Description

This article describes all the steps required to operate with Managed Cloud from contract signature to administering a working Sitecore XP environment in the cloud.

The key milestones include:

1. Signing the contract.
2. Digital contract activation.
3. Provisioning the environment.
4. Accessing the environment.

The following sections describe specific details of each of these steps.

Signing The Contract

The journey begins with an agreement and Managed Cloud contract specific to customer's needs. To start this process, contact your regional Sitecore office.

A typical Managed Cloud contract requires the following information:

• Customer Technical Contact representing the customer – a person responsible for technical implementation of the Sitecore Experience Platform solution on Managed Cloud. This person can be part of the customer's technical team or an Implementation Partner. From day one, this customer will be entitled to Support Portal features related to Managed Cloud and also referred as a primary channel for technical notification on the service level. The contact can be changed later for another contact by your regional Sitecore representative.
• Service Level and the Total Azure Spend Commitment (per month)
• Hosting Services that include the number of slots (environments). Each slot references Type (Production/Non-production), Tier (XP/XM), Size (Small, Medium, Large...) and additional attributes (for example, Disaster Recovery option)

Digital Contract Activation

After the Managed Cloud Contract has been signed on paper, it undergoes the digital activation process on the Sitecore side. During the process, the Sitecore operations team register the order in the respective databases to guarantee consistency. Typically, this process takes a couple of business days.

At the end of the activation process, the following happens:

• Access to the Sitecore Support Portal (https://support.sitecore.com) is granted for the Customer Technical Contact. More information about Sitecore Support services can be found here.
• A welcome letter is sent to the customer contacts identified in the contract including Customer Technical Contact with the Sitecore sales representative copied as well. This letter highlights detailed information about Support access and the next steps required from the customer to finalize the Managed Cloud environment provision.

Provisioning The Environment

After receiving the welcome letter, the Customer Technical Contact must provide important technical details to Sitecore, so Sitecore can proceed with the cloud resources provisioning.

This data can be provided directly within the appropriate item of Sitecore Managed Cloud service catalog called "Create New Set". Once submitted, Sitecore Operations team will execute the provisioning as soon as possible.

Additional documentation on the required input data can be found at doc.sitecore.com.

Accessing The Environment

After Sitecore Managed Cloud environment has been provisioned, all the technical details about it are provided to the customer within the respective service catalog item.

This includes but is not limited to:

• Credentials and instructions about how to log in to the Azure Portal (https://portal.azure.com) and access cloud resources.
• Endpoints to Sitecore instances, and credentials to Sitecore XP Admin UI.
• Instructions to enable the site-to-site VPN (Virtual Private Network) from Customers firewall to your Sitecore environment. (PaaS 2.0)
• Information and credentials for logging into the provided jump box server to gain access to your PaaS 2.0 environment.
• Additional credentials and connection strings to access all infrastructure entities.

Having all this data allows the customer's technical team or Implementation Partner to begin working on the actual Sitecore XP solution implementation.

For more information and references about ongoing tasks and the overall design of the Sitecore XP solution in Managed Cloud, refer to the following documentation section: Managed Cloud.