Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine
Feinberg Information Technology
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Infrastructure Service Offerings

Server Administration 

 

FSM IT provides server administration and the overseeing of its lifecycle, from the provisioning of the server to the management of the operating system and the server's decommissioning. Server administration is available to the medical school to support research, education, and administrative activities. Northwestern provides a data center facility for physical and virtual servers and has agreements with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, or Google for public cloud services. 

 

Features and Benefits 

 

  • Consultation: Includes infrastructure design assessment, system architecture, and procurement of software, physical server, or public cloud service. 
  • Server Management: Includes provisioning server and configuring supported operating systems, related components, applications, or databases for physical and virtual servers residing on-premise and public clouds. 
  • Monitoring and Event Management: Includes monitoring server availability, health, and performance that supports the mission and business-critical applications and responding to issues. 
  • Security Management: Includes regular patching of supported operating systems, administration of system accounts, and remediation of underlying vulnerabilities. 
  • Server and Data Backup: Includes incremental and full server backup of virtual servers, both on-premise and public clouds, and data backup for physical servers in the Northwestern data center. 
  • Server Disposal: Includes decommissioning physical and virtual servers on-premise and public clouds and removing licensed software and data. 

 

Cost 

 

  • Virtual Server Option: We offer virtual servers hosted in a private cloud service called NUCloud hosted in the University data center. Virtual servers are free for faculty or staff seeking to host their research, education, or administrative application that does not require a heavy computing workload. Virtual servers are a cost-effective alternative to physical servers without financial overheads to faculty and staff. 

 

  • Physical Server Option: Physical servers are a good option for faculty seeking to host research applications requiring a heavy computing workload, including scientific applications that can benefit from Graphic Processing Unit (GPU). Like NUCloud, physical servers are hosted in the University data center to protect against potential security breaches and power outages. A quote that Feinberg IT can help with and a valid chart string are required when purchasing a physical server. 

 

  • Public Cloud Option: Feinberg faculty and staff seeking to use public cloud providers to take advantage of scalability can choose between Amazon Web Services (AWS) or Microsoft Azure. A valid chart string is required when requesting a public cloud account. 

 

How to Request Service 

 

To request a service, please complete the Feinberg IT Server Request Form. Feinberg IT Infrastructure staff is available to assist in determining the appropriate server infrastructure needs. 

 

Questions? 

 

Please get in touch with fsmhelp@northwestern.edu for additional support. 

 

Other Related Services 

 

  • Research Data Storage Service (FSMResFiles) 
  • Domain Name and Address Management