Last update: February 21, 2024
Service Description
The National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA) assesses a standard Infrastructure Support (ISF) to provide advanced technology services, and support computing infrastructure and networking services conducive to the needs of employees working in a high-performance computing environment that the NCSA facility provides. Services include project software support, ticketing systems, email services, wiki services, backup services, cybersecurity services, machine room support, advanced interaction space, and high-speed networking outside the specific needs of high-performance computing systems. A complete Service Listing is available upon request.
Charging Policy
Internal Users
- Users are assessed the ISF on a monthly basis at $233.62* automatically broken out over all the funds a staff member is paid on, based on their 100% allocation. These ISF charges are assessed “one month in arrears” so actual labor charges are used as the allocation basis.
- Internal user is defined as the ultimate source of funds within the University of Illinois System, or whose funds flow through the U of I system through sponsored programs. These include academic, research, administrative, and auxiliary areas which purchase the service to support their work at the system. Federal grants administered by the universities are considered internal customers.
- All NCSA technical employees, faculty, students, as well as non-NCSA technical employees located within NCSA facilities, utilize and should be assessed for these NCSA ISF charges.
- However, we have historically forced some fees to be paid with an ICR for grants that didn’t have the ISF language included in the budget. Although in more recent times, we have been including the ISF fee in all submitted proposals.
- For graduate or undergraduate technical students with less than $500 of labor charges in a given month, the fee is waived for that month, to prevent ISF charges from exceeding their labor charges for that month, with the additional basis that if their labor charges were that low for the month, there is a presumption that they did not utilize the ISF services very much in that month. With this in mind, waivers can be granted for these students, faculty, and staff that are not using the high-performance computing system services.
- External Users
- NCSA does not offer Infrastructure Support to external users.
- External user is defined as an organization or individual whose ultimate source of funds is outside of the U of I System. External users include students and any members of faculty or staff acting in a personal capacity, and the general public. Affiliated hospitals or other universities are considered external users unless the System has subcontracted with them as part of a grant or contract.
*Biennially, the ISF service rate is reviewed and recalculated to ensure that customers are provided with the tools and infrastructure to allow employees to stay efficient and effective in their roles. If there is a reason to exempt an employee, a justification needs to be provided and a waiver can be generated by the approving officer.
Billing
The NCSA Accountant will run the ISF Tool around the middle of the month after the monthly financial statements are released. The processed ISF charges are assessed for the previous month and consider all PZAREDS transactions that occurred. This process results in 1 month in arrears (e.g. April 2021 ISF charges will be posted in May 2021).
For non-NCSA departments, ISF Invoices will be sent out to the applicable contact person on file.
Contacts
For Technical Questions and Waiver Applications, please reach out to Amber Munds (amunds@illinois.edu).
For Financial and Billing Concerns, please reach out to the NCSA Business Office (faaccount@ncsa.illinois.edu) or Richelle Lu-Rivera (rlu@illinois.edu)
For Proposal Inclusions, please reach out to the Proposal Development Staff (NCSA-proposals@lists.ncsa.illinois.edu)
Service Listing as of July 1, 2022
Identity/Access Management Services | |
CiLogon | NCSA is paying the full software support rate for CILogon, so that all projects and services at NCSA can make use of this IDP solution. CILogon will allow NCSA to expand services to federation and multiple authentication sources. For more information please see the CILogon information. |
IDP NCSA Support | NCSA operates a web-based IDP that will allow remote authentication for services and websites that are properly setup. This site works with the CILogon software and provides connection to DUO for two-factor authentication. |
LDAP Support (not project OUS) | NCSA operates an LDAP system to support the authorization of people on sites and projects within NCSA. This service allows for group and user management for access to information. |
User Management for NCSA Employees (IDDS) | New NCSA employees are processed to create NCSA accounts. This service mirrors project users, but is supported by ISF |
Kerberos Support | ISF provides the support for Kerberos as one-factor of authentication in the environment |
DUO Support | ISF provides the funding for DUO and the staff to answer questions about DUO for the second-factor authentication at NCSA. Physical tokens are available upon request. |
Identity website | The identity website is the location where staff can change their passwords and manage information about their identity at NCSA |
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Security Operations | |
Office network monitoring | Security operations monitors all networks at NCSA. ISF covers the monitoring and response to systems connected to the office network within the NCSA building and NPCF |
3003 host monitoring | For machines within 3003 that are not related to major projects, ISF covers the hardware and staff time to monitor those systems for security incidents. |
Service network monitoring | All systems running general NCSA services are monitored both in network traffic and log by security under the ISF funds |
Security mitigation | When something is noticed in logs or reports, and when new major security issues are released, IRST works with staff to mitigate or respond to that information. |
Security training | Security offers lunch and learn or other training to staff as needed throughout the year. |
IT Audit support | During the regular set of IT audits each year there is a level of effort covered by ISF to keep information available and to create new information in case of problems. |
Lastpass Support | NCSA has decided that Lastpass is the appropriate way to manage passwords. Accounts and hardware tokens are available from NCSA. This is enterprise support and does provide the ability to share security information between groups at NCSA. |
NCSA Bastion support | NCSA security operates the Ceberus bastion hosts in the NCSA environment to allow two-factor access into the management portions of the NCSA network. |
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Infrastructure Operations | |
VMWare for Infrastructure Services | NCSA operates a VMWare cluster and vSphere for the support of NCSA services across the organization. This cluster only hosts VMs that operate ISF services in the portion covered by ISF. The management services can expand to manage clusters outside of ISF services. |
