Server Hosting and Management

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

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

• 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.

Uptime

TTS strives to maintain high service availability for all of our services. In order to ensure we are targeting the correct uptime models, we will classify your service based on the following criteria:

• 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.

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.

Schedule for Planned Maintenance Windows

Accessing your server
We will provide appropriate level access to the server for approved administrators. Shell and Remote Desktop access will require access to the Tufts VPN, which is no Duo Authenticaiton enabled. Service owners should use Tufts-TTS-Duo

Communication