G-Cloud Service ID number: 6193 3708 6279 725 (Assured) 9423 0849 1604 869 (Elevated)
Traditional storage solutions are typically characterised by large capital expenditure, an intensive management and support burden, and forever swing between under-capacity and over-capacity. Cloud Storage benefits customers as there are no upfront costs and no minimum term commitments. Customers merely pay for what they actually use, when they actually use it.
Like many cloud storage solutions, such as Amazon S3 and Microsoft Azure, UKCloud’s Cloud Storage is a compelling alternative to traditional storage systems. It’s the ideal solution for common storage requirements such as:
The UKCloud assured cloud platform is designed and optimised to meet the unique information assurance needs of UK public sector organisations.
It gives these organisations the benefits of secure, purpose-built, on-demand resources that meet their information assurance requirements, on a true utility (pay for what you use) consumption model.
| Feature | Benefit |
| Allows you to pay for what you use scale resources indefinitely and on demand | Removes the complexity of capacity management |
| Natively enables application deduplication and redundancy | Ensures the highest level of data availability without the cost and management burden of on-premises storage solutions |
| Enables access to storage via HTTP(S) | Allows access to storage from any device. Simplifies the integration of object storage systems into cloud-based solutions. Removes reliance on the availability of web, file or FTP servers |
| Offloads objects (files, media, images) from compute resources | Reduces the load on server resources |
| Automatically replicates and distributes objects to give high levels of data durability and availability | Eliminates the need for cloud backup and recovery |
Organisations can choose from a range of service levels;
UKCloud’s Cloud Storage provides the following technical features:
There are three service options to choose from:
| STANDARD | ENHANCED | ENHANCED PLUS* | |
| Service level agreement | 99.95% | 99.99% | 99.99% |
| Protection level | Local protection (single site) | Local and remote protection (dual site) | Local and remote protection (dual site) with increased erasure coding fragments |
| Scalability | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Retention | Configurable | Configurable | Configurable |
| Protective monitoring | Included | Included | Included |
*ENHANCED PLUS is subject to availability
Additional Service Option:
Global Load Balancing
Cloud Storage from UKCloud is a secure next-generation storage platform designed to address a wide variety of use cases. It’s based on object storage technology which is natively optimised for cloud storage in terms of scale, resilience and accessibility.
Data will be stored in one or both of our highly resilient tier 3, UK-sovereign data centres, which are separated by over 100km.
Our Cloud Storage solution can scale to meet the most demanding storage requirements.
Cloud object storage technology works in a slightly different way to traditional local storage solutions that tend to use RAID as a method to provide data durability.
Instead, Cloud Storage provides data resilience using EMC GeoParity coding. The higher the service level, the higher the data durability.
The service is API (application programming interface) accessible, so is an ideal target for customer applications. It can also be used by existing systems.
In addition, the platform can be accessed using a variety of software tools such as cloud storage gateways, file browsers and other software products.
Documentation on ways to interact with the platform is available from the Knowledge Centre on the UKCloud Portal.
Cloud Storage in our Assured OFFICAL domain uses the same environment for both PSN Assured and internet connections. Although it isn’t possible to bridge between these connections, any objects placed in Cloud Storage via PSN Assured will also be accessible via the internet using the appropriate customer credentials.
Our Cloud Storage supports the native Atmos RESTful API and provides an Amazon S3-compatible API.
Documentation and user manuals for supported API calls are available from the Knowledge Centre on the UKCloud Portal.
The frequency of data backup is defined and managed by your organisation administrator.
We provide tools for monitoring used capacity and storage growth via the UKCloud Portal.
UKCloud doesn’t provide software tools for accessing the platform, but can point you in the direction of paid-for and free third-party applications.
UKCloud’s secure online Portal provides the most common service management functionality. Alternatively, you can contact support by phone or email.
Cloud Storage on the Assured OFFICIAL domain can be managed over the internet (or other connectivity) via the UKCloud Portal.
For the Elevated OFFICIAL domain, security requirements are stricter and require either a PSN-approved connection, UKCloud Secure Remote Access or CAPS-approved encryption.
As far as possible, planned maintenance of UKCloud’s infrastructure takes place between the hours of 00:00 and 06:00 (UK local time) Monday to Sunday, or between the hours of 08:00 and 12:00 (UK local time) on a Saturday or Sunday. We provide customers with at least 14 days’ advance notice of planned maintenance.
As far as possible, emergency maintenance of UKCloud’s infrastructure takes place between the hours of 00:00 and 06:00 (UK local time) Monday to Sunday, or between the hours of 08:00 and 12:00 (UK local time) on Saturday or Sunday, unless there is an identified and demonstrable immediate risk to a customer’s environment. Whenever possible, we provide customers with at least six hours’ advance notice of emergency maintenance.
Atmos fully supports standard REST API commands (Post, Put, Get, Delete, and Head).
Atmos REST supports use of HTML forms to create and update objects as outlined on page 30 of the EMC Atmos programmer’s guide (available on the
UKCloud Portal), under the heading ‘Using HTML forms to create and update content’.
Protection is asynchronous — a single copy is created, and subsequent copies of the data are created when bandwidth allows.
During busy periods, this protection can take longer to complete.
Within five days of accepting your order, we’ll create your primary administrator account and send you a welcome pack, which includes the URL for the UKCloud Portal and associated authentication details.
Once you’ve signed up to the service, you’ll be issued with unique credentials (User ID, Subtenant ID, resolvable hostname and shared secret), which you simply enter into an EMC Cloud Tiering Appliance or other compatible automated solution.
Storage is billed on a per-GB per-month basis, and is based on utilisation of the storage platform across the month.
Used storage is calculated on a daily basis. The data for a month is collected, and the average consumption calculated and rounded up to the next whole number to provide the number of GB consumed in a month.
Billing information is available via the UKCloud Portal.
Billing for the service is monthly in arrears.
Payment can be made by direct bank transfer (BACS/CHAPS).
There are no termination fees for the service. You’re responsible for extracting your own data from the platform if required.
UKCloud may make an additional charge for transferring data out of the service
Yes, we offer a 30-day free trial so that you can test and evaluate our service without commitment. Your trial provides you with a live environment on the UKCloud platform to test our services and verify whether they are suited to your needs.
The service is hosted in the UK and operated by security-cleared staff. It has extensive independent validation (including CESG design reviews) that it is fully aligned with the 14 CESG Cloud Security Principles, and is therefore ideal for all data classified at OFFICIAL (including OFFICIAL SENSITIVE).
UKCloud’s Cross Domain Security Zone allows customers to use the UKCloud-defined and managed UKCloud Guard or a customer-designed and managed Walled Garden to enable communication between platforms.
For more information, see the Cross Domain Security Zone Service Definition.
Protective monitoring is included for our IaaS platform and follows GPG 13.