Private cloud support

How to get support

We provide support for the platform and its shared tools. We do not provide direct support for application issues. Application issues include any issues related to the product team responsibilities listed in the B.C. Government Private Cloud PaaS shared responsibilities model.

However, if you’re experiencing an issue with your application, there are still many ways to get support.

Get support for an application issue

If your application is offline, check the platform status page to see if the platform is experiencing a service outage. If the status page shows that the platform is experiencing an outage, review the get operational support for a platform issue section.

If the platform is online and you believe the issue has occurred in your application, you can:

• Review the platform’s technical documentation
• Search for answers or ask a new question on B.C. government Stack Overflow
• Ask a question in Rocket.Chat or search through past questions
• Browse the platform training and resources

If you’re still not able to resolve your issue, we’re available during regular business hours for application support on a best-effort basis. To get support, contact us in Rocket.Chat using the #devops-operations channel. We don’t provide application support outside of regular business hours.

Get operational support for a platform issue

Our Platform Operations team provides 24/7 operational support for critical incidents. A critical incident is an event that affects:

• Platform production clusters, including Silver Kamloops, Gold Kamloops and Gold Calgary
• Business mission critical platform services, including Artifactory, Vault and ArgoCD

If you think an incident has occurred that’s preventing the platform or a business mission critical service from working properly, you can report it to the Platform Operations team. 

If you’re new and need advice or guidance

If you need help or advice on how to get started on the platform, you can: 

• Post your questions on the Rocket.Chat #devops-how-to channel. Platform community members will do their best to answer your questions about using the platform, leveraging platform tools and resources, setting up your accounts and more
• View our training resources. We provide OpenShift training for onboarding teams and have also collected a list of external resources we think you’ll find useful
• Visit our onboarding page for new product teams. Our onboarding process helps ensure that teams are prepared to start working on the platform

If you need additional help getting started, you can request a meeting with our product director to PlatformServicesTeam@gov.bc.ca. We can answer any questions you have about the platform and help you find the resources you need to start building your application. 

Contact us

Following the steps outlined on this page is the quickest and most effective way to get support on the platform. However, if you’re unable to find the answers you need in the training, technical documentation or Rocket.Chat, you can contact our team by emailing us PlatformServicesTeam@gov.bc.ca for support. 

Only critical incidents will be addressed outside of business hours. General questions, non-critical incidents and application issues are addressed as soon as possible during regular business hours. 

Report an incident

Learn how to report an incident and understand our response times.

Platform incidents

If you think an issue occurred on OpenShift or any of its mission critical services, you can:

• Check Rocket.Chat. The Platform Operations team posts outage announcements in the #devops-alerts channel. If you see that they have posted an announcement, it means the Platform Operations team has identified the problem and is working to fix the issue
• Check the platform status page. The dashboard provides real-time updates on platform and tool uptime. If the dashboard indicates that the platform or a tool is offline, the Platform Operations team has already been notified and is working to fix the issue
• Report the issue. If the dashboard doesn’t show the issue and there is no announcement from the Platform Operations team in #devops-alerts, report the issue in the #devops-sos channel in Rocket.Chat

Application incidents

If you think an issue has occurred in your application, Rocket.Chat is your primary source for support. Reach out to the platform community in the appropriate Rocket.Chat channel.  

Learn how to join the B.C. government Rocket.Chat.

Report an incident outside regular business hours

If it’s a critical platform issue and the issue has occurred outside of business hours, call the B.C. government Service Desk at 250-387-7000, select Option 3 and ask to page the OpenShift Platform Operations team.

After hours support is also available for Keycloak Single-Sign-On (SSO). To report an incident or get support for Keycloak services, contact the SSO team by emailing them at bcgov.sso@gov.bc.ca and post a message in the #sso channel in Rocket.Chat. 

Responding to incidents outside regular business hours

Outside of regular business hours, it takes about 30 minutes for the Platform Operations team to respond to critical platform incidents. If the incident isn’t resolved within the first 30 minutes, the Platform Operations team escalates the issue as appropriate until the issue is resolved.

Only critical incidents are addressed outside of business hours. Non-critical incidents and application issues are addressed as soon as possible during regular business hours. 

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Common platform requests

Discover the most commonly searched-for tasks, with links to additional instructions.

Grant access to an existing private repository in the bcgov-c GitHub organization

If you’re an administrator for your private repositories, you can add users to your repositories by managing user access on GitHub.

There’s a fee for each user that has access to a private repository in the bcgov-c organization, so only grant access to users that need it. The fee for all users is currently covered by the OCIO.

There are a limited number of spots available in the bcgov-c organization. If there are no spots remaining, you’ll receive an error message when you try to add a new user. If this occurs, send a request to PlatformServicesTeam@gov.bc.ca for an additional spot to the Platform Services Team. Once we confirm your request has been completed, you can add the new user to your repository.

The Platform Services team removes bcgov-c organization access for users that have not been active for 6 months. Once access has been removed, users must be re-invited to the organization and re-added to a repository to gain access.

Request a new private repository in the bcgov-c GitHub organization

Only the Platform Services team can create new private repositories in the bcgov-c GitHub organization.

Submit a request to create a private repository.

Request Keycloak Single-Sign-On (SSO) integration with your application

Get access to the Keycloak SSO login service that connects your users to your applications using government credentials, including IDIR.

Submit a request for Keycloak single-sign-on integration with your application.

Request a new project on OpenShift or make changes to an existing project

Request a new project on the B.C. Government Private Cloud PaaS, make changes to an existing project in OpenShift, request a resource quota increase for your app or update information for an existing project.

Submit a request a new project or make changes to an existing project on OpenShift through the Platform Product Registry.

