Web Publishing on UT Web

Web publishing on UT Web is available for experienced developers in colleges, schools, and departments that need to create websites that require Unix-based technologies such as PHP or CGI scripting. Colleges, schools, and departments may provide hosting space to their community members. All users must have a current UT affiliation to log in to the service.

UT Web users must have experience using Unix-based web technologies such as HTML, PHP, and Apache, and are required to be able to manage files using the Unix command line, SSH or SFTP tools. All UT Web users are expected to know and comply with university standards and policies, specifically those listed at https://wikis.utexas.edu/display/utweb/User+Responsibilities.

Specifications

The UT Web LAMP stack uses the open-source software packages:

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7
• Apache HTTP server version 2.4
• MySQL version 5.7 (local installations)
• PHP programming language versions 5.4, 5.6, 7.0, and 7.3

Technical Features

• Virtualmin Web Panel for self-service site management
• Access to phpMyAdmin and the MySQL command-line client
• 1-click Drupal Installer
• 1-click WordPress Installer
• Self-managed file backups and recovery
• Unix shell access via UT EID
• Access to raw log files
• Access to both Git and SVN version control tools
• CGI Scripting
• PHP supported MSSQL connections
• Improved performance and reliability.
• The Information Security Office has certified that UT Web meets the minimum security standards for 
  confidential data.

Campus Connections

Users can connect to campus developer resources outside of UT Web, including:

• Enterprise Authentication
• Enterprise MySQL
• Enterprise Oracle
• UT Forge Subversion Repository
• XML Gateway for Mainframe connectivity
• TED & Austin Active Directory LDAP Services

UT Web hosting is available to university departments at no cost. Related services may incur costs.

 Key Metrics

• UT Web content delivery availability: Service: 99.24% (including service dependencies, excluding defined maintenance windows)
• UT Web content delivery stand alone: Service: 99.74% (excluding service dependencies and defined maintenance windows)
• Disaster Recovery: UT Web user content recovery point objective: 8 hours
• Disaster Recovery: UT Web system configuration recovery point objective: 24 hours
• Disaster Recovery: UT Web disaster recovery time objective: 2 days (assuming underlying infrastructure availability)
• Business Continuity: Catastrophic outage recovery time objective: 4 hours (excluding multi-data center catastrophic events)
• UT Web administrative control panel availability: Service: 99.05% (excluding defined maintenance windows)

Overview

This document defines the service level agreement for the UT Web shared hosting environment.

Service Description

UT Web is the replacement service for Web Central and will be taking the place of the university's primary Web server and publishing environment. UT Web is designed to operate in a similar fashion to Web Central as a shared Web hosting platform that provides Web publishers the ability to design, build, and deploy web content and applications.

UT Web is classified as a critical service.

Intended Users

External users are students, faculty, staff, parents, the press, and the public at large. External users are able to view publicly accessible content at all times.

Internal users for UT Web are staff, faculty, and personnel from university colleges, schools, and departments who act as web publishers for the university.

Supported Computing Environment

For all external users and for internal users the minimum requirement is any device running a university-supported web browser.

For internal UT Web users, the minimum recommended operating system and client software requirements are any system that allows SSH of SFTP connections to a Unix-based operating system as well as VPN access to the UT campus network.

Technical Support

Both Tier 1 and Tier 2 technical support is available during normal business hours, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m., to handle routine requests. Urgent after-hours support is available to internal users for website outages or other issues that require immediate attention.

All requests for technical support will be logged using the ITS centralized ticketing system or issue-tracking tool. External users should start with Tier 1 technical support. Internal users should start with Tier 2.

Urgent Support for Internal Users

Maintenance

ITS will notify customers about both scheduled and unscheduled maintenance using the Alerts and Outages page or internal-user distribution lists. Services may not be available during maintenance periods. ITS will notify external users using a maintenance notification on the website.

User Responsibilities

All users agree agree to be aware of and adhere to the university's Acceptable Use Policy.

Internal users such as Web developers and content contributors:

• agree to comply with the standards set by the Information Security Office for storing and publishing data on UT Web.
• agree to comply with other university Campus IT Policies, where applicable.
• should be familiar with the university's Minimum Security Standards for Applications Development and Administration and Secure Web Application Coding Guidelines when developing Web applications on UT Web.
• agree to limit storage usage to 10 GB per site for the benefit of all UT Web users. In the event storage usage is expected to exceed 10 GB, please contact the UT Web team at web@utexas.edu to discuss available options.
• agree to responsibly use shared resources. ITS reserves the right to disable access to a site without prior notice in the event it is suspected/determined to be having an adverse impact on the service.
• agree to a site review by the UT Web team prior to a custom domain being configured for use with UT Web.
• agree to a security assessment by the ISO prior to a custom domain being configured for use with UT Web.
• agree to being responsible for requesting site and user de-provisioning when the site or developer account are no longer needed.