GrC Service level agreements
This section covers the following topics relative to:
Definition of Incident Types (Incident Priorities)
Incident severity-level descriptions
| Severity level | Criteria |
| Priority 1 | A system or service is completely interrupted. (Critical fault) |
| Priority 2 | A system or service is partly malfunctioning, but basically available. (Major fault) |
| Priority 3 | The failure has little or no effect on the operation of the systems or services. (Minor fault) |
Incident Response Times
SLA Production Environments
| Severity | Schedule | Initial response targets |
| P1 | 24 hours a day, 7 days a week (including German holidays) | 30 minutes |
| P2 | Local business hours: 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Monday to Friday, excluding German Public Holidays | 45 minutes |
| P3 | Local business hours: 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Monday to Friday, excluding German Public Holidays | 60 minutes |
SLA Non-Production Environments
| Severity | Schedule | Initial response targets |
| P1 | Local business hours: 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Monday to Friday, excluding German Public Holidays | 60 minutes |
| P2 | Local business hours: 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Monday to Friday, excluding German Public Holidays | 60 minutes |
| P3 | Local business hours: 8:00 AM to 6:00 PM, Monday to Friday, excluding German Public Holidays | 60 minutes |
Availability
Services are hosted and delivered in secured data centers. The sites provide high-availability network connectivity across two physically separate data centers within a metropolitan area, enabling a redundant configuration for the production environment at the web and application layers.
The service BMC Helix GrC shall have a monthly availability of 99.9%.
Calculation
(Service Time - Planned Downtime – Unplanned Downtime) x 100
Availability = ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Service Time – Planned Downtime
The values in the formula are defined as follows:
- Service time: total minutes for a given calendar month
- Planned downtime: any downtime scheduled or mutually agreed upon to perform routine, non-emergency, or emergency maintenance on the services (this includes rolling reboots required on servers that may temporarily impact user sessions or require the user to log back in and upgrades of BMC Helix applications), or that occurs on non-production systems. Excluded downtime also includes downtime caused by factors beyond Materna's reasonable control, including, but not limited to, customer-managed performance or automated functional testing.
- Unplanned downtime: all downtimes that are not part of the excluded downtimes. This includes full downtime of any core component in the Production environments, inability to log-in and perform work within a core component, and when the performance of a core component is impaired to the point of being non-usable and/or where the issue is deemed to be within the direct control of Materna as determined by BMC, e.g. inefficient resources allocated. List of core components can be found at BMC Helix Availability Policy.
Standard Service Requests
| Request | Solution Time | Service Time |
| Standard Service Request | 1 Workday | Mo-Fr, 8-18, excl. German Public Holidays |
Log File Management
Service and system-related log files are stored and maintained at a central location.
The following retention periods shall apply:
| Log File Type | Retention Period |
| Metrics | 7-10 Days |
| System Logs | 3 Months |
| Security-related Logs | 3 Months |
| Application-Logs (aruser, rsso etc.) | 3 Months |
Customers may request a copy of their application log files on request for consumption into their own SIEM system.
Backup & Restore
The backup of customer environments is performed automatically and at specified intervals. It is carried out on the basis of image-based backups.
Backup Plan
| Environment | Frequency | Backup Type | Storage | Medium | Storage Location |
| PROD | Daily | Full | 60 days | Disk | Primary & Secondary Site |
| PROD | 15 minutes | Snapshot of the database * | 14 days | Disk | Secondary Site |
| Non-PROD | Daily | Full | 30 days | Disk | Secondary Site |
*Database snapshots are performed for BMC Helix ITSM and BMC Helix Business Workflows (Innovation Suite) only
Full backup is a backup of the customers' user data in a form that can be restored completely. A snapshot is the storage of the state of the user data that can be reused in the infrastructure provided by Materna.
Restore Procedure
A restore of a system state can be performed individually on the basis of the backup plan. In individual cases, a corresponding request can be made to the Service Support Desk. The exact requirements are then agreed between the service manager and the contact person. Restore will be charged separately on an effort basis.
Log File Management
Disaster Recovery
In the event of a disaster, Materna shall implement measures to restore the service, in this case to restore data in particular. Disaster events are defined as significant events that limit, interrupt or endanger service continuity. This includes cyber attacks, malware, DDOS and ransomware attacks, power outages, failure of essential infrastructure systems.
During a disaster, customers will not be able to access their primary site but will regain access before the RTO target period has passed. Once this objective is met, customers will have full access to their production environment as they normally would have before the disaster occurred. Non-production environments are not guaranteed or managed during a disaster event as they may be re-purposed to support recovery efforts.
As standard, the production system is replicated in the alternate data center and restored with the backup of customer data.
The following recovery goals shall apply:
- Recovery Time Objective (RTO): 4 hours
- Recovery Point Objective (RPO): 15 minutes
Reporting
Materna provides the Service Recipient with a monthly SLA report that shows compliance with the KPIs documented in the SLA. The reporting is always adapted to the project and Service Recipient-specific requirements. This includes i. a. language, format, frequency, service and platform, whereby a range of KPIs, which must be defined in the SLA, is covered. The standard report included in this offer contains KPIs from the Incident Management. These include:
- Overview of all incidents in the reporting period
- Overview of the number of incident tickets per priority
- Evaluation with regard to "Response in Time" compliance
- Availability calculated on the basis of critical incidents
All of the above-mentioned SLAs shall not apply to disruptions caused by BMC product defects within BMC Helix services that must be remedied by the manufacturer.
Validity of the SLA in case of product defects of BMC Helix
All of the above-mentioned SLAs shall not apply to disruptions caused by BMC product defects within BMC Helix services that must be remedied by the manufacturer.
Service Credits
In the event of an SLA breach, the customer is entitled to receive compensation in the form of service level credits through a defined process.
Service Performance
Materna shall make commercially reasonable efforts to ensure that the time measured on Materna systems required to
- log in to the customer service
- view the home page and
- log out of the customer service
To ensure consistently strong performance, we rely on comprehensive monitoring and evaluation measures. As part of our SLA reporting, you’ll receive regular insights into system performance – including the average duration of key user actions such as “login, load homepage, show ticket list and complete logout.” These processes should take no longer than 10 seconds on average per month.