Phases

6 min read

When preparing, setting up and running a customer managed tenant, Unique identifies three main phases. Learn below about each phase's details.

Overview

Standard model

Unique has a standard model to run Customer Managed Tenants including the following principles:

• Unique regularly releases new bundles (see Upgrade and Release Process).
• Unique has no access to the customers environment and thus cannot directly see the running resources and workloads.
• The customer/client sets up and runs the product themselves potentially with advisory/consulting.
• The customer educates and maintains a 1st Level Application Support which can contact or escalate incidents to Unique Enterprise Support.
• Uniques 2nd or 3rd level support might request logs, telemetry, further insights or screen-sharing sessions to investigate the issues.

This model has crystallised out with multiple FSI clients and is thus the most compliant and recommended way. Clients may opt for Variants as described below.

Variant(s)

If the standard, recommended scheme above is not chosen, there exist many variants that can only be determined when spending multiple iterations with the client determining the responsibilities.

The phases below are valid in regard to the Standard Model.

PREPARE

• The client prepares their environment themselves for the arrival of Unique.
• Unique advises the client based on a daily rate.
• A pre-installation checklist is available.
• Deviations from the checklist must be worked out by the client, Unique can support based on a daily rate.

Client Activities

• Prepares Azure tenant according to the Pre-Installation Checklist.
• Might already provision all Azure Entra and ARM resources required to accommodate Unique either with the provided bundle or by other means.

Unique Activities

• Initially provides a Upgrade and Release Process bundle which contains terraform code that can provision all needed resources to accommodate Unique.
• Advise the client where desired or needed (on a daily rate) including the following:
  • Advisory for the prerequisites.
  • Advisory on the deployment of the Unique landing zone content.

SET UP

• Unique delivers the weekly bundle as defined in Upgrade and Release Process.
• The client ensures that educated staff is present according to the pre-installation checklist.
• The client installs all necessary parts of the bundle.
• The client appoints a 1st first level application support (team).

Client Activities

• Client installs bundle.
  • Azure Resources (overlaps fluently with Prepares last step, some resources might have been provisioned to PoC the setup).
  • Supporting Services and their configuration (helm charts and helmfiles).
  • Unique product and its configuration.

Unique Activities

• Naturally provides a newer Upgrade and Release Process bundle as some time might have passed since the PREPARE.
• Advisory on the deployment of Unique Product and support services.
• Consulting for the just installed supporting services.
• Consulting for SSO configurations.
• Consulting for the Unique Product and its first setup (including assistants or other features).

RUN

• Unique provides regular updates as defined in Upgrade and Release Process.
• The client installs the updates.
• The clients 1st Level Support handles incidents first internally and if it escalates.
• Unique provides 2nd and 3rd Level Application Support.

Client Activities

• Installs provided bundle regularly.
  • Unique can and will not force the client to update in a Unique-dictated rhythm.
  • But Unique only fixes application bugs in the latest releases version.
• Triages incidents internally with 1st Level Support that was built up in SET UP.
• Provides all necessary insights to Unique as far as applicable to investigate issues.

Unique Activities

• Provides new bundles as defined in Upgrade and Release Process.
• Triages and investigates support tickets handed in by client.
• Provides fixes for bugs.
• Advises on configuration mistakes of resources or workloads at a rate.