Servers

We can provision space on dedicated virtual or sometimes physical servers, most commonly required for research purposes. We can also offer management of servers, although you may wish to manage the servers yourself. Numerous memory, processor and storage options are available.

Virtual servers

 We encourage the use of virtualisation wherever possible to reduce the environmental impact and cost of computing, with virtual servers making up the majority of our server estate.

Running within the Imperial College London private cloud and typically based on Microsoft Windows or Redhat Enterprise Linux, virtual servers provide a secure environment to host specialised applications and multi-user software. Virtual servers can be set-up quickly and pre-paid for up to a year in advance. The operating systems running our virtual servers are automatically patched and updated. 

Virtual servers hosted on Imperial's private cloud can only be accessed from inside the university network. Go to our remote access web pages for instructions on how to access university services when working remotely. Access to Windows machines should also be limited to the Imperial End User Connector Licence that is purchased from Microsoft.

Once set up, the server owner has full administrator access and is free to install and configure licensed software, within the bounds of the Terms and Conditions for virtual servers at the university. The configuration, installation and maintenance of application software on the server is the owner's responsibility.

Virtual servers could be used to:

• Host evaluating Windows or Linux software for use by teams
• Host small multi-user applications to aid research
• Provide a Linux shell environment for Windows users

For both physical and virtual servers, ICT will provide the following:

• A full operating system installation
• Operating system patching and a patching schedule
• The owner of the hosted server will be given full access permissions
• Backups (up to 90 days)

You will then be responsible for any server maintenance required, any additional licensing of software and any additional software installation, configuration and support.

For more information and to discuss server hosting options, contact the ICT Service Desk. Please read our full virtual servers' terms and conditions and see below for details on server costs. 

To request a server to be set up, complete our request a server form on ASK. 

ICT can provision servers with both Windows and Linux. Typically we deploy the latest 2 major versions. Currently this is Windows Server 2022 and 2019, and Redhat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9 and 8. We choose RHEL as our Linux distro, as the college benefits from a 5 year site licence, which comes with support from the vendor. For any department who does wish to install and administer Redhat themselves, we can provide you with a subscription and patch your servers using our Redhat Satellite instance. Please contact the ICT Service Desk for further information.

Permissions

By default, the owner of the virtual machine will be set up as the Administrator of the server and be granted remote access permission. 

If the ownership of the server has changed or an additional Administrator is to be added, please contact the ICT Service Desk providing the full name of the virtual machine.  The request must be logged by a current Administrator to maintain the chain of custody.

If the owner of a virtual machine has left Imperial and no Administrator is available, access can be requested by:

• The person who paid for the server in the past or person representing the grant which paid for the server
• Departmental Administrator
• Head of Department 

Follow the instructions below on how to access your virtual server. 

Hypervisor

ICT can also provide a subscription to dedicated VMWare Hypervisors, if you need to fully manage multiple servers, on dedicated hardware.

VMWare Hypervisors are more suited to departmental computing staff and if you have a level of technical experience, and you are responsible for maintaining a larger number of servers.

ICT Responsibilities

• ICT will offer VMWare hypervisors as a yearly subscription, on dedicated hardware.  We will manage all hardware, install and maintain the ESX host. 
• ICT will provide Faculty users with VMWare console access to manage your own virtual machines lifecycle, including console access, control of their hardware resources and virtual devices, and the ability to take manual snapshot (max 10-day retention).
• You only pay for 1 hypervisor, but benefit from the knowledge, that in the unlikely event of a host failure, your virtual machines will transition to another hypervisor in the ICT farm. 
• We will provide you with a dedicated datastore, will run on enterprise storage, managed and maintained by ICT.
• We will subscribe you to a VMWare vSphere Enterprise Plus licence, under the VMWare Academic Software Licencing Program, which supports the use of virtualization applications in teaching and research.
• We will back up your virtual machines on request, on a per datastore basis.

Your Responsibilities

• Orchestrating your own virtual machines.
• Adjustment of virtual machine resources
• Ensuring virtual machines operating systems are kept up to date with security updates.
• Backup of virtual machine data, if Rubrik backup service not taken from ICT.
• Windows Server Licencing

Prices

£2,000 per year - SY480 Gen10 Plus with 2 x Intel 6336Y 24 core CPU, Hypervisor. You then must add choice of disk and memory. See table below:

For example, our 48-core hypervisor, with 1 TB of memory, and a 2 TB datastore, would cost £2,870 per year.

If backup is also required, we can protect your data with Rubrik, at a cost of a further £650 per TB, per year.  This service provides daily incremental backups, retained for a month.

Further support

If you are interested in subscribing to our Hypervisor service, or require more information, then please contact us using the IT Infrastructure purchasing advice form on ASK.