ISS manages approximately 400 servers, both physical and virtual, housed in the central UA data center. The majority of the physical servers are Intel-based, Dell hardware, either rack-mounted or blades. Most of these systems run either Windows Server or Red Hat Linux, either directly on the hardware or as virtual machines hosted on VMware ESX or vSphere. Virtualizing Windows and Linux servers is a purposeful direction for ISS and almost half of these enterprise servers are currently running as virtual machines. ISS also manages two Apple (MacOS) servers.

In addition to the systems noted above, ISS also manages one IBM z-Series mainframe server (z/OS) to host some legacy batch and CICS systems, and three IBM p-Series servers (AIX) for the UA and LCCC PeopleSoft ERP systems.

ISS performs regular backups of all systems with IBM Tivoli Storage Manager. Proper availability of systems and services is monitored through a number of tools, including some custom-developed scripts. The primary monitoring tool is Groundwork, based on a collection of open-source software packages.

Many academic and administrative departments also make use of the data center environment for housing their own specialized systems. ISS manages some of these systems as well. As part of ongoing virtualization efforts, we also offer VM hosting for department servers on the enterprise VM systems. This hosting includes flexible chargeback options, system backups using the TSM system, and management by ISS staff.