Self Managed Server Hosting: Roles & Responsibilities

Our Responsibilities

The OIT Self-Managed Virtual Server Hosting staff is responsible for:

  • Management of the hypervisor
  • Implementation of the product
  • Providing the virtualization platform for the University
  • Updates⁄upgrades to the platform
  • Responding to service requests
  • Backups

We work with IT data center, storage and networking staff to provide the physical foundation of the virtual server hosting service.

Customer Responsibilities

Customers of the Self-Managed Service are responsible for:

  • Installing, patching, upgrading guest operating systems
  • System security
  • DNS management
  • Application administration

You are also the first line of support for the end users of the virtual machines and services running on them.

Roles and Permission

Customers will have varying levels of access to the virtual environment. Provisioning managers and technical coordinators have access to all of a department’s virtual machines. Virtual Machine Admins can be further restricted to viewing a subset of a department’s virtual machine.

The following describes the roles and permissions that can be assigned to staff members.

Technical Coordinators

  • Power On⁄Off⁄Reset
  • Change CD media
  • Assign network
  • Add network adapter
  • Manage snapshots

Virtual Machine Administrators

  • Power On⁄Off⁄Reset
  • Change CD media

Provisioning Managers (up to three)

  • Same access as technical coordinators plus the ability to request and delete virtual machines.

IT and Customer VMware Tools Responsibilities

VMware Tools is a utility that enhances the overall user experience and improves management of the virtual environment.

Customer

The customer will be responsible for installation and updating of the VMware Tools package in the guest OS. The tools package must be installed within 14 days of deployment or within 60 days of updating the virtual environment.

IT

After a virtual machine has VMware tools 90 days out of date, the virtualization team reserves the right to take the virtual machine offline until VMware Tools has been updated.

Details of the Duties and Responsibilities

DutyResponsibility
Procure hardwareIT
Physical resource monitoringIT
Access to the infrastructureIT
Provisioning new guest VLANsIT
Building hypervisor hostsIT
Patching hypervisor hostsIT
Managing console accessIT
Disaster recovery (infrastructure)IT
Hypervisor licensingIT
Data protection (backup and recovery)IT
Request VMCustomer
Guest OS InstallCustomer
Guest availability monitoringCustomer
Guest resource monitoringCustomer
Guest application installation and maintenanceCustomer
Guest network security (firewalls)Customer
IP and DNS managementCustomer
VMware Tools and (virtual) hardware upgradesCustomer
Remote access to the guest OSCustomer
Virus protectionCustomer
Vulnerability scanningCustomer
Guest OS and application licensesCustomer