4D Cloud
4D Cloud provides a shared infrastructure environment hosted within two UK data centres for the provision of compute, storage and networking resources. Full support for Linux and Windows VMs with 24/7 UK based technical support
Features
- Instant VM provisioning
- Large library of VM templates
- Real-time reporting
- Fully self managed online service portal
- Full API access
- Access to a global CDN for deployed resources
- Custom VM configurations
Benefits
- Quickly provision server, network and storage resources
- Manage resources to meet user demand
- Access support and portal systems 24x7
- Control access to resources on a granular user basis
Pricing
£33 a virtual machine a month
- Education pricing available
- Free trial available
Service documents
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Framework
G-Cloud 10
Service ID
4 1 0 7 5 4 2 0 3 5 5 7 5 0 0
Contact
4D
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Telephone: <removed>
Email: <removed>@2407640a-8496-4172-9a5a-107d514365ea.com
Service scope
- Service constraints
- Planned maintenance for the public cloud platform will be communicated to clients at least 7 days in advance and all efforts will be made to ensure disruption is kept to a minimum.
- System requirements
- Microsoft licences are provided under suppliers SPLA agreement
User support
- Email or online ticketing support
- Email or online ticketing
- Support response times
- We have a target for 15 minute initial ticket response, our average initial response time at present is 7 minutes
- User can manage status and priority of support tickets
- Yes
- Online ticketing support accessibility
- None or don’t know
- Phone support
- Yes
- Phone support availability
- 24 hours, 7 days a week
- Web chat support
- No
- Onsite support
- No
- Support levels
-
We provide full support for the cloud platform and infrastructure included within the service. Additional monitoring and management of guest virtual machines can also be provided by our cloud engineering team.
Additional support time can be provided adhoc at £120 per hour (billed in 15 minute increments), or can be block booked on a monthly basis (i.e 2 hours per month across all VMs) at a discounted hourly rate.
We provided a technical account manager for clients in addition to their regular commercial account manager. - Support available to third parties
- Yes
Onboarding and offboarding
- Getting started
-
We provide an initial conference call and WebEx with clients to provide portal training and understand any questions the client has.
There is also online documentation available and our support desk is available 24/7 to provide further assistance during deployment. - Service documentation
- Yes
- Documentation formats
-
- HTML
- End-of-contract data extraction
-
Users can request an export of their VMs and storage in order to extract data on the platform.
Exports can be done from the last complete snapshot or by shutting the VM down for a clean export of live data. Exports are typically provided in RAW format but can also be supplied in OVF/OVA formats. - End-of-contract process
-
Included with the price is a decommission of the virtual machines and cloud environment including secure data deletion.
If exports of VMs are required then these can be provided at an additional cost. Exact costs will depend on the number of VMs and total storage.
Using the service
- Web browser interface
- Yes
- Using the web interface
-
Users can use the online web portal to provision new resources instantly (VMs, storage and networking) as well as manage deployed resources through changing VM configurations and resource allocation on the fly, performing instant backups, configuring CDNs and managing firewall rules.
The web portal also provides access to all real-time and historical logging for the environment along with an audit trail of user actions. - Web interface accessibility standard
- None or don’t know
- How the web interface is accessible
- The web portal is responsive and allows for resizing of text / images without loss of definition. All embedded images also have correct alt-text tags for screen readers.
- Web interface accessibility testing
- We have not done any testing on the web interface.
- API
- Yes
- What users can and can't do using the API
-
Users can fully manage the service through the API interface. API keys are generated through the online portal and IP authorisation is controlled by the whitelist of IP addresses for the user the key is generated under.
All functions of the platform that are available to the user through the web portal are exposed through the API.
The API is RESTful. - API automation tools
-
- Chef
- Puppet
- API documentation
- Yes
- API documentation formats
-
- HTML
- Command line interface
- No
Scaling
- Scaling available
- Yes
- Scaling type
-
- Automatic
- Manual
- Independence of resources
-
We allow users to reserve minimum resources for their environments on the platform ensuring a set amount of resources are always available to guarantee performance.
On demand resources are available to users above these minimum thresholds and depending on overall platform load. - Usage notifications
- Yes
- Usage reporting
-
- API
Analytics
- Infrastructure or application metrics
- Yes
- Metrics types
-
- CPU
- Disk
- Memory
- Network
- Number of active instances
- Reporting types
-
- API access
- Real-time dashboards
- Reports on request
Resellers
- Supplier type
- Not a reseller
Staff security
- Staff security clearance
- Other security clearance
- Government security clearance
- None
Asset protection
- Knowledge of data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Data storage and processing locations
- United Kingdom
- User control over data storage and processing locations
- Yes
- Datacentre security standards
- Supplier-defined controls
- Penetration testing frequency
- At least once a year
- Penetration testing approach
- ‘IT Health Check’ performed by a Tigerscheme qualified provider or a CREST-approved service provider
- Protecting data at rest
-
- Physical access control, complying with SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Physical access control, complying with another standard
- Scale, obfuscating techniques, or data storage sharding
- Data sanitisation process
- Yes
- Data sanitisation type
-
- Explicit overwriting of storage before reallocation
- Hardware containing data is completely destroyed
- Equipment disposal approach
- Complying with a recognised standard, for example CSA CCM v.30, CAS (Sanitisation) or ISO/IEC 27001
Backup and recovery
- Backup and recovery
- Yes
- What’s backed up
-
- Virtual machines
- Virtual disks
- Backup controls
-
Users can schedule full disk snapshots through the online portal for their virtual machines.
