System Administration Services

Table of Contents

Service Overview

Most research teams maintain at least a few servers as part of their data collection, analysis, visualization and collaboration efforts. While it is often quick and easy to get a server up and running, it takes expertise to ensure that it is reliable and running as peak performance. Reliability becomes especially important when disruptions to services impact productivity, or threaten data loss. IT Support gets a lot of service requests from scientists whose servers are running slowly, have security vulnerabilities, have failed hard drives, or where applications will not start up. Most of these problems are preventable, but require monitoring, maintenance, and specialized knowledge of standards and best practices.

System Administration services are available for all Lab systems, and can be delivered in a few different ways.

For self-managed systems, IT Support is available on an hourly basis. This is suitable for cases where the system owner is comfortable assuming responsibility for the operation of the system, and with the risks associated with service disruptions in the event of improper maintenance.

IT Support also offers a System Management Service, colloquially known as 'SLA Management', where IT charges a fixed monthly rate, and assumes responsibility for the ongoing configuration, maintenance, patching, and monitoring of the system. This service is suitable for cases where the system owner is not able to maintain the system on their own, or where the potential impacts of a service disruption is high.

Getting Started

Incident Response

To request support for an incident related to a server, please contact the IT Help Desk at [email protected]. This will create a ticket in the Lab's ServiceNow system. 

For unmanaged systems, a project ID will be needed before the ticket can be assigned. The ticket may be assigned to any available engineer with the necessary skills to address the current issue. All time worked on the ticket will be billed at an hourly rate through recharges.

For managed systems, the ticket will be assigned to the engineer responsible for the system. The system owner will not be billed for time worked on the ticket.

System Management Service

To enroll a server or VM in the System Management Service, please complete the System Administration SLA Enrollment Form.

A separate response is needed for each system for which management is requested.

The form will generate a ticket which will trigger the recharge billing process.

Features

Hourly Support

Under the hourly support model, the owner of the system is responsible for all aspects of the systems maintenance and management. IT will, upon request, provide whatever services are needed by the system owner. These services will be billed as an hourly recharge. IT does not assume any responsibility for the maintenance, monitoring, or security, of the system.

System Management Service

Under the managed support model, IT assumes responsibility for the maintenance of the system. IT will monitor the operational health of the system and key services, patch the operating system and software, configure the system networking and firewall settings, and coordinating hardware maintenance. The system owner retains full responsibility for the costs of equipment maintenance and replacement.

Service Level Agreement

The full text of the Service Level Agreement is available here.