Request a Server.

Fill out the survey for a new Virtual Server

Once a request is received, the server group will identify a two day period to review and approve the request. A member of the system team will contact the original requestor to approve the server quote, and then begin progress to build the server.

About our Servers

Server location will be determined by optimum resource allocation. Tufts has two datacenters available in our virtualization environment, one located in the the Somerville Tufts Administrative Building (TAB) and a second on Summer St. in Boston, MA

• Datacenter location and Location Independence for the service is determined by our Service Classification below.
• Our expertise and troubleshooting is gratis as part of the service, but depending on your storage and server requirements some costs may be associated with hosting your service. Before a server is built the extent of the cost model will be discussed with you and approved via IDR.
• Our servers are virtual hosts and are either RedHat Linux or Windows Server. It may not be possible to support requests of operating systems outside of our standard, although on a case by case basis we can make allowances for self-enclosed Appliance Images.
• Servers are backed up digitally in accordance to our back-up retention policies. Server back-ups are made available for disaster recovery reasons only.
• We monitor our enterprise environment using a number of monitoring systems and support many basic service health checks.
• Hosted servers are patched in the months of Dec-Jan and Jun-July each year. Patching will require downtime per host, but depending on how the application/service is architected may not require a service disruption.
• Standard maintenance windows are below as well as Uptime targets.

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• The ability of the application/service to target high-availability through design and implementation.
• Impact of your service to the core missions of the University.

The following is a matrix we use once a service has been classified

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Service Class

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Expected Behavior

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• of

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Class 1

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Services are expected to run primarily from our Tier IV Datacenters but be able to automatically run from our Tier I Datacenters in order to maintain high availability

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• the University

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Class 2

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Services are expected to run primarily from our Tier IV Datacenters but will not automatically transition from this location to a Tier I location in the event of a service interruption. It may be possible to regain service to Class 2 applications should the Tier IV datacenter be unavailable but only after Class 1 applications are successfully running

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Mission Important, this service may be accessed on a 24/7 basis but does not critically impact the core mission of Tufts

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Class 3

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Services are expected to run primarily from our Tier I Datacenters and will not be easily able to transition to a Tier IV datacenter in the event of a service interruption.

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• .

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Class 4

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Services are expected to only be available at a limited basis, or not critical if unavailable outside of university "business hours."

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Business services such as test or development services that are not directly public-facing

Maintenance

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Planned vs. Unplanned Maintenance

Planned maintenance is discussed, tested, and scheduled prior to 48 hours before the occurring maintenance. For servers classified as "non-production" it may be necessary to schedule and complete work outside of the 48-hour prior window or outside described maintenance windows below.

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