CITC Migrates Secure FTP and PGP to New Virtual Servers
Volume 12 - Number 9 * September 2009
By Brian Richman, Programmer/Analyst, EIS Technical Services Team
Several of CITC’s secure file transfer and encryption/decryption servers had a rough spring and early summer as we struggled with hardware and network failures. These failures were caused by our ongoing use of some very outdated equipment that was fast becoming unable to run the latest versions of the software involved and was also having a difficult time keeping up with a substantial increase in use.
We currently transfer and encrypt/decrypt files for the business side of the University several dozen times a day to and from a variety of locations. We clearly needed a solution that would deliver the stability that the business units needed as well as one that provided the technical continuity that all aspects of the operation demanded.
For some time now, CITC has been implementing Virtual Machine technology in the shape of VMware servers for departmental use around UNT. As the new semester began the switch was thrown and a new Virtual Machine came online for production use. With an updated release of the UNIX operating system that the previous system had utilized, the jump was made to virtualization as this offered a good fit of application processing demand and appropriate resource use.
By moving to a virtual environment for this suite of applications, CITC can now decommission two older servers that we no longer need to spend money on maintenance contracts – the price of which seems to go up at each renewal. These older servers used close to a thousand watts of power consumption each, while the replacement virtual system only uses a few dozen watts of power to run on a physical server that has less than 500 watts of power draw in total. This provides the university with ongoing savings in power and air conditioning costs and is also helping the environment by using fewer non-renewable resources. These gains for all involved, for the environment, for UNT – and for the bottom line, coupled with the ability to continue working within a fully supported environment means we all win as a result of this long overdue change.
“Go Mean Green.”
Originally published September 2009 -- Please note that information published in Benchmarks Online is likely to degrade over time, especially links to various Websites. To make sure you have the most current information on a specific topic, it may be best to search the UNT Website - http://www.unt.edu . You can also search Benchmarks Online - http://www.unt.edu/benchmarks/archives/back.htm as well as consult the UNT Helpdesk - http://www.unt.edu/helpdesk/ Questions and comments should be directed to benchmarks@unt.edu.