3 BingHosting. will provide the Customer with alerts via SMS text and e-mail in the event we lose communication with your server for longer than five minutes. In order to provide this service, we require that the customer supply a nominated contact and a 24 hour contact mobile telephone number and e-mail address.
10 AMENDMENTS
10.1 This Agreement may be amended from time to time upon giving the Customer reasonable prior written notice.
