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Guidelines

Guidelines

The ITS Private Cloud guidelines are pivotal for ensuring secure, efficient, and reliable use of infrastructure resources. Adhering to these standards helps maintain the integrity and performance of the ITS Private Cloud.

  • VPN: The ITS Private Cloud offers a VPN service that enables client to securily access their virtual resources and other orchestration tools like the ITS Private Cloud API. https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/1278738466

  • Virtual Machine Snapshot Management: According VSS best practices (based on VMware best practices), the maximum lifetime for a VM snapshot should be 72 hours. https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/700088474

  • VMware Tools: All virtual machines running on ITS Private Cloud are required to have VMware tools (or equivalent) installed and up-to-date. https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/700711415

  • Virtual Machine Disk: https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/1242923013

    • Recommended Virtual Machine Disks maximum size is 6TB.

    • Each domain has at least one SSD and one HDD storage clusters are provided. HDD is default if not set.

  • Virtual Machine Memory:

    • Recommended Virtual Machine Maximum memory is 256GB.

  • Virtual Machine Administrator: All virtual machines running on ITS Private Cloud are required to have VM Administrator up-to-date. https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/1300627457

  • Virtual Machine Templates: Remove Virtual Machine Network Adapters unmount Floppy/ISO Images from Virtual CD/DVD Devices. https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/1387757572

  • ISO Images: To ensure the execution of the vSphere Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS) and to offer High Availability (HA) for your Virtual Machine, it may be necessary to automatically unmount ISO images from your VMs. https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/700711413

  • User Storage: The ITS Private Cloud offers a VSS User Storage aka VSKEY-STOR service that enables client to store files such as virtual machines exports, import files, ISO images, inventory files produced by the ITS Private Cloud orchestration tools. https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/1743421441

  • Virtual Machine Restore Requests: Allow you to restore your virtual machine from storage snapshots. Regularly back up critical data using UTORrecover. Use Restore Requests only in emergencies, as they are not a substitute for file-level backups or vCenter snapshots. https://eis-vss.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/VSSPublic/pages/1836679170

  • Security. Under the shared responsibility model for security, the ITS Private Cloud is responsible for protecting the infrastructure, which includes hardware, software, networking, and facilities. Clients deploying VMs are responsible for managing the guest operating system, including updates and security patches, VMware Tools, any application software or utilities they install on the instances, and the configuration of the local firewall on each instance.

  • User Account Status: In the ITS Private Cloud, user accounts are classified based on activity and group membership. An account is marked as "idle" if there has been no activity for 100 days. If an account remains idle for 2 years, it is reclassified as "dormant." Additionally, an account is considered "dangling" if it is not listed as a member in any group’s group list. These classifications help maintain account security and resource management within the ITS Private Cloud environment.

 

 

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