Hosted Services

Service Description

Hosted Services assists North Carolina State University departments and colleges with managing their departmental application servers, hosting them in a stable and secure IT environment.

The fee-based service provides system administration and data center security for customers who don’t have the time, expertise or physical environment to support their servers.

Service Features and Benefits

  • Technical assistance with planning, server configuration and implementation
  • System monitoring, management and administration
  • Server software patching and updates
  • Data protection via tape or disk backup and restore
  • Technical consultation in meetings with application vendors
  • 24×7 on-call support
  • System and network security (e.g., antivirus and firewall protection)
  • Physical security within locked, climate-controlled and monitored data centers
  • Electrical power protected by UPS and backup generator

Customers

Hosted Services currently serves 60 colleges and departments across campus. We host approximately 150 servers for our customer base.

System Options

Physical Hardware

Hosted Services’ customers may choose to purchase physical server(s) that fit their application vendor’s specifications. Hosted Services can provide quotes for physical server(s) configured with sufficient resources to support the service.

Virtual Server

Hosted Services’ customers may choose to have Hosted Services configure a virtual server to the  application vendor’s specifications. Hosted Services charges annually for the virtual hosting environment. However, virtualization is usually less expensive than a new server. Among many benefits, virtualization eliminates the cost of hardware lifecycle replacement in the future.

Software Licensing and Vendor Applications

Operating System Licensing

OIT has purchased a site license for the most current versions of the Microsoft Windows Server Operating System (OS) that covers all campus departments. For any server OS other than a Microsoft product, the customer will be responsible for the cost of licensing.

Additional Software Licensing

Hosted Services customers are responsible for their own application costs and ongoing vendor maintenance costs. Although NC State has agreements for some software licenses, Hosted Services customers may need to purchase additional software licenses related to their hosted services. Hosted Services can provide a quote from the university’s software reseller for any software needed.

Costs and Billing Rates

The Hosted Services Cost Model calculates the actual cost to provide a service in alignment with current technologies, hardware refresh costs, storage solutions and human effort.

We charge the full amount of a year of service at the beginning of the service term in July or August. If the service is decommissioned before the service term ends, we will refund the cost of service for the remainder of the service term. If a new service is initiated mid-fiscal year, we will bill a pro-rated amount for the remainder of the service term plus a one-time setup fee.

Service Level Agreement

View a sample Hosted Services Service Level Agreement. The annual service term aligns with the university’s fiscal year (July 1 – June 30.) SLAs are reviewed and signed in the Spring before the start of the next service term.

Next Steps

Discuss requirements, get additional information or initiate service by emailing our team.

Getting Help

If you are currently a Hosted Services customer and you need to report a problem, request a service change, or discuss an SLA issue, email our team. For assistance during regular business hours (Monday – Friday, 8:00AM – 5:00 PM except on university holidays) call 919.515.HELP (4357). Provide the name of your application and a description of your problem. Customers can expect a 1 hour response time for service-related outages. After regular business hours or on weekends or holidays, call 919-515-5500.