Which hosting option is best for you?

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ITS offers a number of virtual and physical hosting options to meet your needs for hosting servers, data, and/or applications.

Virtual Server Hosting

Cost-effective hosting in the ITS Data Center using a shared platform for virtual machines. More efficient in server capacity, hardware, and energy usage than purchasing separate hardware. 

Why choose a virtual server?

  • Easier and faster time to implement as no hardware ordering and installation lead time is necessary
  • Flexibility to scale up or down as needed 
  • No hardware or maintenance for you to worry about since ITS takes care of this for you
  • Virtualization enables maximum equipment resource usage and efficiency
  • Highly redundant and secure to minimize the risk of downtime

Two offerings are available from ITS:

  • Enterprise: Virtual server hosting to campus, with a server size limit of 8 vCPU max.
  • Academic:  Virtual server hosting to graduate students and faculty with research, teaching, and learning needs, with a server size limit of 4 vCPU max.

Physical Server Hosting

Centralized physical hosting of computer and storage equipment is available at two locations. Best for those that require their own hardware to run workload and/or store data. 

Why choose a physical server?

  • You need to manage 100% of the hardware
  • You require 100% dedicated resources 100% of the time
  • You have special hardware requirements (graphics processors, HPC, etc.)
  • Specific 3rd-party application license restrictions

Cloud Hosting

UC Santa Cruz has a university-wide agreement for public cloud services for Amazon Web Services (AWS)  with discounted rates and improved terms and conditions for all faculty, staff, and departmental use. Cloud hosting through AWS offers low up-front costs, high flexibility to change, reduced maintenance, and on-demand scalability.

Why choose cloud hosting?

  • Your workload needs 99.9% uptime
  • You need the flexibility of cloud services
  • You want a dynamic solution for increased demand when needed
  • You need a scalable solution where you only pay for what you use