NC State University has been working to put together a pilot project to extend the capabilities for web hosting on campus. This is a preliminary report of the progress of the project, given at a "Lunch and Learn" series on Dec. 1 2009.

1. Web Hosting Pilot Project
December 1, 2009
Jason Austin & Sarah Noell

2. Overview of the Pilot
Early 2009, OIT staff submitted a proposal to Dr. Hoit for the
pilot.
Proposal was to investigate both internal and external
options for web hosting services for campus. The idea
would be to model the service after commercial services like
DreamHost, Host Gator....
OIT would be the reseller of the service and we are looking
to offer campus:
more flexibility / quicker response time
more packages / options / add-ons with easier installs
more control locally for units to better support their unit
goals (teaching, extension, etc)

3. The Pilot ....
External account with Host Gator
Standard package for dedicated servers; highlights:
4 Gb RAM
Bandwidth 1,500 Gb/month
cPanel / Fantastico
Unlimited databases, ftp accounts, cPanel accounts
Internal service with Hosted Services group
Will replicate the Host Gator service w/ exception of:
unlimited bandwidth
units could put student data on these servers

4. The Internal Pilot team . . .
Sarah Noell - OCC
Jen Riehle - OCC
Jason Austin - OCC
Everette Allen - OCC
Charles Brabec - ISO
Harry Nicholos - ISO
Dolores Leonard - ISO
Richard McLane - ITECS (Engineering)

5. Pilot participants
Four units in addition to OIT OT were selected for initial pilot
Division of Student Affairs
Leslie Dare
ITECS, College of Engineering
Mike Vysocka
College of Natural Resources
Charlie Morris
DELTA
David Howard
Outreach Technologies, OIT
Jason Austin

6. Status of Pilot
Testing currently underway with the external host
Units were asked to sign an SLA outlining terms of service;
No charge for pilot
Testers cannot put any student or other sensitive data
on external host
Support is limited, as OIT staff are learning as we go as
well.
providing some limited training
asking testers to document their findings
meet regularly to review / answer questions, etc
http://ot.ncsu.edu/webhostingpilot

7. What have our testers done?
Student Affairs has been the most active of our testers.
They have several sites running externally and have found
the service to be meeting their needs:
Division is able to unify their approach to web
development
Division's technology support dept provides centralized
access and control for account provisioning and support
More cost effective and is more feature-rich (has allowed
units to stay "on-campus" and not go contract with an
external provider).

8. Uses ....
College of Natural Resources:
Has not moved much to the external source, but see it has
providing a huge benefit for storage of their media. Space
issues consume time and money;
Ability to create multiple databases and schemas allows for
more support options within college;
College of Engineering:
Allows for services to be offered to units in a standardized
manner;
Provides flexibility without sacrificing efficiency.
One click installs is very powerful

9. Uses ....
DELTA:
Allows for exploration of new alternatives to support
teaching
WordPress, Drupal are two that have been tried out
Moodle is another option where things could be tested /
tried out before going production.
Outreach Technologies, OIT
Ability to provision own space and databases provides
flexibility on timelines;
One click installs for many open source packages
Ruby on Rails applications saving time
Keeping tools more secure and up-to-date by running them
in web hosted space. Restrictions/limitations of AFS no
longer an issue.

10. What value-add can OIT provide?
In addition to the flexibility that web hosting can provide our
campus, OIT can also provide some value-add services too:
WRAP-authentication
Levels of service
'Power user' to 'newbie', OIT can offer additional
services
cPanel lite 'version' so that cPanel isn't so complex to
the average user
Possible branding with NC State themes
InForm availability

11. In general ....
We have found the web hosting model to be of value to not only
our testers but also our internal support staff.
Would be a 'for fee' service, comparable in price to an external
provider; value-add services would be available.
Moving quickly to set up the internal service for testing; will
move OT's site, Student Affairs and possibly other testers to
internal service for comparison.

12. Issues / Processes still to work on
Fully test internal hosting service
Business process issues:
costing model for services
legal / licensing issues
payment and billing for service
training / documentation
requesting service, accounts, etc
URL name conventions (being solved at University level)
Security
Making sure student and other sensitive data is
protected if we go with an external provider.
Technical issues
Looking at cPanel 'lite' version
InForm and WRAP
Back-ups & Bandwidth (external)