Data Center Management

The following are included as part of this service:

• Coordination with the University’s Facilities and Capital Planning department which is responsible for the physical plant related to capacity planning, reliability (failover and redundancy), and ongoing maintenance and support for the data centers (a.k.a. “computer rooms”) located on campus, including; electrical power, HVAC, fire alarms/suppression, building maintenance, accessibility, and cabling concerns.
• Coordination with the operating units responsible for physical security on campus, the University’s Campus Police Department and the Framingham State’s Facilities and Capital Planning Department, or off campus at the disaster recovery colocation data center for controlling physical access including; key access, card access and video surveillance.
• Management of network connections and electronic (virtual) access to and from data centers located on campus, or off campus either “in the cloud” or at the disaster recovery colocation data center including direct terminal access.
• Installation or removal of electronic hardware within on campus data centers and the off campus disaster recovery data center including; routers, switches, firewalls, servers or other IT related devices.
• Monitoring of alerts, performance and availability of systems within the on campus and off campus data centers.  
• Maintenance and support for adequate backup, restoration, and recovery of data and systems hosted either on or off campus as well as ensuring these mechanisms are adequately maintained by cloud computing service providers under the oversight of the University’s Information Technology Services organization.

This service is available to select members of the Framingham State University administration who are either accountable or responsible for the strategy, planning, architecture, and day-to-day operation of physical and virtual data centers, including on-premises, remote, and cloud-based data centers including the upkeep, security, performance or monitoring of them Information Technology Services, Facilities and Capital Planning, Campus Police or Executive Staff.

• Planning and coordination with the organizations responsible for the facilities and environmental controls that the data center are reliant upon in order to remain secure and operational by ensuring that facilities are adequately equipped, monitored, maintained, and periodically re-evaluated for any upgrades or replacements to the physical plant.
• Physical security and limited access to only necessary and approved individuals.
• Promotes proper planning to ensure scalability, adequate capacity and limits any risk associated with changes.
• Ensures appropriate alerting mechanisms are in place in the event of a pending issue or failure.
• Provides the ability to recover in the event of an unavoidable issue or failure, limit downtime and minimize potential damage associated with a facilities related or physical security incident.

All data center management incidents and requests must be submitted by a University staff member in a role that oversees, manages, or supports the University's data centers.

Click on "Request Assistance" or "Report an Incident" from this web page in order to provide us with some basic information about your unmet or anticipated need and then submit your request.

Policy on Restricting and Monitoring Physical Access to Information Technology Facilities

Within three business days, someone from Information Technology Services (ITS) will respond to your request.  Depending on the complexity of the request and workload within ITS, a target fulfillment date will be set between two and four weeks out from the initial request.  Priority will be given to urgent requests where warranted and efforts will be made to expedite the turnaround time for these requests as may be necessary.