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University of NSW Communication Services OutofHours Support

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Title: University of NSW Communication Services OutofHours Support


1
University of NSWCommunication
ServicesOut-of-Hours Support
2
Description of IT at UNSW
  • Like many other large organizations, UNSW has
    oscillated between a centralised and distributed
    support model.
  • At the moment we have a hybrid model with support
    for centralized services and infrastructure as
    well as local faculty support (that report to the
    CIO) for school- or faculty-level desktops and
    applications etc.

3
Servicedesk
  • One number / single point of contact for IT
    support
  • Normal Phone and Email Support hours are 8AM to
    8PM weekdays.
  • There is a skeleton crew of (student) casuals
    after hours. Users are directed to the
    Servicedesk managers mobile if no staff are
    available.

4
Communications Services
  • Our group looks after all aspects of the voice
    and data network infrastructure
  • Given that the voice and data networks are
    critical infrastructure, our team is required to
    also provide limited out-of-hours support

5
Out of Hours SupportThe Old Way
  • In the past, this was done in a fairly ad-hoc
    manner the Servicedesk would call the Comms
    manager who would then try and contact the
    relevant support staff via SMS or mobile phone..
    i.e. there were no proper on-call arrangements.
  • There were a few problems with this earlier
    approach
  • The Comms manager was a single point of failure
    what if he/she was out of contact?
  • There was no guarantee that support staff would
    be available
  • The burden of responsibility was not shared
    fairly one or two people ended up doing it all.

6
Current Out of Hours Support
  • Given the increasing reliance on central
    infrastructure, it was decided that we should
    come up with a better out-of-hours support model.
    This was done in consultation with the
    groups/teams who provide that support.
  • In the new support model, most senior staff in
    the group are on-call on a weekly basis.
    Non-technical staff (including the manager) share
    the role of resolution manager.

7
Current Out of Hours Support
  • The role of the resolution manager is similar to
    that which AARNet uses in that they are
    responsible for contacting the relevant on-call
    technical resource, make sure that the incident
    is dealt with properly and to filter calls (we
    only provide on-call support for unscheduled
    severity 1 incidents).
  • As far as the roster goes, each week there is one
    resolution manager (out of a pool of 3), one
    network resource (pool of 4) and one voice
    resource (pool of 2) on-call.

8
Current Out of Hours Support
  • The Servicedesk is given a roster of who to call
    on what week. Note that they only call the
    resolution manager but there are details on who
    to call if the primary person cant be contacted.
  • Since we are only on-call for severity 1
    incidents, junior staff arent used in the
    on-call system as they do not yet have the skills
    to fix major problems in any part of the network.
  • On-call support is voluntary but since we had
    input on how we provide out-of-hours support and
    because we have very few severity 1 incidents
    out-of-hours, nobody has opted out.

9
On-Call Allowances / Overtime
  • Staff that are on-call are paid an allowance of
    30 of their base salary for the week they are
    on-call. This is not part of the Enterprise
    Agreement its an informal agreement between
    the staff, management and HR.
  • Anyone who gets called when they are on-call get
    a minimum of 4 hours overtime paid per the
    Enterprise Agreement.
  • Note that if a project requires a network
    resource to be on-call during scheduled changes
    then this is separate to the normal on-call
    arrangements and is paid as overtime.

10
Miscellaneous
  • All on-call staff are provided with the resources
    they need to provide support from whenever they
    are including a home broadband connection and
    3G/HSDPA modem for their laptop.
  • There is a budget for on-call/overtime
    arrangements but given that the network is highly
    redundant and it is very rare for us to get
    called out of hours (less than once per month),
    we never spend it all.
  • We also have an SMS alert service for critical
    infrastructure.
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