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Friday August 2nd, 2013

OIT > Computing > DCS - Unix Support > DCS Services

System Administration and Support for UNIX Workstations

Summary: This is a brief document intended to outline the services DCS offers, including support levels and prices, so that UNIX workstation owners and users can work with DCS system administration staff to establish desired services and support contract terms.

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Table of Contents

NOTE: DCS contract services depend heavily on automation techniques to control costs. This creates a set of strong recommendations for client systems, including the collection of user data on a separate disk drive, independent of the drive carrying the operating system, and the use of NIS (Network Information Service) to share configuration information within workstation clusters.

Introduction

A standard support contract consists of: Information can also be found below on After-Hours Support and 24-hour oversight, security, and controlled-climate for departmental and other critical systems.

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Support Contracts

A supported system must include System Administration, DCSlib, and O/S maintenance services. Backups are strongly recommended.

A client may elect to have O/S licensing and DCSlib but no support, but we don't recommend this. System administration services have a substantial value to the owner of a UNIX workstation. There is a proactive component in skilled system administration which anticipates and prevents problems which can result in significant downtime and lost data. However, there is also a certain delegation of control implicit in a system administration contract: operations will be performed on the machine for its safety, reliability, and for protection of the rest of the campus, and advance notification is not always possible.

Each contract must designate one or more people authorized to request service for the supported machines.

The prices below are current as of the review date of this document, and are subject to semiannual review.

Services which are not included at a given support level (including all services for unsupported systems) are available on a very limited basis, and then at a recharge rate of $65/hour. We are obliged to concentrate our efforts on the behalf of those who are contracted with us on a regular basis for those services.

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Basic System Administration

We maintain a table of included services at each support level.

Licensing for Operating System and Vendor-Specific Software

DCSlib Network Software Library

Backups

OIT offers a Data Backup and Recovery Service using EMC's Legato Networker product; currently two services levels are offered:

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After-Hours Support

DCS has implemented a dispatch policy with the objective of resolving critical system failures in a timely manner. A critical failure is usually either a machine which has crashed or the failure of a key service for that system (i.e., one of the principal purposes for which the machine was acquired).

Supported systems may call upon DCS staff for assistance during regular business hours (Monday-Friday, 8am-5pm). During normal business hours, issues can be directed to DCS staff at (x8383). Extended support hours (7am-10pm Monday-Friday and 10am-10pm weekends) are available to systems subscribing to server or tailored level support.

Urgent issues during business hours and extended hours should be directed to OIT's Help Desk (x2222).

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24-Hour Oversight, Security, and Controlled Climate

For some systems, such as departmental servers, enhanced security, climate control, and after-hours observation of the system is desirable. This service is available in the OIT Academic Data Center. OIT's Operations group manages this room 24 hours a day, 365 days a year and can contact regular DCS support staff as appropriate. In the case of support calls to x2222 after business hours, our operators can check the system consoles and contact the DCS on-call person as necessary (see after-hours support above). There are some tasks that system administrators must perform at the console this storage service avoids having to provide the system administrators with keys and security codes to your buildings and offices. Also, our computer room is cooled with three air conditioning units which are separate from the cooling of Engineering Gateway (where our computer room is located). Addition information is available at:

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Please contact us to discuss your specific needs or to answer any questions you may have regarding DCS services.

Contact us: Distributed Computing Support (DCS) at (949) 824-8383 or dcs@uci.edu