System Administration and Engineering ServiceĀ 

The Infrastructure Technology & Support (ITS) team provides system administration and engineering support for customized servers and services that are hosted on-site or in the cloud. We provide researchers with professionally managed, standardized, and secure systems using system administration best practices, so researchers can focus on their science rather than server administration.

Service Description

  • Professionally managed server racking, installation, setup and system administration
  • System and workflow design and configuration
  • Software and operating system installation and maintenance
  • Security updates and monitoring
  • User and data management
  • Storage, backup, and archive management
  • Cloud computing setup, system and software configuration, assistance with resource management and reducing costs, setting up budget alerts, and right-sizing resources
  • On-site servers are professionally managed in the Jerome L. Greene Science Center data center which provides power, cooling, and environmental monitoring

Rate

Initial consultations are provided at no cost. After approval of the project's scope of work researchers are charged $150 per hour for hands-on system administration and engineering support. Billing for accrued charges will occur each month via your chart string.

Process

The process for planning and executing a system administration project is listed below:

  • Request a free consultation to discuss your requirements, timeline, and expectations by emailing rc@zi.columbia.edu and include a brief description of your project requirements and timeframe.Ā 
  • Develop Scope of Work and Cost Estimate
    • The ITS team will meet with you to collect requirements, discuss options, and develop a scope of Scope of Work, which includes deliverables, resources, points of contact, responsibilities, timeline, reporting, and costs.
  • Project approval signoff
    • All work and time commitments will be approved by both parties ahead of time.Ā 
  • Staff resource assignment and scheduling
    • System administration support is subject to staff availability. The service engagement schedule must be agreed on ahead of time to ensure staff resources can be allocated when needed.
  • Initiation of project
  • Deliverable/milestone tracking and status check-ins
  • Completion of projectĀ 

Request a Consultation

To request a consultation to discuss your system administration requirements, please contact us at rc@zi.columbia.edu and include a brief description of your project requirements and timeframe.