Monday November 23 2009
information technology central services at the university of michigan

services

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Please note: Services listed on this page are available to schools, colleges, and departments of the University of Michigan. They are not available to individuals at U of M, nor to individuals or groups not affiliated with the University of Michigan. Billing requires a six-digit account or the appropriate chartfield information. Please contact webmaster@umich.edu for more information.

Wasup - Web Application Sign Up (Beta)

Wasup is a tool which allows users to create instances of popular web services like Drupal and MediaWiki. We may expand the list of web application offerings in the future based on community feedback. The UM webmaster team is not intending to compete with any existing solutions, or in-house projects. We have several motives for offering this service:

  • reduce duplicated or competing infrastructures
  • help to reduce the amount of times that people have to re-invent the wheel
  • easier for campus users to get their own web applications, without needing to download, install, and maintain it themselves
  • easier to track the use of web applications on our infrastructure, and upgrade centrally when necessary when a security vulnerability is disclosed
  • meet the needs of a large cross section of campus

Units, groups, and departments at the University of Michigan can use Wasup. A 6-digit account number is required in order to use Wasup to sign up for services. In order to for a person to sign their group up for a service, the person either needs to be a University of Michigan faculty or staff member, or they need to contact webmaster to be added to a list of other authorized people.

There is no charge at this time. Account numbers are collected for verification and registration purposes. In the future there may be a charge for applications similar to the fee for the virtual hosting service. If a fee is established, current users would be able to opt out. Archives of their service instances would be available to help them migrate their site elsewhere.

You can use Wasup to sign up for various web services now.

Virtual Hosting:

A virtual host provides web service at a specific domain name while stilll offering the access control and management functionality of an AFS directory. It optionally includes functionality not available on the "www.umich.edu" gateway servers. Features include:

  • Apache on hardened Linux
  • Flexible Apache configuration
  • IP or name-based depending on requirements
  • Multi-homed ( 2 machines, more if load requires ) to maximize load balancing and availability.
  • Machines located in multiple production server rooms.
  • 24 x 7 expert monitoring
  • Includes PHP and MySQL service if desired.
  • SSL Available
  • Kerberos password authentication with pts authorization available ( requires SSL )
  • Configurable monthly log reports ( using analog ) unprocessed logs available for 6 months
  • Files served from IFS or local disk depending on your needs
  • Mail forwarding available
  • $50.00 per year
  • Included with Application Hosting Service

Current hosts include:

Note: Sub-domain requests for the umich.edu domain are governed by the Standard Practice Guide section 601.15-1. The creation of such a domain requires the written authorization of the unit director, provided to the UM hostmaster: ( hostmaster@umich.edu ).

To start the process of setting up a group IFS home directory visit this page.

Once you have an approved domain name and Group IFS home directory, sign up for virtual hosting here.

Web Application Hosting:

  • Same configuration as Virtual Hosting ( on different servers )
  • Supports authoring in virtually any programming or scripting language (CGIs), php, and mod_perl.
  • Includes SSL Certificate
  • Kerberos password authentication available
  • Development/testing environment identical to production servers.
  • Includes 1 gigabyte of Oracle tablespace on our production Oracle servers (and access to development Oracle tablespace).
  • Additional Oracle space available
  • Debugging and security auditing support included.
  • $480.00/year ( $40.00/month )

SSL Server Certificates:

  • InstantSSL Certificates (128-bit): typically $35.00/year
      Most browsers support InstantSSL certificates; this means your users will not have to do anything special to use your encrypted site. It may be necessary to install InstantSSL root certs on your server; these certificates and documentation to install them will be included with your server's certificate. [ InstantSSL Root CA Certificates ]
  • Entrust Certificates (128-bit): $120.00/year
      Most browsers come with an Entrust root CA certificate; this means your users will not have to do anything special to use your encrypted site. [ Entrust Root CA Certificates ]
  • UM-Signed Certificates: available at no cost
      We have been working with the UMCE Identification, Authentication, and Authorization (IAA) team to create a UM Web Server root CA. If your users are mostly members of the UM community or are willing to install our root CA certificate you can offer 128 bit SSL encryption on your web server at no additional cost to you. [ UMWEB CA Certificate ]

Use the Web Application Sign Up (Wasup) service to request one of the certificates described above. You will need to generate a CSR by following your server's instructions. You will also need a 6-digit University shortcode and name of the authorized signer for billing.

We no longer offer Verisign certificates. If you need such a cert, they are available from Verisign directly.

Database Hosting & Consulting

Our Oracle servers provide the back-end for the University's accounting and billing system, several database courses, mstores.umich.edu, and numerous administrative systems.

  • 24 x 7 monitoring
  • DBA on-call
  • Nightly hot backups
  • Database space included with Application Hosting Service

Our MySQL hosting service as proven to be a popular option for PHP developers and anyone interested in a fast, reliable query-optimized database solution. On our mysql service, we're hosting the preferences and session data for mail.umich.edu, the token and preference data for Spam Busters, data for managing friend accounts, and many other web-applications.

For developers, we also host an instance of phpMyAdmin.

More information about our mysql service is available.

Application Development:

We develop mission critical tools, applications, and web sites for campus.

Our software projects include: directory.umich.edu, webfs, www.umich.edu news management utility, umce accounts, spg, online uniqname/account creation, cosign, mod_ometer, the ITCS showcase online catalog, and many others. Please see our software section for source, documentation, and access to our public CVS tree repository.

Consulting:

We are often called upon to provide assistance and expertise around campus. This takes many forms, but includes: webmaster mail direct support, gateway team, wolverine access support, providing accessibility assessments, standards, wwwsig, etc.