General inquiries
- What is available as self-service in EduCloud Server?
- What systems administration tasks are supported?
- What is a vApp?
- What is an OrgVDC?
- What is a ProviderVDC?
- What Browsers does EduCloud Server support?
- What OS images are currently offered in EduCloud Server?
- How do my VMs activate Licensing in EduCloud Server?
- What are snapshots and how do I use them?
- Backup / Retention
- What are known issues with Educloud Server?
- Can I ask UBC IT to provision a virtual machine within EduCloud Virtual Server Service?
EduCloud Dashboards
- What are EduCloud Dashboards?
- Do I need to request Dashboards for my virtual data center? Is there an extra cost to use the Dashboards?
- How do I access the EduCloud Dashboards?
- Can I set up alert notifications or reporting in EduCloud Dashboards?
- Can I make changes to the data available, such as add/update metrics or create custom dashboards?
New Costs
- Why are we seeing cost increases?
- I can no longer afford the EduCloud service. What are my options?
- Are you expecting more increases in subsequent years?
What is available as self-service in EduCloud Server?
| Feature | Self Service | Open Service Request |
|---|---|---|
| Increasing VM CPU, memory and/or disk resources | X | |
| Deploying additional virtual machines / vApps | X | |
| Delegate access to my organization in EduCloud | X | |
| Take & remove virtual machine / vApp snapshots | X | |
| De-provision virtual machine/ vApp | X | |
| Migrate between Cloud instances | X | |
| Change firewall rules & load balancers | X | |
| Add additional resources to my Org vDC | X | |
| Restore a VM | X |
What systems administration tasks are supported by UBC IT?
Task | Supported | Best Effort | Unsupported |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hardware and Operating System related performance / stability problems | X | ||
| Backups and Restores | X | ||
| Adding external networks to ORGs | X | ||
| Maintaining Gold-images in Catalog | X | ||
| Self-Service Hardware Changes (Increasing VM CPU, memory, disk resources, networking) | X | ||
| File Sharing Setup (NFS, CIFS, etc…) | X | ||
| Local Firewall / ACL Management | X | ||
| Software / Application Installation | X | ||
| User, Group, or Permissions Management | X | ||
| Application Related Problems | X | ||
| Building / Implementing Scripts | X | ||
| Security Auditing | X | ||
| Scheduling Tasks | X | ||
| Guest Operating System Maintenance Including Security / Application Patches | X | ||
| Guest Operating System Agent-Based Monitoring – Resources, Usage, Performance | X |
What is a vApp?
A vApp is a container for virtual machines that offers resource controls and management for the virtual machines that are inside. Think of a vApp as a portable, self-contained box that holds multiple virtual machines that make up a multi-tiered application (like a web server, database, and security server), including all custom network configurations.
vApps offer:
- Container for multiple virtual machines
- Resource controls for the VMs inside the container
- Network configurations contained inside
- Portability of the vApp such that everything can be contained and transferred to another virtual infrastructure
- Entire vApps can be powered on, powered off, suspended, or shutdown
- Entire vApps can be cloned
What is an OrgVDC?
OrgVDC is short for Organization Virtual Datacenter.
An organization VDC is a logical grouping of resources from one or more provider VDCs that an organization is allowed to access. Depending on back-end (provider VDC) configuration and needs of the organization, one or more sets of resources backed by different provider VDCs might be present. This enables different performance, SLA or cost options to be available to organization users when deploying a workload.
What is a ProviderVDC?
ProviderVDC is short for Provider Virtual Datacenter.
A provider VDC is a logical grouping of compute and storage resources. The provider VDC groups together a set of vSphere hosts and a set of one or more associated datastores (storage). This logical grouping is then made available for consumption by organization virtual datacenters. Provider VDCs can leverage the Storage Profiles feature of vSphere to provide multiple classes of storage to differing organizations.
What Browsers does EduCloud Server support?
The EduCloud Server Web Console is compatible with recent versions of modern browsers such as Chrome, Edge and Firefox.
As of December 31, 2020, the Adobe Flash Player based legacy interface is no longer supported. Please ensure you are using the HTML5 version to access your Organization tenant.
