Computing Resources
This page lists a summary of Computing Resources provided by Computer Science IT Services.
The Computer Science IT Services group consists of CS systems engineers who work with the CS Computing Committee and OIT to support the technology needs of faculty, staff, and students.
Questions? Please contact us by sending an email to cscihelp@colorado.edu with your university-provided email address.
This will create a case in OIT's ServiceNow system and assign it to our group to serve as formal tracking for assistance.
Below are the services that CS IT Services officially recognizes and supports. Please contact us if you would like us to explore a new service or application you are interested in to add to this list.
If urgent assistance is needed, please contact us directly on the CS Department Slack, or via Microsoft Teams.
Computer Science IT Services SLA
Hours of Coverage, Response Times & Escalation
Dedicated support hours of operation are 9:00AM to 6:00PM Monday-Friday for requests and incidents.
Weekend support is limited to incidents only, with a response time within 4 hours.
These hours of operation for the "Requests" category exclude university holidays and official closures.
You can contact CS IT Services via OIT's ServiceNow system. Please email cscihelp@colorado.edu.
| Service | Requests | Incidents | Afterhours / Weekend Incidents |
|---|---|---|---|
| Managed Linux Instances | 2 business days | 2 hours | 4 hours |
| JupyterHub (CSEL Coding) | 2 business days | 2 hours | 4 hours |
| OpenStack (CS Cloud Platform) | 2 business days | 2 hours | 4 hours |
| Cloud Object Storage (CS Red Hat Ceph S3) | 2 business days | 2 hours | 4 hours |
| VDI Course Environment (CS vSphere) | 4 business days | 2 hours | 4 hours |
| Moodle LTI Activities to Canvas | 4 business days | 2 hours | 4 hours |
| CS Legacy Faculty Home | 4 hours | 2 hours | 4 hours |
| CS Legacy Student CSEL Sites | 2 business days | 8 hours | n/a |
| URL Redirector Service | 2 business day | 2 hours | 4 hours |
Managed Instances are virtual servers that operate out of the east campus datacenter.
The definition of "managed" in this context means that your instance has a standardized configuration as its base performed by our configuration management platform. This includes authentication and authorization (via OIT IAM Grouper), networking, automated patching, backups, routine authenticated vulnerability scanning from OIS, etc...
When a long term server is required for hosting, etc... this is the recommended option. Completing the following form will create a GREQ with us which you can track in ServiceNow.
Should an unmanaged instance be desired instead for short term use or experimentation, please view the OpenStack Cloud Computing Platform service below to spin up unmanaged servers.
OpenStack is an open source cloud computing infrastructure solution for in-house clouds. It functions similar to cloud platforms such as AWS, but comes with no cost (other than electricity).
The cloud platform provides the self-service ability to spin up a variety of operating systems and attach them to the CU Boulder Science Network. All active CU Boulder Employees will automatically be joined to a Demo project and can spin up Generation 2 instances.
This computing resource is provided free of charge, and is hosted with university resources. It is intended to only be used for university related buisness. Please review the Acceptable Use of CU Boulder's IT Resources page for more information. OIS has full access to this platform.
*Students must be part of a project setup by a faculty, student faculty or staff member in order to spin up cloud instances.
Department Provided Software Licensing
As of July 1st, 2021 you must be enrolled in a course requiring VMWare. Your instructor will then enroll you for IT Academy with instructions to download VMWare products. We can no longer accept individual requests outside this scope.
Once your instructor has created your account; you will receive login details and can request software in the below portal. You must use your IdentiKey based email (identikey@colorado.edu). This will be a separate password as this service is not Federated with CU Boulder's Identity Provider at this time.
Piazza is a forum-based LMS with moderated anonymous posting capabilities for discussion and classroom engagement.
A department-level Piazza license is available to CSCI, CSPB, and CYBR courses.
If features of the paid model are desired, please send us a message via cscihelp@colorado.edu.
This will license all courses you teach in Piazza.
To get started, you will need an instructor Piazza account which can be created via Canvas.
- Login to Canvas and Navigate to your Course
- Click "Settings", and open the "Navigation Tab"
- Enable Piazza, which will now be in Course Navigation.
- Create your Piazza course in Canvas
Application Services
It is generally recommend for CSCI Faculty to have their pages on WebExpress.
We however understand some needs for a self-managed space with php as well, which can be done at with a per-user webdirectory home on the CSCI Home Server. If a CMS is desired, it is typical that a database will also need to accompany it. Please contact us for access to that as well.
Faculty can setup a self-service personal website with php, located at https://www.cs.colorado.edu/~IdentiKey
Contact us if a custom URL is desired. To begin, ssh into CSCI Home at home.cs.colorado.edu and create a public_html directory in the root of your home directory.
# create a public_html directory in your home directory root
mkdir -p ~/public_html
# Add html or php content
echo "hello world" > ~/public_html/index.html
If you receive an unauthorized or permission denied error when visiting your site, make sure the web server has permission to read this directory and that contexts are correct.
# Repair Permissions
chmod o+x ~; chmod o+rx ~/public_html
# Restore SELinux Context
restorecon -Rv ~/public_html
CSCI hosts a redirector service at https://redirector.colorado.edu, which is responsible for simple URL redirects with rewrite. The destination can be any internal or external URL.
This is good for legacy URL's that should be redirected elsewhere without dealing with CNAMES and TLS SANs.
Examples of current sites handled by this service:
https://epic.cs.colorado.edu/ -> https://epic.colorado.edu/
https://mfm.colorado.edu/ -> https://www.colorado.edu/irt/mfm/
Any colorado.edu address can be redirected anywhere, please send us a message to request a new redirect.
The official LMS at CU Boulder is Canvas. All CSCI course are recommended to operate on Canvas as of Fall 2020. We however also recognize the need for certian Moodle activities that do not have a Canvas analog, such as the CodeRunner plugin.
We have worked with OIT ATAP to find a solution that embeds any Moodle activity into Canvas with gradebook and roster sync. For more information please view the following course.
A database host is available for faculty who require databases for teaching or coursework purposes. This host is part of the Education Lab Remote Access set of machines specificaly for database excersizes.
It is a standard managed instance and operates MySQL 8 on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.
All active CSCI affiliated IdentiKeys can SSH into this host with the CU Boulder VPN but for security purposes MySQL does not use PAM/SSSD. Database accounts are to be managed individually by the Faculty member.
The host is located at elra-sql.cs.colorado.edu
JupyterHub server for Jupyter notebooks provides a web-based environment within a per-user sandboxed pod. Several environments are available, such a web Visual Studio IDE.
This operates on a clustered container platform from the east campus datacenter. It is open to CEAS users.
Faculty can request a custom container image built for their course. Message us at cscihelp@colorado.edu
Additional Resources
While optional, Computer Science IT Services recommends university owned computers be managed by OIT Dedicated Desktop Support. This includes professional support for end user machines including managed patching, software, troubleshooting, printers, backups, etc...
Faculty and Staff currently opted into DDS can visit the DDS Request Portal to directly create a ServiceNow case with their group. This is the recommended method to contact DDS.
To opt into DDS, please send a message to Kyle Giacomini for a consulation.
Additional information can be found on the DDS - Prospective Customers page.
Access to most CSCI services are managed by Grouper, the OIT Enterprise Access Management Service. This is the interface used to control access to various services such as SSH, Linux Sudoers, RDP, OpenStack Projects, etc...
Generally, when a service is requested from CSCI IT Services, we will also provide a set of grouper groups for said service for you to manage. This can range from source of record groups to inividual IdentiKeys.
Please view the following OIT page for more information.