ALMIS® Cloud Hosting Services in partnership with Microsoft Azure
Our hosting platform is designed to fully support ALMIS® International products and is fast, secure and easy to set up.
ALMIS® cloud-based solution delivers additional value for customers
Maximise Uptime and Security with Reliable Cloud Benefits
Our cloud solutions provide reliable, 24/7 uptime and robust security features, ensuring seamless performance and swift recovery. Explore the benefits that keep your systems optimised and protected.
Benefits of Cloud
- Machine availability 24/7 with an uptime of 99.9%.
- We provide this through Microsoft Azure, which also features dual-location redundancy. This means that if one data centre has a complete outage, it will switch to a second geographically separate location within minutes.
- For any Single Instance Virtual Machine using Premium SSD or Ultra Disk for all Operating System Disks and Data Disks, we guarantee you will have Virtual Machine Connectivity of at least 99.9%
- RTO less than 30 minutes, RPO less than 5 minutes.
- When it comes to resilience and recovery, we use Azure managed disks for all operating systems and data storage.
- Planned updates that minimise downtime during working hours.
- We schedule any updates to take place at weekends. Product patching for the Microsoft Server and all other deployed software (not including the ALMIS® suite) and associated reboots are scheduled for a Sunday between 04:00 and 10:00.
Critical security updates
- We give priority to high security updates for CVE or Zero Day exploits. Same day critical
- Deployments are always handled out of hours, typically after 20:00, and we let you know about these in advance by email
- Updates on versions and new software releases We do this automatically for you, unless you tell us otherwise, either at an arranged time or when no-one is using the system, whichever comes first. We will install, manage and service the software needed to operate your database and we can change versions automatically or when you ask us to
- Seamless transfer of your existing ALMIS® data
- We can help you bring over any data you need from your existing setup via an SSL encrypted connection so that your data remains secure. This service is priced separately as it depends on the complexity of the migration and how much time it takes
IT Support & Reporting
- If you have any issues with our hosted platform, our team can investigate these quickly and easily without the need for support files or additional downtime. However, user management is the responsibility of the client through the User Management functionality in our software products.
- Customised reporting on vulnerabilities.
- Our solution includes an automated monthly report provided by our Qualys deployment. The report gives complete visibility of recorded vulnerabilities and their recorded time to closure.
Key Features of ALMIS® Cloud security
Reliable, Secure, and Redundant Data Storage
Your data is safeguarded with secure, redundant storage and continuous recovery protocols. Discover our commitment to keeping your information protected and accessible.
Data Storage
- Data is stored at two separate data centres: UK West and UK South. ALMIS® Cloud also uses Geographically Redundant Storage (GRS) which stores an equivalent of six replicas of server data across two regions (three in each region) to provide additional durability of your data. Disks for each client are encrypted with keys specific to that client and that same encryption standard protects all six copies of your data. Backups of each drive are taken every night and retained on a 30-day cycle. There are options to increase retention periods on a client-by-client basis.
Server Recovery
- Our entire Azure platform has been implemented with Azure Monitoring and Recovery services. This protects every server with a failover system in place which constantly operates the core servers in the two different datacentres. With your data being replicated, we can bring replacement servers online and restore you to full operation within a target RTO of 30 minutes and an RPO of 5 minutes.
Service Continuity
- Failover testing is completed on a regular basis, with each client instance being tested at least once every month and the full platform failover is tested annually. These tests are separate from ALMIS® International’s internal Disaster Recovery testing schedule.
Data Deletion
- If a disk drive used for storage suffers a hardware failure, it is securely erased or destroyed before Microsoft returns it to the manufacturer for replacement or repair. The data on the drive is completely overwritten to ensure the data cannot be recovered by any means. When such devices are decommissioned, they are purged or destroyed according to NIST 800-88.
Secure File Transfer Protocol
- Secure file transfer options are available to help our clients transfer data from their core banking system into our hosting platform without the need for any user interaction.
