Updated: December 12, 2017
Data Protect Backup (the Service) is a Managed Hosting usage-based service that provides data protection via file backups. The backups are stored to disk and optionally to tape for archiving within CenturyLink’s multi- tenant data centers that support the Service. As part of the standard Service, CenturyLink provides the installation, configuration, administration, monitoring, and maintenance and support for the Service components described below. The Service is available for use with the following CenturyLink services: CenturyLink Cloud Services, Dedicated Cloud Compute, Managed Hosting Services and/or Colocation Services located within a CenturyLink data center. When ordering the Service for use with CenturyLink Cloud Services, the name of the Service is Managed Backup. Customer chooses the amount of backup and pricing model that fits their business operation. The Service Level Agreement (SLA) associated with this Service is the Data Protect Backup SLA.
CenturyLink performs full and incremental backups as part of the Service. Customer backups will be retained on local disk for a period of two weeks. Backups that are older than two weeks per the creation time stamp will expire and will be purged from the system. At a minimum, a full backup is executed once per week. The amount of backup stored on disk accumulates based on the retention and any copies retained with DOV (Digital Offsite Vaulting). Backups are stored and measured as protected data which for the purposes of this Service means data that has been backed up and is in storage. The amount of stored data accumulates per the defined retention periods and DOV settings. The Service is available for most server operating systems (OS) as detailed in the matrix titled Supported Operating Systems. For the avoidance of doubt, the Service is not a Disaster Recovery Service and does not support backup of Virtual Machines/VMDKs or System State recovery.
The following table details the operating systems that are fully supported with the Service. For those operating systems that are not represented in the table, the deduplication feature may not be available for use and thus could result in higher data usage.
Operating System |
Architecture |
Master Server |
Client |
---|---|---|---|
Windows 2008 | X86 | NO | YES |
Windows 2008 R2 | X64 | NO | YES |
Windows 2012 | X64 | NO | YES |
Windows 2012 R2 | X64 | NO | YES |
Windows 2016 | X64 | NO | YES |
RedHat 5.x | X64 | NO | YES |
RedHat 6.x | X64 | NO | YES |
RedHat 7.x | X64 | NO | YES |
Suse SLES 11 | X64 | NO | YES |
Suse SLES 12 | X64 | NO | YES |
Solaris 10 | SPARC | NO | YES |
Solaris 11 | SPARC | NO | YES |
HPUX 11.31 | IA-64 | YES | YES |
AIX 6.1 | Power PC | YES | YES |
AIX 7.1 | Power PC | YES | YES |
The Service utilizes deduplication to reduce the overall amount of backup being stored on disk. Deduplication will be performed on the host for most OS. The Supported Operating Systems table above provides additional information on this.
CenturyLink enables encryption as part of the standard Service.
Customers may set up and manage the servers that are selected for backup by accessing the respective Portal (see Definitions).
Restores of customer data can be performed from unexpired backups stored at the local data center, or the DOV data center, or on tape. Restores are performed from full backups and subsequent incremental backups only. For example, if the oldest unexpired backup is a Full Backup, then a Restore is possible to that date. If the oldest unexpired backup is an incremental backup, then a Restore is not possible to that date; however, a Restore up to the most recent full backup can be performed.
DOV is an option of the standard Service offering that includes creating a copy of the backup, transferring the copy via an existing, secure, dedicated CenturyLink provided network connection between the data centers (data transmission for this feature utilizes Secure Socket Layer or “SSL”), and retaining the backup copies on disk at the DOV site for retention periods of: (i) two weeks, five weeks, or 13 weeks for use with Managed Hosting and Colocation Services; and (ii) two weeks for use with CenturyLink Cloud Services. DOV retention periods can be managed via the Portal. In the event Managed Backup is selected for a server in the Control portal (see Definition), the DOV component will automatically activate, and such DOV component cannot be turned off until the Managed Backup Service is de-selected for that server via the Control portal.
The Service offers secure, long-term, offsite archiving of the customer’s critical data for various business reasons. Offsite Tape Archive and Offsite Dedicated Tape Archive are available for an additional charge. Refer to Tape Archiving under Additional Services.
The Service is hosted in a CenturyLink location with secured access and redundant power.
Pricing for the Service is based on a subscription level and Third-Party Software Agents. A subscription level is based on a designated amount of monthly usage. Customer selects the subscription level in the Service Order, with subscriptions available from 0 to 100 TBs. A subscription of 0 means that the customer will be charged for actual usage incurred on a monthly basis. A subscription of greater than 0 means the customer commits to a defined usage amount and is charged a monthly recurring charge. Additional charges will apply if actual usage exceeds the subscription level. Usage pricing is based on a subscription tier, with the calculation as follows:
[(average amount of GB of backups per day over a calendar month) – (subscription commitment level X tiered rate) = overage charge]
Customers electing for the subscription model greater than 0 may receive a discounted rate and can apply the subscription over multiple sites. Please contact your CenturyLink sales representative for additional details.
Additional Considerations:
CenturyLink will provide support for installation, content migration and customer validation. The CenturyLink Service Center provides 24x7 monitoring and management support.
Once backups are configured and active, the backups automatically commence on a daily basis. Backups are retained for a default of two weeks. Once backups are disabled, the backed up data will remain in storage according to the retention schedule.
Customers can access the Portal for setup and management of the servers that should be scheduled for backup. Options within the SavvisStation Portal (see Definition) include turn On/Off backups, day of week for full backup, DOV retention periods, and long-term archiving to tape, but only if the customer has the commercial offering for tape archiving. Options within the Control portal are limited to turning On/Off the Managed Backup Service.
