Service Level Agreement


This SGD Networks Level Agreement (SLA) applies to clients that have contracted for web hosting or web services from SGD Networks.


As used herein, the term “Web Services Availability” means the percentage of a particular month that the content of client’s web service is available for access by third parties via HTTP and HTTPS, as measured by SGD Networks.


Clients can expect a reply (at minimum) from SGD Networks support within an hour during business hours, and within 24-hours during weekends and recognized holidays.


Service Level


SGD Networks’s goal is to achieve a minimum of 99.9% Web Service Availability for all clients. Remedy:


Subject to Sections 3 and 4 below, if the Web Service Availability of client’s web service is less than 99.9%, SGD Networks will issue service credit days to client in accordance with the following schedule, with the credit being calculated on the basis of one month’s hosting costs for the affected Services:


Web Service Availability Credit Percentage:


Monthly   Uptime Percentage    Days of Service added to the end of the Service term (or monetary credit equal to the value of days of service for monthly postpay billing customers), at no charge to Customer


< 99.9% – >= 99.0%    1
< 99.0% – >= 95.0%    3
< 95.0%    5


Credit remedies do not apply to monthly fees charged for support of applications.


Exceptions


Client shall not receive any credits under this SLA in connection with any failure or deficiency of Web Service Availability caused by or associated with:


  • Circumstances beyond SGD Networks’s reasonable control, including, without limitation, acts of any governmental body, war, insurrection, sabotage, armed conflict, embargo, fire, flood, strike or other labor disturbance, interruption of or delay in transportation, unavailability of or interruption or delay in telecommunications or third party services, virus attacks or hackers, failure of third party software (including, without limitation, ecommerce software, payment gateways, chat, statistics or free scripts) or inability to obtain raw materials, supplies, or power used in or equipment needed for provision of this SLA;
  • Failure of access circuits to the SGD Networks network, unless such failure is caused solely by SGD Networks;
  • Scheduled maintenance and emergency maintenance and upgrades;
  • DNS issues outside the direct control of SGD Networks;
  • Issues with FTP , POP , IMAP or SMTP client access;
  • False SLA breaches reported as a result of outages or errors of any SGD Networks measurement system;
  • Client’s acts or omissions (or acts or omissions of others engaged or authorized by client), including, without limitation,
  • Custom scripting or coding (e.g., CGI, Perl, HTML, ASP, etc), any negligence, willful misconduct, or use of the services in
  • Breach of SGD Networks’s Acceptable Use Policy;
  • E-mail or webmail delivery and transmission;
  • DNS (Domain Name Server) Propagation;
  • Outages elsewhere on the Internet that hinder access to your account. SGD Networks is not responsible for browser or DNS;
  • Caching that may make your site appear inaccessible when others can still access it. SGD Networks will guarantee only those areas considered under the control of or contract by SGD Networks: SGD Networks server links to the Internet, SGD Networks’s routers, and SGD Networks’s servers.
  • Problem escalation
  • Tier 1 problem reports (end-user issues such as student and faculty inquiries) will typically be handled by client or client employees but may be escalated by the client to Tier 2 status.


Tier 2 reports (questions about the operation of supported services, reports of software bugs, requests for feature additions, etc.) will be submitted to SGD Networks via email.


All emergency reports concerning web service availability, outages or other conditions that broadly affect the client’s services shall be reported by email.


All problem reports will be submitted by client employees to support@sgdnetworks.com. Email reports flow immediately into SGD Networks’s support channel and will be confirmed by return email. In the event that the client’s services are inaccessible for a period of more than four (4) hours during operational business hours, SGD Networks will arrange for a conference call with client staff members to discuss the situation and plan for recovery.


Credit Request and Payment Procedures


In order to receive a credit, client must make a request by sending an email message to support@sgdnetworks.com. Each request in connection with this SLA must include client’s name and the dates and times of the unavailability of client’s web service and must be received by SGD Networks within ten (10) business days after client’s web service was not available. If the unavailability is confirmed by SGD Networks, credits will be applied within two billing cycles after SGD Networks’s receipt of client’s credit request.


Notwithstanding anything to the contrary herein, the total amount credited to client in a particular month under this SLA shall not exceed the total hosting fee paid by client for such month for the affected services. Credits are exclusive of any applicable taxes charged to client or collected by SGD Networks and are client’s sole and exclusive remedy with respect to any failure or deficiency in the Web Service Availability of client’s web services.


Backups


SGD Networks is pleased to offer Cloud backups, an automated backup solution that will capture a copy of all files and databases regularly and give you the power to restore them at a granular level directly from the admin console. Backups are stored on an off-site server for security and peace of mind. Here’s how it works:


Within the Cloud Manager, you will find several backups available to choose from. By default, we store 3 daily backups, two weekly backups, and two monthly backups but can set this higher based on backup storage quotas and needs. You can choose to either browse the folders within a particular backup to select specific content, browse your databases, download a full copy of the backup, or in extreme circumstances 
you can push a restoration of the entire backup back to your hosting account to revert every change that was made since the backup was created.


When browsing the contents of a backup you can granularly select specific files and folders that you want to recover. From the top menu you will have the option of either downloading a backup of the selected items, or restore those items back to your hosting account which will automatically push the items right back to your account and bring them online.


Maintenance


SGD Networks’s support and maintenance services will provide ongoing support in the form of troubleshooting and resolving any issues that arise over the life of the contract in regards to the server’s performance and the application(s) running thereon. We will also ensure that your hardware and software is regularly updated and patched to guarantee consistent performance. All updates and patches will be performed on the development server and pushed to production once it is established there are no issues or conflicts. Storage will be monitored, and we will be responsible for mitigating against Denial of Service Attacks and other potential threats to the server’s uptime.


SGD Networks provides full SSH/Secure FTP access to private servers in our virtual cloud as well as out-of-band console access for remote recovery. Additional project managers can be provided with secure access to resources and SGD Networks will support a cooperative agreement to provide full access to the server operating system and software layer to the extent the client wishes to troubleshoot and manage their instance.


Security and Quality Assurance


In order to ensure the highest assurance of quality service, we maintain our servers at secure, SOC2 compliant, industry-leading data centers in the U.S. with a 40Gb redundant network backbone. We conduct regular scans for system irregularities, data corruption and infected files. Our servers are configured to automatically update all web applications installed through our script installer nightly as well as WordPress plugins and themes while taking a backup in case of failure to ensure up-to-date code. Finally, we administer regular off-site backups of all of your content in the advent of data loss.


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