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Application Administration

Service Description

The Application Administration service is a professional service that provides hosting, maintenance, 24/7 monitoring, and support services to University of Illinois clients. The Application Administration service provides professional support services that leverage industry best practices for supporting and maintaining complex multi-tiered enterprise applications.

The following is a sampling of the types of services that can be provided to customers of this service:

  • 24/7 monitoring and surveillance services to provide highly available systems.
  • 24/7 service desk to provide continuous customer care services.
  • Database hosting and support services. Database software support for Oracle and Microsoft SQL Server is available for any release currently supported by the database vendor or installed in the AITS environment. Both Oracle and SQL Server DBMS are fully supported by the DBA team. Oracle RDBMS is covered by our University site license; SQL Server may require licensing fees depending on the service footprint.
  • Web and application server hosting and support. AITS standards for web application server include Tomcat/Apache for internally developed applications and the Oracle Fusion Middleware for vended applications. Other supported web servers for vended applications include Microsoft IIS and Citrix for client applications.
  • Server hosting and support services. AITS supports Sun Solaris, Linux, and Windows platforms. The current recommended server platform by AITS is Linux system.
  • All Application Services are securely maintained and patched in regular cycles to provide a high degree of security to protect sensitive data and keep the applications functioning properly and smoothly.
  • Reliable application services aimed at the highest availability to end users. A standard Sunday morning maintenance window from 6 a.m. - 12 p.m. is utilized where needed to apply critical updates, maintenance or upgrades to application services.
  • Redundant, distributed architectures are utilized where supported to keep the highest availability to end users.

Key understanding of system performance and tuning services are provided to keep the applications running as efficiently as possible for a better user experience.

Application hosting is provided which is a reliable, monitored, secure, and managed solution with the flexibility and performance of a distributed computing solution.

The Application Administration team has extensive experience with a wide variety of application software technologies, tools and platforms including but not limited to the following:

  • Application Deployment technologies including but not limited to Oracle Fusion Middleware, Apache/Tomcat, and Microsoft IIS .Net framework.
  • Database technologies that include Oracle and SQL Server.
  • Operating systems including Windows, Unix and Linux with Linux serving as the preferred standard.

Benefits of using the Application Administration service include:

  • Services can be provided to University customers for nearly any imaginable technology.
  • Cost avoidance for customers who do not have to maintain and provide their own in-house resources and skills for performing this type of technical support work on a full time basis when a full-time resource is not required.
  • No need for customers to have to acquire, maintain or support their own in-house, costly Web server(s) or platform infrastructure.
  • Solutions that comply with industry standard deployment best practices, security standards/policies and accessibility policies and statutes.
  • Periodic vulnerability scans, remediation and audits.
  • 24/7 support and availability for customer applications.
  • All applications and sensitive application data are securely maintained and backed up in case of a disastrous event.

Hours of Availability

This service is available to customers 24/7, excluding planned outages, maintenance windows and unavoidable events. Maintenance windows are used only when needed for planned changes that have gone through the AITS Change Control Process. In addition to the standard AITS maintenance windows, site-specific and service-specific changes may be coordinated with customers at non-standard times.

Standard maintenance windows are defined as:

  • 6 a.m. to 12 p.m. each Sunday when application usage is at its lowest
  • After 5 p.m. every Tuesday and Thursday, unless business needs to make a change during business hours
  • The second Thursday of each month from 5:30 pm -11:00 pm for patching Microsoft servers
  • 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. three Sundays a year for routine Solaris and Linux maintenance

Customer Responsibilities

  • Identify a primary point of contact to work with AITS in coordinating the activities being performed by the service
  • All new work over 250 hours that could potentially benefit other departments should be initiated through the ITPC process.
  • Support requests relating to the use of the service will be initiated by opening an incident or request ticket with the AITS Service Desk

How Do We Charge?

Service Level Agreements detailing projected hours and cost will be worked out with each customer depending on the desired level of support. 

 

 

For further information or to request any service contact the AITS Service Desk

servicedeskaits@uillinois.edu
217-333-3102 (Urbana)
312-996-4806 (Chicago)

A service representative will contact you to discuss your needs.