Customers with the appropriate authorizations can manage the Services within the Portal.
CenturyLink may modify the managed applications, systems, network and facilities used to provide the Service. Such modifications are subject to CenturyLink’s change management process which includes risk assessment, completed test procedure, metrics for measuring progress, and back out procedures. The change management process will be followed prior to scheduling and implementation of such modifications.
Customers may monitor the Service via the Portal. The SavvisStation Portal may also be used for assistance with reporting including identification of backup servers, successful backups, and usage. The Control Portal may also be used for assistance with identification of backup servers and allows the customer direct access to the information directly on their servers.
CenturyLink will retain primary notification and resolution responsibilities for all automated environment alerts in the production environment.
All changes to the CenturyLink managed applications, systems, network and facilities are subject to CenturyLink’s change management process. This process is intended to confirm that work is reviewed for completeness (risk assessment, completed test procedure, metrics for measuring progress, back out procedure, etc.) and accuracy prior to scheduling and implementation.
Major and Minor Releases require a new installation of the Software binaries, which is not included in this Service. CenturyLink suggests that customer purchase a new managed server (via a Service Order) and migrate data (defined in a SOW) as a commercially reasonable practice.
All times listed under Scheduled Maintenance Windows are local times and subject to change. CenturyLink will use commercially reasonable efforts to perform routine maintenance only during the Saturday or Sunday defined maintenance windows. See Maintenance Windows page for details.
CenturyLink will provide support for the Service during installation, content migration, customer validation, and 24x7 monitoring and management by the CenturyLink Service Center after installation.
Customer will designate and maintain a Customer Contact during the Service Term (including current contact information). “Customer Contact” means a technical point of contact available 24x7 with sufficient knowledge, authority and access to address configuration issues, event notifications, system or infrastructure modifications and authentication of applicable CenturyLink systems.
Customer is responsible for the following tasks. Customer acknowledges and agrees that its failure to perform its obligations set forth below may result in CenturyLink’s inability to perform the Services and CenturyLink shall not be liable for any failure to perform in the event of customer’s failure.
Any outages directly caused by Customer's failure to provide the following items will not be subject to the SLA.
Customer acknowledges and agrees that:
At customer’s option and expense, customer can choose to add additional components to the Service. Contact a CenturyLink sales representative for additional information.
Tape Archiving provides long-term shared tape-based archiving of customer data tape on a customer-chosen frequency (weekly or monthly). Customer data will be archived to tape at the CenturyLink DOV location and transferred to a long-term archive service for a customer-chosen period of twelve (12), thirty-six (36), or eighty-four (84) months. If customer requires long-term retention of data utilizing the Tape Archival, customer must also utilize DOV as the tape operations and facilities are centralized to the DOV locations. For locations without DOV, data stored on disk in the local data center may be sent to long-term tape archival from the local disk. Long-term storage may include storage utilizing qualified third party vendors who specialize in the storage of media. Price is calculated based on the amount of backups transferred to tape, the retention period of the tape media and whether Shared (standard) or Dedicated Tape is selected by the ustomer. Note that backups will go to local disk, then DOV disk and, then to tape. CenturyLink does not make exceptions. Data stored on tape is not de-duplicated or compressed. Tape Archiving not available for CenturyLink Cloud Managed Backup.
Hot backup Agents are available for Oracle, DB2, SQL Server, MS Exchange and SAP (UNIX & Windows). Hot Backup Agents are not available for CenturyLink Cloud Managed Backup.
Similar to the Offsite Tape Archive offering but uses tapes dedicated to a single customer. Data stored on tape is not de-duplicated or compressed Offsite Dedicated Tape Archive not available for CenturyLink Cloud Managed Backup.
Any Ports and VLANs in addition to those included in the standard CenturyLink design shall be subject to incremental charges as set forth in the relevant Service Order. Any Port or VLAN requested by the customer after the initial installation of the Service shall also be subject to additional, incremental charges.
Customers who purchase the Service for use with a non-standard CenturyLink service (e.g. non-standard CenturyLink managed compute environment) or customize Service for use (e.g. modify a CenturyLink managed OS) are subject to limitations of the Service including deficiencies of:
Customizations to the Service are subject to additional terms, conditions, SLAs, and charges as further described in a Statement of Work (SOW).
For Shared tapes, if there is useful life on the tape after the vaulting period has lapsed CenturyLink returns the tape to the pool to be used again in the Shared environment. CenturyLink does not run any specific process to forcibly erase data. When a data retention period expires, the data is removed from our catalog and the storage is marked as re-usable for other backups, and finally the tapes are moved to the scratch pool. Once in the scratch pool and in a tape library, they may be allocated for re-use and overwritten. CenturyLink cannot access any prior images once a new header is overwritten to the beginning of the tape.
For Dedicated tapes, when an image expires, the image is removed from our catalog, the storage is marked as re-usable for other backups. They are returned to the shared scratch pool, not a customer specific pool. Services for Dedicated Tape destruction can be scoped via a Statement of Work.
Tape Archiving, Hot Backup Agents, Offsite Dedicated Tape Archive not available for CenturyLink Cloud Managed Backup.
If a customer has specific needs not covered under the standard services described in this Service Guide, they are directed contact their sales representative for other options. Anything not explicitly listed as included in this service may require a Statement of Work (SOW) where CenturyLink’s consulting services team would need to be engaged.
See Definitions for Managed Hosting.