Table of contents
This document outlines the services provided and the roles and responsibilities of DIT and Site Owners using self-service Pantheon Drupal hosting. Site Owners must review and acknowledge this document before launching their sites.
Service description
DIT has partnered with an off-campus vendor, Pantheon, to provide self-service web hosting to the UMD campus community. DIT has negotiated reduced rates and access to Pantheon diamond support for our sites participating in this program.
Pantheon provides tools and services for Drupal website development. Their offerings may expand to include other content management systems in the future.
Documentation and support
Site Owners who opt to use this service should have the technical knowledge and skills to build and maintain their own sites. Pantheon maintains extensive documentation. See Pantheon documentation topics for details.
Support summary
- DIT provides support for new site creation, hosting and billing processes, CAS Drupal module and site retirement.
- Pantheon provides support for their own tools and processes, including any site downtime or platform outages.
For all other questions, Site Owners must use their own resources, publicly available resources, or third-party vendor resources.
DIT response time
The expected response time for new site requests, billing inquiries, and other routine support requests is within 2 business days. We will respond to reports of large-scale unscheduled outages as soon as possible during normal business hours.
Roles and responsibilities
Definition of roles
- Site Owner: Refers to both the functional owner(s) and technical contact(s) for a UMD Drupal site.
- DIT Platform Engineering: Team in the UMD Division of IT that manages the UMD Pantheon organization, billing and the contract with Pantheon.
- Pantheon: External vendor that provides specialized hosting for Drupal sites.
- DIT NOC: Network Operations Team in the Division of IT that is the administrator of the UMD domain name service (DNS)
Summary of roles and responsibilities
This chart indicates whether a given role has any hands-on responsibilities for an aspect of Pantheon hosting.
|
Site owner |
DIT Platform Engineering |
Pantheon |
DIT NOC |
|
|
Initial site creation |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Site building |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
|
Initial site launch |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Domain name changes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Billing changes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Site retirement |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
|
Hosting technical support |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Drupal technical support |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Training |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
|
Authentication |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Applying core updates (Dev) |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Applying core updates (Test/Live) |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
|
Applying other code updates (Dev) |
No |
Yes |
No |
No |
|
Applying other code updates (Test/Live) |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
|
Backups |
Yes |
No |
No |
No |
|
Site outages/downtime |
Yes |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
Large-scale outages/downtime |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
|
PCI Compliance |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
No |
Plans, rates, and billing
Pantheon offers multiple levels of service. Higher levels of service provide faster performance, more features, and improved availability in case of scheduled maintenance or unscheduled outages. All plans include Pantheon Diamond support. For plan limits and pricing, see Drupal Hosting.
Site owners are billed monthly for hosting. Site utilization will be reviewed every 6 months in April and October and the associated plan adjusted if needed. Site owners and KFS budget owners will be notified for approval of these changes.
Site owners may terminate service at any time. Terminations and other billing changes will take effect in the next monthly billing cycle after the request is received. Requests made within 5 business days before the end of the billing cycle may require one more cycle to take effect.
Charges are not prorated.