Harvard-MIT Data Center

For systems hosted in our data center we provide enterprise-class network storage built on stable, secure, and scalable infrastructure, and implemented with open standards.

We can customize access to match security concerns as well as offer choices for backup frequency to meet the needs of your application.

To discuss, further please contact us.

For physical servers that we host, we offer administrative access without the need for physical contact through remote graphical consoles, serial consoles, and power management tools. Using the remote administration service in combination with our Monitoring service reduces drastically the time of most server outages. In emergency situations, you can address the problem immediately, without waiting for support personnel to respond.

Our remote administration service provides console access to your server from any web browser with Java support. Serial console access also is available via SSH. In the event of a network interface failure on your hosted system you have persistent access to the server via the remote console. If your server locks up completely you can access its power feed remotely to reboot it.

Any hosted system with a display device can be configured for remote console access, which provides a graphical remote desktop that includes keyboard and mouse support without the need to run additional services. Any hosted system with serial line login support also can be configured for textual serial console access.

Virtual media support enables you to access a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM drive on your desktop workstation from your hosted server by using the web-based console viewer running on your desktop workstation. This provides remote access to removable media for software installation and can reduce the need to copy files over the network.

We check the status of our services continuously. If a problem is detected at any time, we are notified immediately. If you experience a problem with any of our services, please check http://mon.hmdc.harvard.edu before contacting support. If your problem is listed there, our staff was notified and we are working on a resolution.

Note: You can receive notification about all scheduled and unscheduled outages through email or RSS feed, or by checking a web page. For more information, please visit Outage Notification.

If your problem is not listed, please contact us with as much information as you can provide regarding your problem. You receive an automated response immediately, and the message is routed to the appropriate staff member. We will respond as soon as possible.

For outages affecting large numbers of people outside of business hours, our best effort is made to investigate the problem, and to resolve it.

We provide acces to our existing Cluster Computing infrastructure with an RCE account. If you have recurring or continual needs for greater resources than are available through our standard service offerings, we might be able to work with you to purchase additional equipment to supplement our public resources.

We set up and manage the resources on your behalf. Final approval is subject to our review of requested resources against available resources.

For additional information, please contact us.

Our data center is designed to maximize the availibility of physical resources. The power infrastructure is served by a large-scale generator, uninterruptible power supplies, and filtered city power. The data center has redundant air conditioning units, and is equipped with a preaction, gas-based fire supression system. Physical access to the data center is limited to our server staff. The room is also equipped with motion and glass break sensors.

If you have any specific questions about our data center, please contact us.

We rely extensively upon open standards products for interoperability, stability, and flexibility. Because we are committed to supporting a wide range of areas of academic endeavour, we avoid the constraints of proprietary solutions whenever feasible.

Wherever applicable our infrastructure is built upon commodity hardware from major vendors. As such, we benefit not only from enterprise-level hardware support, but also from the confidence that as technology changes and develops, we can continue to integrate a broad array of technical solutions and provide the best possible environment for research computing.

While our existing infrastructure provides support for many aspects of quantitative research, we also are prepared to assist you with hardware purchases of your own. In most cases we prefer to acquire servers that are 1 rack unit (1U) in height, with redundant power supplies, a RAID configuration, and a minimum 3-year hardware warranty.

For additional information, please contact us.