Overview
The UO Drupal Hosting Service provides an environment and infrastructure supporting the deployment of Drupal-developed websites and applications in use by the University of Oregon. The service consists of an Aegir-based Drupal site management and provisioning system managed and maintained by the UO Drupal Steering Committee working in conjunction with Information Services.
- The UO Drupal Hosting Service is a free service sponsored by Information Services and the UO Drupal Hosting Steering Committee.
- The site management interface for the service can be found at the UO Drupal Hosting site. Access to this site requires the use of the Administrator VPN (FortiClient).
- Access to the service can be provided to University IT professionals after consultation with members of the UO Drupal Hosting Steering Committee.
- Basic user support for Aegir functions and processes is provided by UO Drupal Steering Committee. System-level support is provided by Information Services.
Terms of Service
Use of the UO Drupal Hosting Service requires a full or part-time staff member employed by the UO and tasked with supporting the site(s) deployed on the hosting service. This employee is also required to have a job title reflecting a role in Information Technology, have web development as an officially-sanctioned job function, and have demonstrable skill in the development of Drupal-based websites. UO student employees may assist with the development and maintenance of a website if sponsored by an employee meeting the above criteria who is responsible for the ongoing upkeep of the site.
- If the support employee leaves their position and the department is left without support it is the department's responsibility to contact the Drupal Hosting Steering Committee to work out a support plan for the interim until the position can be filled. Any deviations from this must be approved by the Steering Committee.
- Web sites that are not allowed in Drupal Hosting include those for student projects, student clubs, or personal web sites of any kind.
- Those seeking to use the Drupal Hosting service are required to attend a consultation with members of the Drupal Hosting Steering Committee to determine the suitability of the service for the proposed website. Other solutions for website hosting at the University of Oregon may be proposed.
- Use of the UO Drupal Hosting Service constitutes agreement to adhere to all Terms of Service for University of Oregon academic web publishing and collaboration services on the Terms of Service for Academic Web Publishing and Collaboration Services article.
Data Allocation and Site life-expectancy
Each site has the following resources assigned by default. Any request for additional resources should be directed to the UO Drupal Support team.
- File system max allocated space: 1 GB
- Database max allocated space: 1 GB
- Max file upload limit: 32 MB
Inactive Sites
Sites that are used for development purposes and reside on the development/test infrastructure may be removed by the hosting service administrators after 6 months of inactivity.
Production sites that are inactive for more than one year may be removed from the system. Archived sites will be made available as TAR.GZ files of the file system and database export of the site. These will be available for an additional year after which time they will be deleted permanently.
Insecure Sites
Sites that are deemed insecure by the UO Drupal Hosting Steering Committee or the Security group within Information Services may be disabled and/or set inactive depending on the severity of the security issue. Prior to any action being taken reasonable efforts will be made to contact the site administrator.
Sites must run on a version of Drupal not tagged as End of Life by Drupal.org.
Support
All support for questions or issues regarding the Drupal Hosting Service must be initiated by using the Request Help button on the Web Development & Hosting service page.
The RT queue, monitored by members of the Drupal Hosting Service Steering Committee, is intended to allow for troubleshooting of issues related to the hosting environment and/or infrastructure. Issues that have no discernible relation to the hosting environment or infrastructure are considered the responsibility of the client, and are thus inappropriate for the support queue. The Steering Committee is presently developing documentation to assist developers with commonly encountered issues.
The Steering Committee will reply to appropriate tickets within one business day of submission, and where workload allows, provide guidance and suggestions to clients facing difficulties that are not deemed to be related to the hosting environment or infrastructure as time permits.
Issues that occur after normal business hours and are deemed to be critical issues should be escalated to the Systems group hotline. Only the defined technical contacts for a hosted site may escalate an issue to the hotline.
Announcements
Users of the Drupal Hosting Service will be automatically subscribed to the Drupal Hosting mailing list. This list will be used as the communication avenue for disseminating information regarding the service. We will post notices about issues, upgrades, planned and unplanned downtime as well as any other pertinent information regarding the service. It is the responsibility of the user to disseminate this information to pertinent stakeholders of the sites they manage.
Maintenance Window
The UO Drupal Hosting Service will use the currently defined maintenance window as follows:
- Tuesday 5:00 a.m. - 7:00 a.m.
The maintenance period will not be used every week and notification will be sent to the UO Drupal Hosting mailing list at least one week prior to performing any maintenance that will incur, or the possibility of incurring, site downtime.
Although we have a standard maintenance time period defined, extenuating circumstances may arise that require the service to be unavailable. These circumstances will be communicated to the stakeholders of the Drupal Hosting Service as soon as possible in order to facilitate the planning process for users.
All users are responsible for reading and adhering to the Terms of Service and all UO Policies for the UO Drupal Hosting Service.
Violations of these policies will be referred to the appropriate authorities.
Need help?
Please submit your questions in a ticket on the Web Development & Hosting Support service page.