Managed Services Anywhere

Updated: August 7, 2023

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This Service Guide (“SG”) sets forth a description Managed Services Anywhere offered by Lumen (the “Services”) as part of Lumen’s Cloud Application Manager Service. “Lumen” is defined as CenturyLink Communications, LLC d/b/a Lumen Technologies Group or its affiliated entities. This SG is subject to and incorporated into the Agreement, Hybrid Technologies Service Exhibit (formerly the CenturyLink TS Service Exhibit) and Cloud Application Manager Service Schedule (current version of which is located at https://www.lumen.com/en-us/about/legal/business-customer-terms-conditions.html) between the parties. The specific details of the Service ordered by Customer will be set forth on the relevant Service Order. For avoidance of doubt, any references in the Agreement, Service Exhibit, Schedule, or Service Orders to SSG, will mean SG.

The description of Cloud Application Manager Service is available in the Cloud Application Manager Service Guide.

Service Description

Lumen's Managed Services Anywhere provides orchestration, monitoring, and management of hybrid IT environments and workloads running on them. Management activities encompass configuration, deployment, patching, troubleshooting, and optimization. These activities are provided for a growing list of managed technologies (see Managed Technologies section below) by a team of Lumen Cloud Application Manager power users leveraging automation.

Managed Platforms

Managed Services Anywhere is currently available for the following managed platforms, which may be modified or changed from time to time. Managed Platforms means those platforms listed below for which Managed Services Anywhere is available.

• Lumen Private Cloud on VMware Cloud Foundation
• VMware vCenter
• Microsoft Azure (Azure)
• Amazon Web Services (AWS)
• Google Cloud Platform (GCP)
• Physical Server (e.g. bare metal server in a Customer’s premise or its third party contracted data center location)
• HPE Synergy Platform

Managed Technologies

The technologies listed below are accurate as of the version date of this Service Guide and are subject to change without notice based on vendor modifications to their technologies and/or offerings. Updates to this list of technologies will be posted as the technologies change.

Operating System, Application, and Database Technologies

The following operating system, application, and database technologies are included in all the Managed Technology environments below. Supplemental or vendor-specific technologies for a particular environment are listed with that environment. 

1. AWS

2. Microsoft Azure

3. Google Cloud Platform

4. Lumen Private Cloud on VMware Cloud Foundation (LPC on VCF)

5. Physical Server

6. VMware Cloud Foundation and vCenter (BYOC)^*

7. HP Synergy Platform

8. Azure VMWare Solutions (AVS)

9. VMware Cloud (VMC) on AWS

Product Features

The latest price plan for Managed Services Anywhere provides two levels of service options—Alerting and Managed—across three different Workload Tiers—operating system, non-cloud-native database, and non-cloud-native web server—that can be set as desired for individual Cloud Application Manager Provider Accounts.

Prior price plans only provide for a single Managed Services Anywhere level of service for individual Cloud Application Manager Provider Accounts.

Levels of Service

The Alerting level of service alerts Customer via several communication options dynamically selected by the customer from Cloud Application Manager monitoring of cloud infrastructure and workloads for Managed Technologies in a manner defined below. Lumen service desk does not monitor or respond to these alerts. Lumen provides Customer support for Cloud Application Manager and configuration assistance on monitoring and alerting features as part of this level of service. It also includes use of ALM orchestration capabilities without separate fees. This level of service does not provide management or technical support for customer workloads.

The Managed level of service includes all of the features of the Alerting level of service; plus the available managed activities described in the section below. The Managed level of service also includes available Lumen orchestration (e.g. deploying a virtual machine, re-booting) of Managed Technologies for Customer workloads and 24x7 management and technical support of Managed Platforms and Managed Technologies within Customer workloads.

Workload Tiers

The Operating System Workload Tier includes the following Managed Technology workload components: virtual machine, operating system, operating system patches, operating system connections, Lumen provided ClamAV anti-virus on the operating system, Apache or Microsoft IIS web services on the operating system, and Active Directory service on Microsoft Windows operating system. It also includes the cloud native elements within the Managed Technologies list above until a cloud native workload tier option becomes available in the future. For clarity, should Customer enable this workload tier, Lumen will provide the described managed activities against these components.

The Non-Cloud-Native Database Workload Tier includes Managed Technology database instances running on Managed Technology operating system instances that are not cloud native database platform-as-a-service elements of a public cloud.

