Node4 have adopted the SRE model that was first used by Google to support customers modern application architectures. Node4 have pioneered the use of SRE in conventional MSPs to deliver against a customer’s DevOps agenda, whilst maintaining operational excellence.

The reasons for the promotion of the SRE model is twofold:

• Traditional managed service models are too rigid to support customers agile development processes especially around automated change. Customer Azure applications are also using platforms heavily reliant on PaaS services whereby the MSP is a service consumer vs. an owner

• Simply splitting the responsibilities of the Development team and Operational teams to support a DevOps approach is extremely difficult to deliver effectively whereby operationally a third-party MSP is responsible vs. the two teams working together in the same office

The SRE model is the perfect solution as it provides clear responsibility boundaries for the SRE team that allow for Cloud Operations to be part provided by Microsoft (Azure) and Development by the customer or chosen partner. This model is the ideal way to execute a DevOps aligned strategy with the use of a specialist Azure SRE team.

DevOps Managed Service features

• 24x7 Service Hours - Our DevOps experts are here to help 24 hours, 7 days a week, 365 days a year

• SRE On-Boarding – A comprehensive concierge service to ensure your application gets the red-carpet treatment for service go-live

• SRE Incident Management - A mature Event and Incident Management methodology to sustain our solutions, enabling detection and management of issues

• Priority Escalation to Microsoft – Issues can be escalated to the premier support team at Microsoft 24x7

• Service Monitoring (Azure Native) - We will deploy shared dashboards, alerting and triage runbooks to ensure effective monitoring of all solution components and agreed SLO’s

• Metrics & Logging (Azure Native) – We will keep track of SLI’s transparently using Log Analytics and Insights that both teams can use as a single source of metric

• Release Management Support - Ensuring all releases use agreed Azure DevOps deployment pipelines to provide a consistent and effective release management approach

• IaC Change Management - Ongoing change management that both Node4 and the customer have access to and can contribute to

• Operability Improvement – Every month we will work on a backlog tasks to improve the service, making it more resilient, faster and secure

• Solution-Based SLA – We’ll agree contractual SLA’s at the outset of the agreement to clearly define success