Request to remove OpenShift or B.C. Government GitHub organization membership

Remove a team member’s access to OpenShift or a B.C. Government GitHub repository.

Submit a request to remove GitHub or OpenShift membership.

Community-based support

We follow a community-based support model, and that extends to the open-source community. When your developers have time, we encourage them to engage with other product teams and applications, to share knowledge, skills and expertise.

For example, they can:

• Help patch issues that have been identified in another team’s application
• Review code or components that have been suggested by other platform users
• Make suggestions on how a tool or feature could be improved
• Share their knowledge and expertise by answering questions from other developers
• Present the work they’ve been doing on the platform at a platform community meetup

Stack Overflow

You can ask and answer questions on Stack Overflow and support your colleagues in the B.C. Government developer community. If you want to have a record of your answer for you and others to reference in the future, this is the right option for you.

The Government of B.C. Stack Overflow group is a private space just for B.C. Public Service developers and other technical roles. It’s a community-based group for developers, supported by developers within the government, working on projects across the B.C. Public Service.

You can join the Government of B.C. Stack Overflow group with your IDIR or GitHub account. Simply go to the B.C. Government Stack Overflow login page and choose which credentials you want to login with. Join with only one of these accounts, as the Developer Experience team pays for licenses for each user account.

Join the Government of B.C. Stack Overflow group.

Rocket.Chat

It’s important to incorporate the right information in your questions to help you get a quick and effective answer from the platform community on Rocket.Chat, including:

Where has the issue occurred

If the problem is with a cluster

In what cluster and namespace are you experiencing the problem? Provide the namespace name, so the community knows exactly where to find the problem.

If the problem is with a tool

What tool are you trying to use? Let the community know which platform tool is causing the problem.

If the problem is with a stack

Tell us about your stack. What languages and libraries are you using? Which versions of these?

Additional information

Also explain what device you were using when you experienced the problem. Were you using a Windows machine, a Mac, an iPhone, an Android or something else? If you were using a web application, what browser were you using? Provide as much detail as possible, including version numbers.

What are you trying to do

What were you trying to do when the problem occurred? Explain what task you were trying to accomplish, how you were doing it and why it was important. The more detail you can provide, the better.

What is the problem

Now that the community knows what was supposed to happen, tell them what went wrong. Include descriptions of how the problem occurred, what the problem looks like and how it’s behaving. For example, if a screen is failing to load properly, explain how it looks and why it’s not correct. Provide as much detail as possible. If you received an error message, include a screenshot of the message with your question. 

What have you done to try and fix the problem

The results of your initial troubleshooting efforts can be very useful to the community when they’re trying to determine the cause of your issue. Make sure you include any steps you’ve already taken to resolve the issue and include as much detail as possible. If you’ve been following instructions on a Stack Overflow thread, provide a link to the thread. If you’ve been reading documentation about the problem, provide a link to the documentation. 

What kind of help do you want

What are you asking the community for? Do you want a solution to the problem? A link to documentation you can use? An alternative way to complete a task? Let the community know what kind of support you’re looking for.

Post your question to a channel

If you aren’t sure what channel you should use to ask a question or share information, you can review the channel descriptions to find out what each channel is for. Choose the best channel for your message. If none of the channels seem suitable, you can use the #general channel to post your message.

Typical response times in Rocket.Chat are:

• 4 hours if a question is submitted during business hours
• 24 hours if a question is submitted after business hours

If your question doesn’t get answered within a reasonable time, re-post it and tag your message using “@all” to get people’s attention. 

Our most frequently used channels are:

#devops-sos

We monitor the #devops-sos channel during regular business hours.

Only use the #devops-sos channel for urgent or time-sensitive questions. For example, if you have:

• A production problem with your application
• An issue with an OpenShift-hosted tool that is impacting the operations of the production instance of your application

The #devops-sos channel is for reporting issues related to the platform. Traditional B.C. government support channels (7-7000, IMB help desks, etc.) should be used for shared infrastructure such as reverse proxies, SiteMinder and firewall rules.

#devops-how-to

Use the #devops-how-to channel to ask non-urgent questions about the B.C. Government Private Cloud PaaS or OpenShift platform. For example, you can:

• Ask for help solving a problem with your application or the platform
• Get feedback on a code snippet
• Learn about platform features or tools
• Ask for documentation or other support resources

#devops-operations

Use the #devops-operations channel to connect with the Platform Services team. For example, you can:

• Talk to us about bringing a new product or tool to the platform
• Ask us for help tuning resources for your application
• Ask us for help with networking or storage services on the platform

#devops-alerts

Use #devops-alerts to be notified about platform updates. We post information about upcoming or ongoing maintenance activities, incidents, outages and changes on the OpenShift platform. 

Platform tool channels

Platform tool channels are used for discussions about the use and development of various platform tools. There’s a separate channel dedicated to each tool:

• Rocket.Chat: #rocketchat-help
• Keycloak Single-Sign-On (SSO): #sso
• Artifactory: #devops-artifactory
• Vault Secrets Management: #devops-vault
• Sysdig Monitor: #devops-sysdig
• Patroni: #patroni

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Technical documentation

The B.C. Government Private Cloud PaaS technical documentation is available for you to use and reference as you build, deploy, maintain and retire your application.

In the technical documentation, you’ll find information on how to do the following:

Build, deploy, maintain and retire your applications on OpenShift

• Configure your applications for automation and resiliency
• Monitor your applications
• Leverage reusable code and services

Work on the platform

• Understand platform architecture and storage options
• Manage OpenShift projects and access
• Use GitHub in the B.C. government
• Manage databases and APIs
• Troubleshoot issues

Meet B.C. government requirements and standards

• Follow security and privacy requirements
• Meet B.C. government design system standards

Platform training