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

Updated 12 months ago