Server reliability and uptime policy

Date of next review due: 1st April 2010.

This page details our arrangements for reliability and uptime which apply unless otherwise stated contractually.

Applicability

Details here apply to all of:

the CycleStreets website;
area-specific subdomains such as Cambridge CycleStreets;
user interfaces running from the same codebase and database, such as Cycling Sorted;
calls to our API from mobile phones and external websites such as Camden maps
proxied sites running under different domain names.

Downtime

We aim to exceed 99% uptime.

Historical downtime since December 2008 has been:

no periods of extended downtime;
occasional 10-minute scheduled downtimes to initiate backups during quieter periods.

Non-emergency reboots are minimised and will always be scheduled for out-of-office periods if not at night-time.

Our main and development servers are monitored via a ping service, resulting in a text message being sent to one of the developers if no response is forthcoming.

Response times

During the hours of 10-6pm, e-mail to our main contact address, info@cyclestreets.net, relating to unavailability of the site, will generally get a response within 2-4 hours if not immediately.

Outside office hours, we often in practice would respond to reports of a serious problem, though this should not be relied upon. Downtime is regarded as highest priority above all other work.

The two server administrators make efforts to avoid holidays at the same time.

Phone-based support is not available unless otherwise arranged.

Server responsiveness

Routing data imports are run overnight up to two or three times per week. During these times, the machine may be less responsive. If the journey planner is subject to a spike, we delay importing until the traffic to the site has eased.

Backup

Our backup routine is as follows:

The code is backed up in several places so can be restored easily, or in theory rolled out on our development server if an extended period of downtime (due to a hardware fault) occurs.
Backups of contributed photos are made on a daily basis.
The database is currently backed up manually roughly every two weeks. (Moving to a more automated procedure is work scheduled to be in place by end-April 2010).

All backups are made to a machine in a different datacentre, and additional off-site backups are in practice made every few months.

Servers

At present we have a single production server. We hope to purchase a second server for resilience and speed purposes, but full funding has not yet been found for this.

If your organisation requires increased resilience beyond what is outlined above, please contact us to discuss this; we are happy to consider server upgrades if funding to cover our costs is available.

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