The Non-Cloud-Native Web Services Workload Tier includes Managed Technology integrated web server environment instances running on Managed Technology operating system instances that are not cloud native web server platform-as-a-service elements of a public cloud.

Management Activities

The management activities listed below are available either through the Managed level of service applied to desired Workload Tiers within Provider Accounts for Customers on the latest price plan or through the Managed Services Anywhere level of service for individual Cloud Application Manager Provider Accounts for Customers on a prior price plan.

Lumen reserves the right to require Advanced Managed Services or other upgrades (subject to additional terms and pricing) for any customer request that is not described below or otherwise deemed out of scope. Certain support services may be automated or provided by Lumen designated personnel.

Configuration Management

• Confirm the initial install and basic functionality of the OS, application components, or native cloud service based on Managed Platform provider’s recommended best practices where applicable.
• Perform configuration management on the managed device via Cloud Application Manager’s remote administration functionality.
• Maintain version control of deployed VMs, application and services.

Remote Administration

• Perform systems administration tasks on the Customer’s behalf.
• Maintain administrator-level access to all instances and physical servers within the Managed Services Anywhere enabled Managed Platforms; subject at all times to Customer ensuring that Lumen has the appropriate permissions.
• Administrator level access permits Lumen to view physical servers, instances, VMs, the databases, etc.
• Remotely access managed devices on the customer’s environment via the remote gateway.
• In order to provide effective remote administration service for Windows Operating Systems, the Lumen proprietary management appliance will serve as an AD controller to which managed Windows servers will join if Customer has not configured an Active Directory. Where Customer’s Active Directory exists, a trust between the Customer’s Active Directory and the controller on the management appliance must be established for authentication of Lumen remote administrators.

Patching and Maintenance

Install available critical and vendor-recommended patches for services running on Managed Platforms. This includes:

• Automated installation of vendor security patches for vendor provided software
• Health checks to maintain service availability post-patching
• Adherence to industry standard practices when processing patching change requests
• Patch installation status reporting
• Patch management on Managed Services Anywhere enabled environments where Customer’s environment has access to patch repositories

Change request activities include risk guidance, testing procedures, tracking metrics throughout progress, roll-back processes and post-deployment validation.

Customers define when or if Lumen schedules patching cycles. Customers are responsible for requesting the installation of released patches.

Access Management

Lumen manages user policies, administration and password management enforcement of Managed Platforms configured within Cloud Application Manager.

Security

Lumen offers access to installation of industry-recognized anti-virus protection intended to secure the OS, taking into account the guidelines of the Managed Platform providers, regular virus and malware signature updates, and offers OS-level hardening recommendations to mitigate risk on the Managed Platform environments. Implementation of other recommended or client-required hardening steps is accomplished via the normal support ticketing process with Managed Services Anywhere. Customer is responsible for all applicable licensing requirements.

Licensing

Lumen will provide support for the following license types for the customer environments that are designated for Managed Services Anywhere:

• Customer-provided licenses used and modeled within Cloud Application Manager.
• Licenses provided by the native Managed Platform providers.
• Lumen provided licenses, where applicable.

Watcher Monitoring and Alerting

The Lumen developed and proprietary monitoring service (Watcher), automatically integrated directly with AWS, and Azure, and Google monitoring technologies, enables host, service, and application monitoring of Customer’s AWS, or Azure, or Google cloud environments. The Watcher utilizes an intelligent agent deployed to all managed VMs or physical servers. Monitoring policies are centrally configured and maintained by Lumen certified cloud engineers. When Watcher is deployed on physical servers, enables hardware and OS monitoring of Customer’s private environment.

Lumen’s Watcher uses both agent-based and cloud service provider metrics (for physical servers only an agent is used) to generate alerts on the performance of the applicable record or log flagged for monitoring. Metrics are the result of standard checks that are performed and reported back to the customer and Lumen’s support organization.

• Comprehensive monitoring policy is applied to all managed instances (e.g. VMs, database instances, storage instances, etc.).
• Configurable monitoring policies for defining alerts and trigger based notifications via service request.
• Change Management integration for automated suppression of alerts during maintenance activities.
• Watcher dashboard to view policies and alerts on all managed devices, applications and services.
• Graphing of performance metrics for managed workloads, applications and services enables historical trending and analysis.
• Graph overlays to compose and compare disparate metrics sets in a single view.
• Historical retention of the performance metric data is available on a rolling 28 calendar days basis.