Servers (Housing and Administration)

The VCU Computer Center (VCUCC) is located at 900 E. Main Street.  VCUCC has a state of the art computer room with keycard access, raised flooring, racks for mounting equipment, high-capacity air conditioning, and power provided by a battery backed-up building uninterruptable power supply. Individuals and departments can move their servers to VCUCC and take advantage of the superior facilities.

The VCUCC staff members have expertise in Windows and UNIX operating systems, system design, and administration, processing technologies, and systems. Whatever your need, VCUCC has the skills to meet your challenge.

Contact the VCU Computer Center for more information regarding server hosting and administration.

 

UCC Server Housing Standard Operating Procedures

 

Introduction 
The UCC staff is responsible for maintaining a secure, highly reliable Computer Center infrastructure for servers and, in general, all IT equipment that supports the University. A high degree of coordination between various University departments and TS departments is required to maintain the appropriate controls to ensure high reliability of the Infrastructure that is essential to support the IT requirements of the University.

Audience
This Operating Procedure gives requirements to System Administrators/Engineers for maintaining housed equipment in the UCC.

Purpose
These procedures have been put in place to allow the UCC staff and the Network Services staff to provide reliable IT service to the University as a whole. There are over 700 servers in the Computer Center. This requires accurate record-keeping and coordination with the UCC staff for installation, maintenance, and de-installation of all equipment. This Operating Procedure addresses the requirements for equipment not maintained by the UCC staff. The procedure is for equipment that is only housed at the facility and maintained by the individual or department that owns the equipment. The UCC server housing service offers physical security, temperature controls, secure network connections, and power for equipment that may be otherwise maintained in a less desirable environment.

Server Housing Requirements 

Equipment will be considered for housing on a case-by-case basis, but server housing is contingent on space and infrastructure availability. When a customer requests server space at the VCU Computer Center Pocahontas primary site, the first consideration will be to place the server in a suitable Virtual Machine environment. If the application is deemed not to be appropriate for a Virtual Machine environment, the application will then be considered for deployment on a physical server. These decisions are made on a case by case basis with an emphasis placed on utilizing one of the Virtual Machine environments to conserve overall data center resources. Configurations for the Virtual Server environment will be determined by the UCC engineers using vendor documentation and working with the server requester. Generally, VMs will be thinly provisioned. Virtual Resources can easily be increased later if required. Charges for the VM adjustments will not be applied until the next SLA renewal the following June.  
If new hardware is required, the UCC can assist with the server specifications and order. The UCC generally will only house rack-mountable equipment. Exceptions have been made to this policy after review by the UCC staff. Usually, the UCC staff would like to see applications housed on data center production-level equipment so the end-user will experience a secure, more reliable hardware environment. We strongly recommended that all equipment is under a vendor’s hardware warranty or third party maintenance coverage. The UCC can assist with adding maintenance coverage with our third-party vendor, SGT. All UCC housed equipment must comply with VCU IT policies and standards, which at the minimum include anti-virus software be installed and maintained, and that Operating System and database patching are kept current. VCU Assurance Services requires that housed server owners provide both a patching plan and a patching schedule for potential review by the VCU Information Security Officer (ISO), and require the VCU Computer Center to deliver the Housed Server Standard Operating Procedures to all potential housed server customers when a request is made to house equipment at the VCU Computer Center’s Pocahontas facility.

Server equipment in the UCC needs to be set up to respond to ping traffic from the Xymon monitor. This enables the UCC staff and Network Staff the ability to monitor issues that may develop in the environment.

Centralized data storage is available from the UCC to either be directly (fiber cable) attached to the housed server or attached to the network (Network Attached Storage). View the current list of UCC data storage fees. 

Housing Procedures
Equipment additions (including VMs) to the UCC 

1. A SPP (Server Provisioning Plan) request is required to discuss your plans for housing your system at UCC.  Submitting an SPP with the security details, physical or virtual designation, required resources, required network ports, and any other devices the server communicates with will be required.

2. Requests for IPs for existing servers or additional network ports for existing servers require a "IT Support Request" in the "Servers" section of the "Servers and Storage category of Ivanti Web Desk (previously LANDesk Cherwell Service Management).  Submission of the Support Ticket request will generate a data classification security review and security plan for Information Security Officer approval (ISO). The ISO must approve the security plan before the server can be provisioned. Upon receipt of the request, the UCC will forward this SOP document to all administrators requesting Housing services from the UCC.

3. A Server Inventory entry is required before a network connection will be provisioned. The Server Inventory site is reached through the IT Professionals site. As part of the housing procedure, the UCC staff will assign the Rack or Cluster location.

4. After receiving approval for server provisioning, you need to request an IP Address and DNS through Rams Central. When creating a new ticket in Rams Central, select the “Network Services” category. Select ‘Request a new IP Address’ or DNS Name request from the Selection List.  The rack location and Port information are required by Network Services to complete the IP request.

5. If the request is for physical equipment, equipment racking is to be performed by the UCC staff, or under their supervision.

6. If the request is for a virtual machine, select ‘Request A New Virtual Machine’ from the Virtual Machine section of the Servers and Storage category.

Equipment Maintenance 
Equipment deployed in the computer center needs to be maintained at specific standards. This is required to maintain the integrity of all equipment in the Computer Center. All equipment will have to be patched upon notification by the UCC staff or ISO as quickly as 24 hours for nonscheduled vendor patch releases aimed to address a specific immediate threat. All Windows servers are required to run a fully functioning version of the current VCU virus protection solution and be maintained with current Microsoft patches.

Equipment removal from the UCC 
1. A IT Support Ticket is required to inform the UCC about the removal of the equipment. When creating a new ticket in Rams Central, select 'Servers and Storage' Servers, Server Deprovisioning Request.

2. A Decommissioning Checklist outlining the proper decommissioning procedures for a server should be completed. It will be the requester’s responsibility to perform these tasks. Contact the NOC for the Decommissioning Checklist.

3. Surrender the IP Addresses and DNS entries. The request is made through Service Desk for the surrendering of the IP address and the removal of network cables. DNS entries to be surrendered should also be named. When creating a new ticket in Ra,ms, select "Network Services," select Request a New IP Address, or Request a new DNS Name.

4. All equipment removals are to be performed by UCC staff. The equipment will be removed when the NOC is notified that the above tasks are complete.

5. The Server Inventory entry should be removed after the equipment is removed.

7.  The Server Admin or Owner is responsible for taking care their own SSL certificates.

UCC Staff Support 
The University Computer Center staff is available for support (other than the coordination of equipment deployment) at $50 per hour with a 4-hour minimum charge per server for assistance with building/configuring/diagnosing/repairing/rebuilding any servers housed at the UCC. Full hardware/OS support “Hosting” services are available at $100/month.