Use of Engineering instructional resources is for educational purposes only, academic research on instructional resources is prohibited. Please see our research computing policy for more information: EWS Labs, Research Computing Policy. If you need resources for your research group, we are happy to put you in contact with our Research Services team. 

Instructional VM Policies

• Turnaround time for VM requests is on a first-come, first-served basis. A minimum of 10 business days' notice is required to fulfill new VM requests. Many requests are processed more quickly, but customizations beyond our managed environment may cause additional delays.
  
  
• Our support hours are between 9 am and 5 pm Monday-Friday. If you communicate with us outside of normal University business hours we will respond to you on the next business day.
  
  
• Maintenance Windows
  
  Instructional VMs have a daily maintenance window from 4am to 7am to perform preventative maintenance, software upgrades, and operating system patches. Some instructional VMs have an additional weekly maintenance window every Monday between midnight and 7am.
  
  Reboots during maintenance windows
  
  Computers may reboot upon completing installations/updates if required. Whenever possible, advance warning will be given to logged-in users.
  
  
• Do not share your VM access or credentials with anyone. If you need additional access for yourself or a colleague, contact Engineering IT: https://go.illinois.edu/ewshelp
• Course staff are responsible for managing and updating their course content. If updated software is necessary to support your course content please fill out our software request form: https://go.illinois.edu/EWSSoftware Software requests must comply with our policies: EWS Labs, EWS Software Request Policy
  
  
• We reserve the right to adjust resources for managed VMs, any changes will be communicated to the customer.

General Specifications

• Available operating systems: Redhat, Windows, Windows Server, and Ubuntu

• Authentication uses Campus LDAP. i.e. NetID and AD password

• The course staff group will be used for access and sudo privileges unless specified otherwise

• Resource configurations start with 2 vCPU and 4 GB of RAM and 80 GB of storage. Resourcing can vary based on use case.

• Backups are retained by default for 14 days with up to 90 days available upon request. Data recovery of content older than your backup policy is not possible.

• VMs by default are only accessible from campus networks, other configuration options are available upon request. Public IP space is provided at the discretion of Engineering IT and we reserve the right to remove your virtual machine from public IP space if necessary. For more information, please refer to this page: Networking, Firewall, Service Plan Details

Request VM(s)

https://go.illinois.edu/ews-vm-request

VM users are expected to comply with EWS Labs, EWS Policies and Campus Computing Policies at all times when using campus computing resources. VM(s) will have monitoring and configuration agents installed so that the VM can be kept up-to-date. A timely response is required when Engineering IT contacts a VM user about issues with security patches, vulnerability alerts, and OS upgrades. Any non-compliance with the above policies may result in the VM being powered off or removed from the network.