Systems Administration

The cornerstone of any IT organization is its ability to efficiently and effectively manage systems and the applications that run on them. To provide excellent service availability, performance, and security while minimizing the resources needed to deliver these services, the vision of IT Services is to embed repeatable processes that have been established by the most experienced technical staff. Automated applications have been developed to manage the computer systems on campus, streamlining the process of setting up a new computer for a user and making sure that it has latest software upgrades and a new system can be readily patched in if there is a failure. In addition, cloud computing and a timeshare service allow users to take advantage of the robust computing resources on campus.

Technologies in this section

Goals

  • Increase level of automation in complex, multi-step processes involving systems and application administration.
  • Offer modular system build capabilities that install Stanford pre-packaged and configured software components and applications.
  • Automate population of inventory databases; populate programmatically with procurement asset information; automate profile changes of hardware and software.
  • Increase ease of use by academic community to timeshare service for off-loading cluster processes.
  • Pilot virtual desktop infrastructure technologies.
  • Take advantage of auto-discovery products that automate inventory of system hardware and software profiles.
  • Investigate virtual desktop infrastructure technologies to allow for a centrally managed and secure desktop environment.
  • Look into configuration management and provisioning frameworks: e.g., Puppet, yum.

Roadmap

  • Increase automation of system deployment for Windows Server instances.
  • Integration of desktop inventory tools with a configuration management database (CMDB).
  • Improve reporting of inventory data out to clients to help with hardware refresh, software licensing, and asset management.
  • Test virtual desktop infrastructure technologies to evaluate their potential for cost savings, improved user experience, and enhanced information security.

Measures of success

  • High ratio of server to systems administration staff.
  • Reduction in provisioning time for systems and applications.
  • Stable or reduced rates to clients.
  • Increased automation of inventory audit reconciliation; less manual inventory surveys.