Infrastructure Services | IT Infrastructure at Penn State

Cabling and Wiring

Cable and Wiring Infrastructure allows for the design, installation, maintenance, and support of Layer 1 of the University Enterprise Network.

Cellular Infrastructure

All cellular services at Penn State are provided by third parties. However, Penn State IT can assist University organizations with their cellular accounts.

Cloud Services

Penn State Cloud Services provides access to industry leading public cloud computing platforms to enable easy and rapid acquisition, development, and scaling of IT resources. Cloud Services let you focus on developing value-added services and solutions, while reducing the administrative burden associated with purchasing, powering, and maintaining infrastructure.

CrashPlan

CrashPlan makes backing up and restoring files from all devices, including external hard drives, fast and easy. The program utilizes a centrally located appliance for administration and authentication, cloud for data storage, and a client on the end point machine.

Data Center Operations

Penn State’s Data Centers are state-of-the-art facilities where departments and units can securely house their research and business data. The Data Center Operations Team manages daily operations and access to these facilities.

Database Solutions

Penn State’s database services help protect and maintain the University’s data repositories, ensuring critical data is secure and recoverable.

DNS/DHCP/IPAM

Support for Domain Name Service (DNS), Dynamic Host Control Protocol (DHC), and IP Address Management (IPAM).

Enterprise Network

The Enterprise Network service provides underpinning network infrastructure for enabling education, research, and business services across the Penn State enterprise and throughout the world.

File Serving

Non-PASS file storage service used primarily by Penn State IT and University Libraries.

Linux and Unix Server OS Administration

The Linux and Unix Server OS Administration service provides Linux and Unix servers as a service to members of the Penn State community. This includes deploying and maintaining systems for administrative and academic services.

Load Balancing

The Load Balancing service monitors and routes network traffic to ensure Penn State websites and enterprise applications, such as news.psu.edu and LionPATH, perform efficiently and reliably. Balancing traffic across available resources avoids bottlenecks and increases efficiency. Load balancing also increases reliability by routing traffic away from overloaded or unresponsive resources. The service supports many protocols, including CIFS, DNS, FTP, SQL, RDP, DNS, SSH, LDAP, RPC, IMAP, POP, and SMTP.

Monitoring Tools

The service provides around-the-clock, proactive monitoring of Penn State’s enterprise hardware and software infrastructure and critical computing systems.

PASS

Universally accessible disk space and file storage space are available for all Penn Staters, departments, and courses.

RedHat Satellite Server

Red Hat Satellite is an IT infrastructure management tool primarily used to monitor and manage Red Hat Enterprise Linux environments.

Splunk

Splunk is a cross-platform aggregation and search engine that allows you to view data and logs from many different sources in a one-stop-shop for business intelligence and powerful search capabilities. Splunk stores machine data and allows you to generate graphs, reports, alerts, dashboards, and visualizations.

Supporting Technologies

Supporting Technologies provides behind the scenes services like RADIUS for Wireless and VPN (Virtual Private Network), Network Time Protocol (NTP), and the Web Proxy Server.

University Backup Service

UBI (University Backup for Infrastructure) provides a remote file backup service for data on Penn State servers, network attached storage, and other infrastructure systems. Multiple versions of files can be backed-up and later restored in the event of file corruption, accidental deletion, or other damage sustained to the original file. The primary copy is stored on the University Park campus, and a copy of all data is replicated off-site to improve resiliency and availability of the service.

VM Hosting Services

The VM Hosting service provides cost-effective, reliable Virtual Machines (VM) for departments, colleges, and research units at Penn State University. VM Hosting is responsible for the virtual hosting environment while those using the hosted service are responsible for the setup and maintenance of the operating systems and applications installed on hosted virtual servers.

Windows Server OS Administration

The Windows Server OS Administration service provides Windows servers as a service to members of the Penn State community. This includes deploying and maintaining systems for administrative and academic services.

Wireless

The Wireless service provides for the design, installation, and maintenance of the Penn State wireless network. Supporting multiple wireless protocols, authenticated access is provided for Penn State users (the “psu” SSID), and no-cost guest access (in partnership with AT&T) is provided for visitors to the University who do not have Penn State credentials (the “attwifi” SSID). Eduroam (education roaming), the secure, worldwide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community, is also provided/supported (the “eduroam” SSID).

Windows Update Service (WSUS)

Windows Update Service

The Update Service is a Penn State service that supports automatic updates for Microsoft Windows operating system upgrades. For more information, IT personnel can go to KB0016782 in the Penn State IT Knowledge Base.