Catalyst Cloud provides software defined infrastructure, platform services, and software services for you to host applications and to store or process data. The services cover a wide variety of aspects of how IT systems and data are stored and processed.
An important aspect of running applications or storing data using Catalyst Cloud’s services is the delineation between the responsibilities that Catalyst Cloud has and the responsibilities you have, with respect to those running applications or data stored.
The model Catalyst Cloud uses is sometimes called the “Shared Responsibility Model”, as there are responsibilities on both you and Catalyst Cloud.
Catalyst Cloud is responsible for operating and securing:
Our data centres
Network functionality of the cloud
Hardware
Hypervisors
Cloud software
Storage resources
Operating systems exclusively relating to:
Our Hypervisors
Our Control plane
Our Management systems
The Operating systems for specific managed services (for example, the Managed Database Service or the Managed Kuberentes Service)
Ensuring isolation of private resources between tenancies, where these have been configured as private
Customers are responsible for configuring, operating and securing:
Network configuration (such as security groups / firewall rules that control access to the applications and systems they host on Catalyst cloud)
Operating systems relating to the images run on your compute resources
This includes any applications running or data stored on your instances.
Data stored on any services on the cloud (block storage, object storage, databases etc.)
Authentication to your applications, resources and systems.
This includes managing and maintaining which users have access to your project(s).
The Containers you run on the cloud
Application software and configuration
Any sharing of resources with the Internet or other tenants
Catalyst Cloud provides services with the expectation that you are responsible for the design of your systems and data store to meet your expectations of availability and durability. Catalyst Cloud’s services have a number of features which can assist with making systems highly available, or protected against loss from some kinds of failures, but the responsibility for making an application available or data durable is ultimately yours.
Although Catalyst Cloud provides in the Service Terms a definition of what we agree with you to be acceptable availability or durability, no service is provided with 100% assurance of availability or durability. For that reason, it is critical to ensure that your design takes into account that failures will happen, and design for the consequence of failures, to a level of risk that you have decided is acceptable.
For example, you may store data in object storage in one of two ways: with a single-region copy, or with multiple-region copies. If you choose to store data in a single-region copy, it could be at more risk of loss than if stored in multiple regions. However, it is possible that data could be lost even in multiple-region configurations, although this is unlikely. Therefore, some data you may wish to protect by having additional backups in another platform or location.
Under the Shared Responsibility Model, our obligations are to implement the services such that you should be able to reasonably rely on the stated service levels. But the assessment of risks for your systems and data can only be made by you with an understanding of your risk profile and business continuity needs.
The full detail of both our and your obligations are in the Terms and Conditions, found here: https://catalystcloud.nz/about/terms-and-conditions/
Now that you are aware of how the shared responsibility model works on the Catalyst Cloud there are some terms and general knowledge you should be aware of before we start with an example of how to create your first instance.