Virtual Servers
isginf uses and recommends
virtual servers provided by ITS. Virtual servers are sufficient for many purposes and have many advantages:
- pay only when and for what you need
- cheap for small configurations that are often idle - a typical web server is only around CHF 100 per year
- no initial investment
- no end of warranty of hardware
- fault-tolerance and high availability
- ecological, both in terms of energy efficiency (electricity, cooling) as well as environmental (CO2 output, pollution from production)
- no additional server room space
isginf will manage the full life cycle of a virtual server.
ITS is responsible for the maintenance and upgrade of the physical host servers.
Configuration
The configuration of a virtual server can be selected depending on your needs. The minimal configuration that
isginf recommends is currently:
- 1 CPU
- 2GB memory
- 60GB storage
The maximum configuration depends on the current host servers that
ITS uses. A configuration with
- 64 CPUs
- 1024GB memory
- several 100TB storage
is known to work.
Operating Systems
If
isginf manages the operating system then one of the
supported operating systems must be installed.
If the operating system is also managed by a researcher or
ITC then the virtual machines can be configured for a broad variety of Windows and Linux versions.
Console Access
Access to the console of virtual machines can be granted on request.
Hardware Changes
The configuration can also be dynamically changed. If your needs change, resources can be added or removed as needed. Adding resources does not need a reboot in most cases.
Cost
The price of a virtual server varies depending on load and the allocated resources at any time. The pricing is documented by
ITS here.
At the moment, the cost for virtual machines are paid by the department. For groups that use them excessively and for computations we reserve the right to bill expensive instances to the owning group.
