Hosting

isginf offers to organize the hosting of servers or clusters of research groups in the server rooms.

Planning

Please contact isginf at the start of your project before you even buy the hardware. Many factors have to be taken into account when deciding if and where the equipment can be hosted:

• Availability of power and cooling capacity
• Reliability of cooling and power
• Network connectivity

Please also note that all server rooms at ETH are geared towards energy efficiency. Only rack-mountable equipment with an airflow from front to back can be placed in any of the rooms.

Alternatives

Please consider using virtual servers for all use cases that allow it.

Server Owner

Each server has an owner which is the primary contact for isginf for maintenance and other issues. If the owner is unavailable we fall back to the ITC of the group.

Life Cycle

isginf takes care of the whole life cycle of the hosted system in the server rooms:

• procurement
• placement
• power and network connectivity
• relocation or maintenance when needed
• disposal

Operating System and Software

For servers and clusters with an operating system managed by isginf the responsibilities of the owning group are outlined here. Additional requirements for the hardware also apply in this case.

For servers where the operating system is also installed by the research group, the responsibility is entirely with the research group. Typically the ITC is the person we contact for maintenance and issues.