C&C Group

Future proof hardware for contract period
All servers and firewalls are purchased from new, to current standard specifications, with extended warranties.

Capacity planning
The production services team perform daily checks on disk capacities across all data volumes.  This information is regularly analysed for data usage trends and if required, more capacity will be recommended. These reports are available on request from C&C Group.

Licence management
Licenses are purchased and allocated by C&C Group, using in-place vendor agreements. C&C Group can gain efficiencies on licence costs due to our in-depth understanding of database and platform licensing.

Real-time diagnostics
Vendor-supplied hardware monitoring tools are installed and fully configured. External network access is regularly checked by multi-located monitoring services.

Guaranteed availability
Per-server hardware redundancy is insitu where possible. e.g. RAID, CPU/RAM fallback.  Clustering options are available.

Hardware faults rectified
Diagnosed failed hardware is replaced under vendor's extended warranty agreements.

Housekeeping
Daily disk space analysis; temp/log file archival/cycling. In addition, application specific house keeping tasks are consider prior to go-live of the required services.

Disaster recovery
We offer the most economic and reliable backup and recovery options suitable for our customer.  This spans from tape back-up and restore, right the way through to active site-to-site replication of key files and databases to secondary hardware at a secondary site; website switchover using short-TTL (Time to Life) DNS.

Microsoft Patch management
Daily monitoring of Microsoft Update status; patches can be applied automatically, or to a defined schedule, as per agreement.

Recovery management
C&C Group performs file system and application-specific recoveries, when necessary, as per tailored disaster recovery procedures.

Virtualisation
C&C Group are experts in virtualisation techniques, most often used to establish value for investment test and disaster recover platforms.

Network diagnostics
We monitor the network for expected and unexpected behaviour using sophisticated monitoring tools.

Network redundancy
Our data centres employ WAN redundancy via multiple tier 1 providers; servers configured to team multiple network adapters, where available.

Managed security
Firewall rules are configured to minimal inbound requirements only; per-client VLANs restrict network access only to client servers; diagnostics interfaces are typically on a separate C&C Group-only VLAN; rigorous password policies are employed.

Managed scalability
All infrastructure put in place under our SaaS agreements are done so with scalability in mind. C&C Group are extremely flexible when it comes to offering both cost savings by consolidating services onto dedicated or virtualised environments, and in contrast are experts in up scaling systems should our clients' requirements change. (eg. global rollouts)

Skilled support team always on site
Our principle data centre houses a skilled on site support team 24*7.

Physical Security
Servers and networking equipment is securely fitted in locked racks; named-user registration, key-cards and pass-codes are required to access data centre buildings, rooms and racks.

Backup management
Backup policies are tailored to suit data dynamism and retention requirements; weekly or nightly full backups with interim incremental as appropriate; replication to secondary servers provides off-site storage is required.

Hot Standby
Replication to a secondary hot standby environment.

Recovery management
C&C Group performs database recoveries, when necessary, as per your tailored disaster recovery procedures which we will agree with you. In addition our disaster recovery plans document the standard procedures for recovering from level 1 to 4 failures.

Performance tuning
Query plan analysis; index/statistics maintenance.

Capacity planning & housekeeping
We pro-actively monitor and manage the disk utilisation, hardware, network, database and applications using the latest technologies.

Performance monitoring
Common performance metrics (e.g. CPU, memory, swap and I/O usage) are perpetually logged to rolling files for analysis.

Backup management
Backup policies tailored to suit data dynamism and retention requirements; weekly or nightly full backups with interim incrementals as appropriate; replication to secondary servers provides off-site storage if required.

Recovery management
C&C Group performs operating system re-installation and recoveries, when necessary, as per tailored disaster recovery procedures.

Licence management
Licenses are purchased and allocated by C&C Group using in-place vendor agreements.

Housekeeping
C&C Group’s own ScriptRunner software searches the common OS log files (such as Event Viewer) and can archive these logs if required. This leaves concise and appropriate logs available facilitating efficient log analysis and management.

Microsoft Patch management
Daily monitoring of operating system provider patch updates.  Patches can be applied automatically or to a defined agreement.  The policies to be employed is agreed with the client, where we will also offer recommendation and guidance.

Guaranteed connectivity
Data centres employ WAN redundancy via multiple tier 1 providers; servers configured to team multiple network adapters, where available.

Burst-able connectivity speeds
If required by our clients, C&C Group are able to burst connectivity speeds above the agreed limited for short periods, typically up to 100Mbps

Advanced security firewall and routing
Firewall rules configured to minimal inbound requirements only; per-client VLANs restrict network access only to client servers; diagnostics interfaces are typically on a separate C&C Group-only VLAN.

Disaster recovery
Active site-to-site replication of key files and databases to secondary hardware at secondary site; website switchover using short-TTL DNS.

Load management
Background services are rate-limited where possible to ensure availability of primary services.