Understanding Roles and Responsibilities

Your VMware Server Virtualization environments can comprise both supported and unsupported Guest OSs.

  • Supported OS: A Guest OS that is supported by Rackspace.
  • Unsupported OS: A Guest OS that is not supported by Rackspace and that requires you to assume some responsibility for that managed VM.

The following table lists all services and the party responsible for managing them. For some tasks, you and Rackspace Technology share responsibility.

Layer

Service

Physical server

ESXi

VM Container Container

Managed VM Supported OS

Managed VM Unsupported OS

Application

Provisioning

Manage delivery of equipment (as needed)

Rackspace

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Rackspace provided guest OS

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Customer

Depends

Customer-provided guest OS

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Customer

Customer

Depends

Initial deployment

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Customer

Customer

Depends on application

Alerting

Performance monitoring

Rackspace Reactive Only

Rackspace Reactive Only

Rackspace Reactive Only

Rackspace Reactive Only

Customer

Customer

Outage monitoring

Rackspace Reactive Only

Rackspace Reactive Only

No

Rackspace Reactive Only

Customer

Customer

Reporting

Performance reports

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Outage reports

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Customer-specific

Bandwith consumption reporting

Rackspace

N/A

Rackspace per request

N/A

N/A

N/A

Access

Physical Access

Rackspace

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

N/A

Remote/Logical Access

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace and Customer

Customer

Same as OS

Administrator/Root Access

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace and Customer

Customer

N/A

Change management

Patching

Rackspace coordinated with Customer

Rackspace coordinated with Customer

Rackspace coordinated with Customer

Rackspace coordinated with Customer

Customer

Customer unless application services purchased

Hardware changes including software

Rackspace per request (Fee)

N/A

Rackspace per request (Fee)

Rackspace per request (Fee)

Customer

Customer

Password rotation for Rackspace credentials

Rackspace

N/A

N/A

Rackspace

N/A

N/A

Scheduled maintenances

Rackspace coordinated with Customer

Rackspace coordinated with Customer

Rackspace coordinated with Customer

Rackspace coordinated with Customer

Customer

Customer

Manage firewalls

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace and Customer

Customer

N/A

Allocate IPs

Rackspace

Rackspace

N/A

Rackspace

Rackspace

N/A

Assign/ Apply IPs

Rackspace

Rackspace

N/A

Rackspace

Customer

N/A

Manage DNS

No

Rackspace

N/A

Rackspace

N/A

Manage storage

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

Customer

Customer

Backups

Fire level backups

N/A

N/A

N/A

Rackspace

N/A

Same as OS

Image level backups (requires VM recovery)

N/A

N/A

Rackspace

N/A

N/A

N/A

Replication

VM replication (Zerto)

N/A

N/A

Rackspace Coordinated with Customer (Fee)

N/A

N/A

N/A

Exports

Export VMs

N/A

N/A

Rackspace Reasonable endeavor plus fee

N/A

N/A

N/A

Decommission

Decommission your environment

Rackspace

Rackspace

Rackspace

N/A

N/A

N/A