Servers

TU Delft offers its employees the use of physical or virtual servers. These servers are known as Faculty Managed Servers and can be requested to conduct work related to a specific project within a Faculty.

Note

It is not possible to use the servers to set up services that are already provided by the ICT department.

Virtual vs Physical Servers

There is a choice between virtual and physical servers. Virtual servers are provided free of charge and can be requested via TOPdesk. Physical servers can be requested by contacting the Faculty’s IT Manager and any associated costs are paid by the purchasing department.

In most cases, a virtual server is the most suitable option. However, a physical server may be necessary when it is intended for use as a GPU or computing cluster.

Server Configuration

When requesting a virtual server, users can choose from a range of predefined hardware and operating system configurations. The following operating systems are available: Windows Server 2019, Windows Server 2022, Red Hat Enterprise Linux (latest supported version), and Ubuntu (latest LTS version).

If additional capacity is needed, it can be requested via the ‘ICT malfunction’ or ‘request ICT service’ forms in TOPdesk. This includes options such as increasing the number of processors, cores per processor, RAM, or disk storage.

Some considerations:

• ICT provides the server, operating system, and network access.
• Users are granted administrator privileges, allowing them to install any required software, provided it complies with the conditions specified in the request form.
• Access can be granted to both TU Delft members and external users.
• ICT provides daily backups, restoration services, and virus scanning for Windows servers.
• ICT ensures that the server operating system remains up to date (e.g. security patches), except for Linux systems.

Tip

Detailed information on managing the server, including network and firewall settings, is provided at the bottom of the TOPdesk application form.

Example Use Cases

• Performing computational or data processing tasks that require a dedicated server environment.
• Running an instance of a service or application, such as ABAQUS, COMSOL or other specialized tools for a lab or research group.
• Hosting a static website, a web application, or an API for a project.
• Hosting databases, such as MySQL, PostgreSQL, MongoDB or other database management systems.
• Deploying and managing TU Delft GitLab runners for CI/CD pipelines.

Relevant links

• Intranet page for faculty managed servers
• TOPdesk form to request a new virtual server
• Intranet page for Faculty IT Managers.