Boyd Data Center Hosting: EITS and Client Responsibilities

EITS responsibilities

• Assistance with installation of departmental server and storage equipment
• Provision of adequate network connections for client environment
• Provision of adequate power for client environment
• Appropriate notification of data center maintenance events
• Appropriate notification of data center outage events

Client Responsibilities

All clients must:

• Provide a top of rack (TOR) switch for connectivity to EITS. We can make special accommodations as necessary.
• The TOR switch must support (Link Aggregation Control Protocol) LACP.
• The TOR switch uplinks must have Spanning Tree Protocal (STP) disabled. This is to separate spanning-tree domains between clients and EITS. EITS has other safety mechanisms in place to protect against broadcast storms.
• All traffic between EITS and the customer must be Virtual Local Area Network (VLAN) tagged.

The client is responsible to create and maintain all tasks for departmental equipment, which includes:

• Recognition that all servers (virtual or physical) and software under this agreement will be required to meet all security and production policies and standards as identified in the Network Access Policy and the Production Machine Standards.
• Storage of equipment and manuals are to be housed outside the Boyd Data Center.
• Departments are responsible for Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity Planning for their equipment/applications and should review the requirements established by the UGA Department of Emergency Preparedness. In the event of data loss/software failure in the client's servers, the client is responsible for any costs associated with the procurement of software, data recovery and/or labor required from an outside vendor.
• To understand that access for the client’s staff will be allowed in a limited manner and subject to the EITS Boyd Data Center access policy, in order to preserve a secure environment for all clients.

Production Machine Standards

This document is not intended to endorse a particular vendor or model, but instead to suggest guidelines (which may be endorsed as "requirements") for equipment suitable for Data Center deployment.

• "Server class" equipment (reputable vendor, no retired desktops, etc).
• Rack mountable, unless desktop model is required for specific application.
• Redundant (n+1) power supplies.
• Preferred rack installation is to connect 1/2 of the PDUs in a rack to each of two independent circuits of sufficient capacity. One power supply is then connected to each of the two (or nx2) PDUs so that each server is powered by two independent circuits. Servers installed in this fashion will continue to run if power to one of the two circuits is lost.
• Servers should be connected for onsite and out of band management through the use of LOM or serial connection to terminal servers.
• Disk failure should be mitigated through the use of locally attached hardware RAID or through redundant connections to IP or SAN-based mass storage. Critical services should be equipped with redundant pathing to storage (i.e., two HBAs connected to separate ports on the SAN fabric). RAID arrays should have designated hot spares.

Requirements for Onboarding

Steven Duffee (sduffee@uga.edu) or Chris Fleming (cfleming@uga.edu) will reach out to you to schedule a discovery meeting. Members from network engineering and operations will be in attendance to answer questions and gather information.

During this meeting, we will discuss:

• The Memorandum of Understanding
• Power and Rack space requirements
• Cabling requirements
• VLAN/Subnet requirements
• Central firewall services (Layer 2/3 Overlay Networks)
• Migration timelines

Once the subnet/VLAN information is known, submit a ticket to the EITS Network Engineering group with desired subnets/VLAN IDs. We can assign new VLAN IDs as necessary.

EITS will handle the cabling and connectivity pieces of the migration. We will run new single mode fiber cables as necessary and provide 10G LR optics.

For new customers, EITS will assign rack space and install PDUs per the discovery meeting.

When all steps are complete, EITS will work with you on scheduling an install date and time.