Server and Database Hosting Services

ITSS provides professionally managed servers (virtual and physical) and database environments to meet the specific technical and operational needs of academic and administrative units at UMD.

Service Offerings

ITSS provides a suite of hosting solutions tailored to departmental needs, including:

  • Infrastructure Provisioning & Setup: Initial provisioning and deployment of physical or virtual servers, databases, and environments tailored to departmental operational requirements.
  • Fully Managed Server Hosting: Continuous infrastructure support where ITSS maintains administrative control, managing the underlying operating system, storage allocations, security baselines, and regular patching.
  • Self-Managed Environment (SME): Provisioning of hosting space where the requesting unit retains full server management and application administrative responsibilities, while ITSS manages the foundational hardware and network infrastructure connectivity.
  • Database Hosting: Delivery of secure and optimized database environments (such as MySQL or PostgreSQL) including baseline creation, administrator access configuration, and background maintenance.
  • Physical Server Delegation: Coordination and technical assistance for units acquiring dedicated physical hardware, ensuring correct placement and network integration within institutional facilities.
  • Data Backup and Restoration: Implementation of scheduled, secure backups for servers and databases alongside responsive restoration workflows to safeguard institutional data integrity.

Exclusions

The following areas fall outside the scope of local ITSS hosting:

  • Hardware Procurement Funding: Departmental requests for specialized or dedicated physical servers must be directly funded and purchased by the respective collegiate or non-collegiate units, with consultation from the ITSS service team.
  • Resource Threshold Scaling: Virtual environments requiring resource allocations exceeding 2 Processors, 8GB of Memory, or 256GB of Storage are considered out of scope for standard local offerings and require custom architectural evaluation.
  • Application and Content Management: Management and maintenance of unit applications, services, web content, or isolated database content remains the sole responsibility of the Departmental Owner.
  • University-Level Infrastructure Realignment (OIT): UMD's local infrastructure capacity is strategically restricted to systems that explicitly require on-campus hosting due to geographic proximity, specific regulatory requirements, or localized latency limitations. During initial architectural evaluation and scoping, ITSS may determine that a requested server environment or workload is better suited for migration to the University-wide Office of Information Technology (OIT) hosting services infrastructure.

User Eligibility

This service is available to the following groups with a legitimate business need. A legitimate business need is defined as a person's necessity to access data, a system, or a service in their capacity as a School Official:

  • UMD academic and administrative units

Service Availability

ITSS is committed to providing reliable hosting infrastructure and timely technical support.

  • Core Infrastructure Availability: Hosting services are architected for continuous operation with a target uptime availability metric of 99%, excluding scheduled platform maintenance windows.
  • Normal Working Hours: Support staff are available Monday to Friday, 8:00 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. CST, excluding University holidays.
  • Emergency Support: Technical personnel remain on call via an after-hours rotation exclusively to address production-stopping emergencies affecting mission-critical systems.
  • Service Alerts: ITSS will distribute electronic notifications regarding system abnormalities, critical incidents, or planned maintenance events directly to affected system owners.

Roles and Responsibilities

This section defines the responsibilities of both ITSS and the Departmental Owner to ensure a successful partnership.

ITSS is responsible for:

  • Maintaining and managing the core infrastructure, hardware health, operating systems, and network routing configurations.
  • Executing routine security scans, system tuning, log management, and applying critical operating system patches or upgrades.
  • Managing institutional data protection routines, monitoring storage capacity thresholds, and executing file or environment restorations upon request.
  • Providing technical guidance and architectural consultation during initial environment provisioning or physical machine placement.

The Departmental Owner is responsible for:

  • Clearly defining specialized technical requirements, performance specifications, and expected workloads during initial scoping.
  • Managing administrative configurations, code deployments, application tuning, and user access permissions within their assigned environment.
  • Ensuring compliance with the University of Minnesota Information Security Policy, especially for hosts processing private-restricted data.
  • Promptly monitoring and reporting system abnormalities, application errors, or performance degradation to the ITSS Help Desk.

Request Support

To initiate a new hosting environment request or report an issue with an existing server or database, please contact ITSS through one of the following channels:

Service Manager