Snapshots can be scheduled individually for each virtual disk allowing, for example, a weekly snapshot for an OS disk and a daily snapshot for a data disk. - Datacentre setup
- Multiple datacentres
- Scheduling backups
- Users schedule backups through a web interface
- Backup recovery
- Users can recover backups themselves, for example through a web interface
Data-in-transit protection
- Data protection between buyer and supplier networks
-
- Private network or public sector network
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
- Data protection within supplier network
-
- TLS (version 1.2 or above)
- IPsec or TLS VPN gateway
Availability and resilience
- Guaranteed availability
-
We provide an SLA for 99.95% web interface uptime and 99.95% hypervisor host uptime. All VMs will hot-migrate in the event of a physical host failure.
In the event of an SLA breach users can claim credits against their invoice charges by contacting their account manager. - Approach to resilience
-
All equipment is dual PSU with bonded network connections. We operate a KVM cluster with hot-migration of VMs between physical hypervisor hosts. All storage is provisioned on dual controller RAID-10 SANs with hot-standby disks and the ability to hot swap drives.
We operate the platform across our two UK data centres and are able to support the migration of VMs between platforms if required.
All data centre power is UPS and generator backed (tested monthly with full building load) and all networking is provided over physically diverse fibre that is lit and managed by 4D.
Full information and design documentation is available on request. - Outage reporting
- We provide outage notifications through our ticketing system which will issue an email to affected users along with an online status page to which regular updates are posted by the engineering team.
Identity and authentication
- User authentication
-
- Limited access network (for example PSN)
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
- Access restrictions in management interfaces and support channels
- Management interfaces are controlled by both access lists preventing communication from unauthorised users/networks as well as username / passwords.
- Access restriction testing frequency
- At least once a year
- Management access authentication
-
- Dedicated link (for example VPN)
- Username or password
- Devices users manage the service through
- Directly from any device which may also be used for normal business (for example web browsing or viewing external email)
Audit information for users
- Access to user activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long user audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- Access to supplier activity audit information
- Users have access to real-time audit information
- How long supplier audit data is stored for
- At least 12 months
- How long system logs are stored for
- At least 12 months
Standards and certifications
- ISO/IEC 27001 certification
- Yes
- Who accredited the ISO/IEC 27001
- NQA
- ISO/IEC 27001 accreditation date
- 20/05/2017
- What the ISO/IEC 27001 doesn’t cover
- Nothing. We have the whole scope of business operations included within the ISO certification.
- ISO 28000:2007 certification
- No
- CSA STAR certification
- No
- PCI certification
- No
- Other security certifications
- No
Security governance
- Named board-level person responsible for service security
- Yes
- Security governance certified
- Yes
- Security governance standards
-
- ISO/IEC 27001
- Other
- Other security governance standards
- PSN CoC
- Information security policies and processes
-
We operate a full ISMS with security incident reporting.
All incident reports are reviewed through a security forum on a regular basis.
Operational security
- Configuration and change management standard
- Supplier-defined controls
- Configuration and change management approach
-
All changes are split into pre-approved changes or major changes.
All changes (PAC and major) require the completion of a change request which looks at the technical, commercial and security impacts of a change. Changes are reviewed by the change board before being approved or denied. - Vulnerability management type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Vulnerability management approach
-
We operate a centralised patch and security management system to identify new patches which need rolling out.
We also have annual penetration and vulnerability assessments (both external and internal) on our systems. - Protective monitoring type
- Supplier-defined controls
- Protective monitoring approach
-
We identify potential compromises through proactive penetration and vulnerability scanning, proactive monitoring of systems behaviour as well as our internal incident reporting process.
In the event a potential compromise is discovered we will review the incident internally and aim to have an initial response within 24 hours. - Incident management type
- Conforms to a recognised standard, for example, CSA CCM v3.0 or ISO/IEC 27035:2011 or SSAE-16 / ISAE 3402
- Incident management approach
-
We have processes in place for predefined incidents.
Users are able to report incidents, or suspected incidents, through the online incident reporting portal and these are fed back into into our incident review teams as well as the security forum.
Reports are provided externally on an as needed basis or when an incident needs to be reported to a regulatory body.
Secure development
- Approach to secure software development best practice
- Conforms to a recognised standard, but self-assessed
Separation between users
- Virtualisation technology used to keep applications and users sharing the same infrastructure apart
- Yes
- Who implements virtualisation
- Supplier
- Virtualisation technologies used
- KVM hypervisor
- How shared infrastructure is kept separate
-
Each virtual machine is provisioned within KVM with complete memory and CPU isolation.
All virtual disks are directly connected to the VM and all networking is segmented into vLANs for each client.
We also operate a customer isolation module which prevents IP spoofing between clients.
Energy efficiency
- Energy-efficient datacentres
- Yes
Pricing
- Price
- £33 a virtual machine a month
- Discount for educational organisations
- Yes
- Free trial available
- Yes
- Description of free trial
- We provide a 30 day trial period at the start of a contract which includes full access to all features and resources.
Service documents
Request an accessible format
If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need versions of these documents in a more accessible format,
email the supplier at <removed>@2407640a-8496-4172-9a5a-107d514365ea.com.
Tell them what format you need. It will help if you say what assistive technology you use.