VMWare hardware | ISF supports the hardware and storage for the VMWare cluster that supports ISF services. |
RHEL Licenses | RHEL site license for NCSA is currently covered under ISF. If you are in need of RHEL software or support you can be provided an account. |
Public-Linux | Public-linux is a shared hosted VM running a Linux environment to allow NCSA staff the ability to access other Linux hosts or operate basic functions. |
Mail services | NCSA operates mail servers for the purpose of sending mail to the campus relays that are addressed to ncsa.illinois.edu addresses. In addition, this mail service includes some programmatic mail elements that cannot move to campus. |
Mail list support | NCSA supports the ability to send mail via mailing lists. This service currently includes alias management for all historical mailing lists and the software side administration of the lists.ncsa.illinois.edu service. |
Web Services | NCSA offers websites for NCSA www and other sites that are related to the organizations within NCSA. These are not personal sites and are only offered using the current approved technologies. No management of content is included in this service. This includes the technical operation of the internal website for NCSA employee use. |
AFS operation | AFS is operated by NCSA for support of technologies like the web sites and for general small file-system data sharing. This is a limited resource and is not meant to be used for project data. |
Gitlab operation | Gitlab is operated as a service for private NCSA data with version control. This service can be used to support project data and person data that needs to be stored in a GIT environment and can’t be made available publicly. |
DNS/DHCP/Netact | NCSA networking operates DNS for the ncsa.illiois.edu domain. DHCP is provided on the office networks for management of laptop and desktop systems in the office space. Netact is part of this service to validate new systems added to the office space network. This also includes the operation of the firewalls that protect the NCSA office space network. |
Puppet for Infrastructure | Puppet is the configuration management for NCSA systems. This will cover the Puppet server and development for the system supported under ISF. This includes servers that support that infrastructure. |
NPCF Rack for operations | ISF covers the rack, floor spaces, power and cooling for the infrastructure that is offered in the NPCF building. |
mySQL for NCSA services | ISF supports the operation and system that operates mySQL for NCSA services and activities. This include hardware, software and service support. |
Ticket dispatch and management for NCSA services | NCSA has many tickets that are not part of a project, but need triage and dispatch. ISF covers that general NCSA ticket management, but not always the work that must be completed. This includes TMG and ICI staff that manage NCSA staff tickets. |
Networking monitoring | The network in the office spaces and 3003 is monitored and statistics are generated under the ISF funding. |
System monitoring and alerting for infrastructure systems | ISF covers the cost of monitoring and alerting for the systems in the NCSA infrastructure. This will pay the monitoring costs for both on-site and off-site solutions for system alerts. |
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Office and Shared Space Services | |
WAN connection for office and 3003 service machines | ISF covers all office networking at NCSA. This is the wired connection and the connection from shared spaces in the building. This service includes the portion of the WAN network that is used by those ports. This also includes general systems in 3003. |
Conference Room Technical Support | Staff will be funded to provide basic support and documentation for the technology found in the NCSA public conference rooms. This only covers those rooms above the first floor. |
Wired network in offices | NCSA provides up to two ports per person in each office. These wired ports are on the NCSA network and must be activated for use. |
Wireless in NCSA Building | Wireless is supported by Tech Services in the NCSA building, but all equipment growth and costs are covered by ISF. This includes the Illinois-guest network on the first floor. |
Conference Room technology (above the first floor) | NCSA conference rooms have technical aspects that have changed with the Hybrid and remote work environments that are found at NCSA. ISF covers the equipment in those conference rooms and covers the support for that equipment. This includes upgrades and only covers the conference rooms above the first floor. |
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NCSA General Services | |
Print Servers | NCSA provides print servers to allow staff to use the public copiers as printers for any work-related printing needs. |
Jira | NCSA offers Jira as a project tracking and ticketing service for all staff activities. |
Wiki | NCSA provides the NCSA wiki as a place to share and store information related to NCSA activities. This data is backed-up and supported by the ISF funds. |
Firewalls | NCSA has firewalls in place to help support the desktop and laptops on the NCSA network. It is recommended that all desktop and laptop machines on the network make use the NCSA firewall. |
VPN | NCSA provides a VPN service that allows staff to access the NCSA network from external locations. It is recommended by NCSA security that VPN is used for all work traffic that is off-site from NCSA. |
3003 general machine room services | ISF supports the basic operations within the NCSA 3003 machine room. This includes basic networking and racks for small numbers of general equipment. This also includes the support for racks, power and cooling for the infrastructure services in that room. |
NCSA general software licenses | NCSA provides some software that is purchased via the campus webstore for the department this software changes year-by-year based on the campus license agreements. Today this includes the Adobe full suite of tools, office tools and many system management tools provided to staff. This doesn’t include special licenses for individual software. |
Slack | NCSA provides a slack communication service as part of the internal communication at NCSA. This service will allow all NCSA staff to join using their @illinois.edu email. Chat and chat groups are managed by ISF funding. |
Jira programmatic extras | For some efforts on the administration side of the Jira system, NCSA provides programmatic extensions to Jira. This includes some plug-in work and bots that manage Jira activities. |
Desktop backups | NCSA expects that knowledge management is an important part of keeping the center running and the activities moving forward. To this end ISF supports the backup of all computing systems that hold NCSA data. This service is run by Code42, and supported by NCSA desktop support. |
System backups for operations | ISF covers a method to backup critical systems and operational elements in the infrastructure. These include, but are not limited to, network switches, infrastructure servers, authentication servers and primary puppet deployment elements. |