FAS Information Technology

FAS Information Technology Oracle database instance is available to all departments within FAS. In general FAS Information Technology does not charge for departmental requests which conform to the standard requirements set forth by this service catalog. Should a department have exceptional requirements which go beyond the scope of this document, a specified agreement may be needed to define service and establish costs if deemed necessary by the FAS IT administration.

All requests are reviewed by FAS IT administration and approved or denied based on the scope of the project and the availability of resources.

FAS Information Technology provides the following services for database hosting.

• Individual Oracle account administration and maintenance
• Development and production environments
• Monitoring
• Security (including patches and server upkeep)
• Reports on errors (as well as help determining whether cause is related to the application or the database)
• General consultation on database/application issues

Departmental Requirements

• Requests are honored on a departmental level (we currently do not support databases for single individuals)
• Application upkeep is the responsibility of the local departmental DBA.
• The department must provide FAS IT with the contact information to their DBA
• FAS IT reserves the right to take offline any application accessing the databases that is causing system-wide issues in order to maintain stability.
• Departments entering into agreements with third-party vendors must plan for long-term support as FAS IT will not take up support of applications that were not specifically designed or managed by FAS IT staff.
• FAS IT requires cooperation with any internal or third-party DBA in terms of application management, development, and maintenance. Failure to follow specific requests, recommendations or other requirements may result in termination of database hosting.
• All DBAs are required to be subscribed to the developers’ mailing list for notifications of downtimes, maintenance windows and outages.

Quotas

FAS Information Technology does not generally assign specific quotas to the database system. This said, should a particular database become excessively large in comparison to the storage capacity of the system, FAS IT reserves the right to contact the department and consult on usage of space to ensure maximum efficiency.

Backups and Retrievals

All FAS databases are backed up on a nightly basis. In the event that critical information is inadvertently corrupted or deleted, please contact the FAS IT Service Desk (495-9000 or help@fas.harvard.edu) to request that the data be retrieved.  Retrievals are available for 14 days after the data was last backed up. Retrieval requests can take several days to process. Please note that any data that you receive and then subsequently delete between consecutive nightly backups will not be available for retrieval.

Technical Consultation

FAS IT provides basic technical consultation on a best effort basis. Local DBAs may write to help@fas.harvard.edu with technical questions that will be handled on a case-by-case basis. FAS IT stresses the best-effort level of support for technical questions as it is the responsibility of the participating department to assign ownership and management of the database to a staff member (or outside consultant) with the knowledge to create, maintain and otherwise upkeep the working status of the database.

Contact Information

For questions on issues involving databases, or to request information about migrating an existing database to the FAS system, please contact help@fas.harvard.edu for details or to request service.

Support for non-Oracle databases

FAS IT does not generally provide support for non-Oracle environments. However, should a department wish to request database support in a different product (MySQL, Perl, Lamp), please write to help@fas.harvard.edu with the details of your request and these will be handled on a case-by-case basis.

Centralized Filemaker Server

FAS IT provides a centralized Filemaker server to host Filemaker 8 databases for FAS departments.

Database requirements:

• Filemaker databases moved to the centralized server must be password protected.
• Administration, upkeep, and changes to the actual database are the sole responsibility of the participating department.
• It is the responsibility of the participating department to adhere to any rules of the college, or laws which affect the length of time for which data must be kept. FAS Information Technology will not monitor any such end-user rules/regulations.
• Databases must be compatible with version 8 of FileMaker (version 7 and above). If a database is not compatible with version 8, the local instance of FileMaker must be upgraded before any move can occur.
• Upgrades, migration and other changes necessary before transfer to the FAS IT Filemaker server are the sole responsibility of the participating department.

Procedural Details

• Departments interested in moving an existing database to the centralized server must contact the FAS IT Service Desk (contact info listed above) to begin the process.
• The server team will require two to five business days to coordinate moves of databases to the centralized server and with use the departmental contacts to facilitate the moves for users.
• Moves will be coordinated with the FAS IT Service Desk to minimize impact to the end-user experience.

Services provided

• FAS IT will fully maintain the centralized server (end-users will not have to maintain any hardware).
• FAS IT provides standard backup services with nightly incremental backups and weekly full backups.
• FileMaker software is provided free of cost to FAS departments, faculty and staff.

Services not Provided

• Neither FAS Information Technology nor the FAS Service Desk will provide any assistance with creating, managing, or data entry for databases.
• It is the responsibility of the participating department to ensure that their staff be versed in FileMaker and have working knowledge of the current version.
• If the participating department has protocols, procedures, or any other rules for management of the data, it is their responsibility to make sure that their users adhere to these rules.

Maintenance Windows

For regularly scheduled maintenance, FAS IT will provide at least 24 hours of advanced notice via email. FAS IT will email the departmental contact should an emergency maintenance be required with short notice

Notification Processing

FAS IT will provide email notifications for updates, clarifications, planned maintenance outages, as well as reports on unscheduled outages. Both planned and unplanned outages on a global level (involving services beyond the ones described herein, but affecting them) will also be posted on the FAS IT website home page and on the telephone system status line available at 617-495-9000

Outages or intermittencies specific to the FAS IT Filemaker server will be announced via an email list which will be maintained by FAS IT.

Response time

FAS IT will provide response times based on the severity of the outage, as well as the time of day. During normal business hours (defined as 9am to 5pm), FAS IT will dispatch technicians within 30 minutes of an externally reported or internally monitored outage. During non-business hours, FAS IT will dispatch a technician within 4 hours to address the outage. Recorded network status can obtained and possible service interruptions can be reoprted by calling 617-495-9000. Calls that are not deemed to be mission-critical during evening hours will be queued for service during normal business hours. As a point of clarification, while Filemaker itself is not considered a service which will receive immediate support after-hours, if the service is interrupted by a larger issue which is caused by failure of mission-critical systems, service may be restored after hours as a result of that scenario.

Cost of Service

At this time, FAS Information Technology does not charge for this service for FAS departments, faculty and staff. Costs may be incurred by non-FAS groups wishing to participate and will be determined on a case-by-case basis taking into account the scope of the request.