Checklist of questions to the hosting provider of a mission critical application. The role is assumed to be the role of the person responsible for checking the responses, usually the Technical Architect.
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| 1 | Existing Sites
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How many data centers and where are they? |
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| 2 | Data Center Detail
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Describe the local data center. The type of things you want to know are:a) Is it an isolated building? b) When was it built?c) How many levels?d) How many current occupantse) What is the topology of you largest client and how many servers do they have with you? |
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| 3 | Redundant Power
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How many separate power grids does your center have? Does each rack have power pulled from independent grids? What type of power is available in each rack? Do you have diesel generators? Do you have battery racks? How long can the data center run on the battery racks/ UPS/ generators? |
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| 4 | Seismic Bracing
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Does the building have any special seismic bracing? Are the racks bolted to the floor (through the raised floor?) |
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| 5 | Fire suppression
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Describe the Fire suppression system. |
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| 6 | Rack Redundancy
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Do the Racks have redundant network connections? |
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| 7 | Cooling and Filtering
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Describe the cooling and air conditioning system |
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| 8 | 24X7 Support
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Is the center staffed 24x7 and what skills are always on site? |
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| 9 | Physical Security
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Describe the security features of your local data center. Does the data center have man traps, security cameras, locked cages/racks, biometric readers, proximity cards, etc.? |
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| 10 | Global Backbone
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Do you have your own internet backbone or do you use some kind of transit to connect to the Internet? If you have your own backbone, please describe. |
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| 11 | Transit
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Please describe your transit bandwidth to the tier providers (T3, OC3, etc.) |
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| 12 | Peering
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Describe any Private Peering – Agreements to exchange packets between providers. |
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| 13 | Manage and Monitor
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Please describe how you manage/monitor your network. Do you provide SLAs for your network? If yes, please describe your network uptime SLA. |
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| 14 | Manage/Setup VPNs
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Describe your preferred remote service connectivity. Do you allow clients to have dedicated leased lines to the back of their sites? Do you provide a dedicated VPN network or do you VPN into the application layer? |
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| 15 | Provider Disaster Recovery
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Do you provide disaster recovery services? If yes, please describe your preferred methodology. Please describe how this service is priced. |
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| 16 | Content Caching/Distribution
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Do you provide any content caching or content distribution services? If yes, please describe. |
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| 17 | Bandwidth Pricing
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How do you price network bandwidth utilization. Do you ask for commitment levels? What is your price per.5mb or 1mb? |
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| 18 | “Smart” networks – Packet tracking
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Please detail any specific network offerings. |
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| 19 | Co-Location Services
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Please describe your co-location offering. What standard monitoring services come with this offering? What optional services come with this offering? |
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| 20 | Semi-Managed Services
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Please describe any semi-managed offerings you may have. If you offer these then what standard and/or optional services come with this offering? |
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| 21 | Full Services (Des,implement,support)
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Please describe your fully-managed offering. What standard monitoring services come with this offering? What optional services come with this offering? |
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| 22 | SLA/MBG
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Please outline the Service Level Agreements you provide with your hosting services. Do you provide money-back guarantees if you do not meet your SLA? If yes, please detail. |
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| 23 | Services and Rates
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Once a client is engaged with you, what kind of professional services do you provide to assist in the implementation/design efforts? |
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| 24 | Backup and Recovery
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Do you provide backup services with you co-location, semi-managed and fully-managed service offerings? Do you provide a dedicated network for backup? Do you provide off-site storage? What kind of recovery services do you provide? What SLAs do you provide based on your backup offering? |
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| 25 | ASP Offering
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Are you an ASP? If yes, please describe your ASP services. |
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| 26 | Database Support
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Do you provide DBA support on site? What kind of database monitoring do you offer? What kind of DB reporting do you offer? |
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| 27 | Load Balancer and Firewall
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Do you provide front end web server load balancing as a service? If yes, what load balancers do you support? Do you provide redundant load balancers? Please describe how this service is priced.Describe your firewall offering. |
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| 28 | Firewall or Access Lists
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Does your reference architecture use firewalls or router access lists (with n-tier architecture). Please detail your reference architecture security. |
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| 29 | Certified Technicians
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Do you require your on site technicians to hold certifications? If yes, what certifications? Do you outsource your on site support? Do you provide any specific training for your technicians? |
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| 30 | Reference Architecture
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Please provide a Visio (or equivalent) drawing detailing your web site reference architecture. This should include how you provide web, application and database redundancy, backup, remote access, load balancing and security. |
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| 31 | Supported H/W and S/W
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Please provide a list of supported hardware (Compaq, Dell, SUN, etc.) and software (web, application and database) platforms. Please describe how you support these applications. |
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| 32 | NOC
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Where is your primary Network Operating Center located? Is all the monitoring done from there or is monitoring distributed to all the data centers? |
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| 33 | Paging and alert services
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Do you offer clients pager and alert notification services in the event of site or server failure? |
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| 34 | Rective Monitoring
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What monitoring tools do you provide (basic ping, HP Openview, BMC Patrol, HTTP gets, etc.) |
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| 35 | Site usage tracking
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Do you provide any site usage tracking tools? If yes, what tools? |
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| 36 | Reporting
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What kind of reporting (disk, network, firewall resource utilization etc.) capabilities do you offer? |
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| 37 | Change Control Process
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Do you have a documented change control process? How do clients update their site content? |
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| 38 | Issue Tracking
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What tool set do you use for trouble ticket generating/tracking? Can the client access this via the Internet (web access)? |
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| 39 | Customers
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Who are your largest customers? Can you name a client with requirements similar to mine that will give a reference? Do you have any banking/Financial Services clients? |
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| 40 | Performance Audit
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Have you or any of your hosted clients ever gone through an audit (SAS70/ISAE3402 (/SSAE16)? If yes, what were the results? |
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| 41 | Costs
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Please provide a pricing breakdown for your co-location, semi-managed and fully-managed services. Please separate setup costs from monthly/annually recurring costs. |
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| 42 | Implementation Schedule
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Do you have a reference implementation plan? How long does a typical implementation take? Can you provide a reference to an implementation that is similar to our requirements? |
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| 43 | Rent/Lease Hardware
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Do you offer hardware rental and/or lease to buy services? If yes, please provide a summary of your hardware rental/lease prices. |
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| 44 | Potential Sales Impact
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Do you provide any services to any of the companies in our group, namely <list any companies in group that have or may have hosting arrangements>? |