What OS images are currently offered in EduCloud Server?
| Operating System | Support End Date |
|---|---|
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 | June 30, 2024 |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 | May 31, 2029 |
| Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS | April 1, 2023 |
| Microsoft Windows 10 Enterprise 64 bit | October 14, 2025< |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard 64 bit | October 10, 2023 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2016 | January 21, 2027 |
| Microsoft Windows Server 2019 | January 9, 2029 |
Note: If you are responsible for maintaining a virtual server that runs an operating system that is not considered under support by the vendor, UBC will not meet regulatory, compliance and security requirements. As a result, all unsupported servers need to be either upgraded, replaced, or decommissioned. Please consult the vendor documentation if the operating system you are using is not in the above list.
In order to allow time for system owners to transition off legacy operating systems, UBC IT has purchased a one year support extension for servers in the EduCloud Server environment for the following OS’s only:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 – extended support ends November 30, 2021
How do my VMs activate Licensing in EduCloud Server?
VMs for UBC clients should be configured to activate against UBC's KMS server (Microsoft Windows) or UBC's Satellite server (Red Hat).
Other clients are responsible for obtaining appropriate licensing.
What are snapshots and how do I use them?
Snapshots allow you to preserve the state of the virtual machine so you can return to the same state repeatedly. The most common use for snapshots is to preserve system state before making major changes or applying operating system patches. Please note that snapshots are not backup systems – they only contain deltas of changes between the time the snapshot was taken and current state.
You can take a snapshot of a virtual machine either on a virtual machine level or a vApp level. Please note that you can only take one snapshot at a time – subsequent snapshots replace previous snapshots of the VM or whole vApp. vApp snapshot will take a snapshot of each VM contained within it, thus replacing any individual VM snapshots taken previously.
After you take the snapshot, you can revert a virtual machine to the most recent snapshot or remove the snapshot. Remove the snapshots as soon as possible, especially on high-transaction virtual machines (e.g. email or database servers).
Snapshots are not intended to be a backup solution. Snapshots add to disk latency and can reduce performance. Snapshots can also prevent the VM from being backed up properly. In order to reduce the performance impacts from aged and forgotten snapshots, snapshots older than 30 days will be automatically removed.
Note: Snapshots do not capture NIC configurations.
What are known issues with Educloud Server?
See EduCloud Server Known Issues.
Backup / Retention
| Backup Type | Local Backup Retention | Remote Backup Retention |
|---|---|---|
| Local and Remote Backup - crash consistent backup is taken every night and copied to a remote location the same day | 28 daily | 28 daily, 12 weekly and 12 monthly |
Can I ask UBC IT to provision a virtual machine within EduCloud Virtual Server Service?
For small units that do not require a full EduCloud Server Org, individual servers can be provisioned. Only limited access to EduCloud management tools is available for these servers.
The owner is still responsible for management of the server itself.
What are EduCloud Dashboard (Operations Manager)?
EduCloud Dashboards is a web application which gives EduCloud administrators visibility into their virtual data center environments. Various dashboards and metrics are available to assist in monitoring, troubleshooting, and capacity planning.
Do I need to request Dashboards for my virtual data center? Is there an extra cost to use the Dashboards?
EduCloud Dashboards is available to most EduCloud virtual data centers. The Dashboards are part of the EduCloud Server service and there is no additional cost to use them.
They are not available to individually provisioned VMs in the ubc-shared organization.
How do I access the EduCloud Dashboards?
In the HTML 5 tenant interface, choose Operations Manager from the primary drop-down menu.
Can I set up alert notifications or reporting in EduCloud Dashboards?
At this time, there are no alert notifications nor reporting features in EduCloud Dashboards.
Can I make changes to the data available, such as add/update metrics or create custom dashboards?
At this time, EduCloud Dashboards is read-only so no custom changes can be made.
Why are we seeing cost increases?
Contract renewals and hardware refreshes have resulted in significant cost increases compared to previous years.
While there has been preferential academic pricing with vendors allowing for subsidized EduCloud costs for the community, this pricing structure is no longer available from many vendors. As a result, there are substantial increases in overall costs that can no longer be absorbed.
I can no longer afford the EduCloud service. What are my options?
There are several options available if costs are becoming too high:
- Review your existing virtual machines and remove any unused or idle workloads
- Right-size the virtual machines - more machines are not necessarily better
While these are just a few recommendations, we are available to help you review and explore additional options. Please contact us at UBC IT Systems for further information.
Are you expecting more increases in subsequent years?
There will be annual price adjustments in the coming years to adapt to current market conditions.
Despite containment strategies to minimize hardware cost increases, market conditions have dictated a steady rise. As such, Educloud charge backs need to be rightsized accordingly. You can anticipate a future increase in August 2025, for implementation on April 1, 2026.
