Virtual Server Hosting for Research, Schools, and Administrative Units

Overview

University schools, departments, researchers, faculty, and staff can request virtual servers for a new project or application, a new service, and/or new portions of an existing environment.

These servers are best used smaller workloads and those that do not require extensive computational resources. The supported operating systems are RedHat Enterprise Linux version 8, Windows Server 2019, and Windows Server 2022. If a different operating system is needed, available options include NUCloud, NUWorkspace, or Public Cloud (Amazon Web Services, Azure, Google Cloud Platform).

Researchers who need a high level of computational resources should consider using the Quest High Performance Computing Cluster.

All requests for hosted virtual servers are subject to approval by the Associate Director, Platform Services Infrastructure.

Use of the Environment

Hosted virtual servers cannot be used for the following purposes:

• File Servers
• Video/Media storage
• Personal use

The Northwestern University Appropriate Use of Electronic Resources policy applies to any infrastructure using Northwestern IT resources.

Hosted Support Model

In the hosted environment, Northwestern IT maintains the underlying infrastructure that the virtual machine may reside on. This includes Compute, Storage, Networking, Patching, Security, and Backups.

The virtual server owner is responsible for their data, applications, access management, maintenance of the operating system*, and network and firewall access controls. After initial deployment, the virtual server owner is responsible for any configuration changes to the server. If a MySQL database is requested, the requester must show proof they have purchased a MySQL license.

* Systems are provided with a pre-determined operating system and kernel patch schedule and are then scheduled patch automatically. The date & time are chosen by the customer and can be changed as needed. RHEL servers are provisioned with ADS (Active Directory Services) authentication enabled.

If operating systems are not kept up-to-date, Northwestern IT will work with the virtual machine owner to bring systems up-to-date, if possible. Northwestern IT reserves the right to decommission systems that may threaten the environment due to unsupported operating system versions, security/threats, or misuse of resources.

Monitoring during business hours is available by discussing needs with Management & Monitoring Services (MMS). There is no after-hours support for hosted servers. Any issues reported during non-business hours will be documented and handled next business day.