ESS IT

ESS Information Technology provides computing services to the Department of Earth and Space Sciences. In order to streamline support requests and better serve you, we utilize a support ticket system. Every support request is assigned a unique ticket number which you can use to track the progress and responses online. For your reference we provide complete archives and history of all your support requests. Please visit the IT website for detailed information on services.

ESS IT Ticketing System

Overview

• ESS IT has 3 levels of support:
  • Basic – this is available to any faculty, staff, or students within ESS
  • Enhanced Computing Services Lite (ECSL) – this is the same as our standard Enhanced Computing Services but with 4 custom hours per person per year rather than 12 and limited to 4 devices.
  • Enhanced Computing Services (ECS) – this is our higher level of service with 12 custom hours per person per year
• Custom hours – these are hours that people on ECS or ECSL can use for support for non-standard requests that may be unique to their setup.
• Priority is used for triaging requests, the lower the number the higher the priority. If priority is a range then generally the higher priority end will be for issues with existing functionality and the lower priority end will be for new functionality. Note that priority 1 is reserved for systems that downtime would result in irrecoverable data loss and it is expected that staff are available after hours to assist ESS IT with recovering systems.
  1. Critical – requires after hours repair; research group staff must be identified who can assist with after hours repair & testing
  2. High – needs to be fixed ASAP & represents a hard stop to work, a presentation, etc until repaired
  3. Standard- should be fixed in the near future; work is delayed or throttled until completed
  4. Low – would be nice or new features/deployments/requests
  5. Background – if we ever have downtime we may look at it
  6. Unsupported – used for tracking demand for possible future inclusion
• We’ll be creating ticket templates based on the support items listed below and will start tracking most requests via the ticketing system in order to better track demand and how time is spent. It is anticipated that this will go live in July 2023.
• Any new support areas must first be reviewed by the ESS Computing Committee before inclusion. In general we’d expect that minor changes or service additions should occur throughout the year but major changes or removals should only be announced to take effect at the next ECS renewal cycle.
• ECS and ECSL fees are set annually by the ESS administrator. For 2023-2024 the ECS fees are $889 (faculty), $502 (staff), $367 (grads), and $97 (undergrads & guests). The ECSL fee is $50. Renewals take effect at the beginning of Autumn quarter; if you are signing up in Summer quarter you may elect to have it count as either the current or next year. Neither fees nor hours are prorated.
• Requests for ECS/ECSL support without being signed up will be assigned the lowest priority but will be used for tracking demand.
• The implementation timeline would be:
  • Effective Immediately: the priority triage system, the web portion, and items marked as unsupported.
  • Effective Autumn 2023 – the remaining policy with the noted exception of legacy setups as defined under the Research Networking & Remote Access sections

ESS IT Overview of Services