We will install and support linux on any compatible workstation for you, following these guidelines.

• Your hardware must be directly supported by our version of Linux, in particular without use of third party network or storage drivers.
  • We are always happy to advise on hardware purchase based on your requirements and budget.
• The primary hard drive is devoted entirely to the operating system.
  • Local user data must be stored on separate hard drives. We value your data, and will not put it at risk by having it share space with the OS, where it may get overwritten by re-partitioning during reinstalls or updates.
• We do not share root passwords with non IT-staff. If you have special needs, talk to us, we can usually make things work for you using sudo.
• Home directories are generally stored on the department file server, although can discuss special arrangements for special needs.
• We cannot support dual-boot systems.

We would prefer to be involved in the purchase process for any server hardware we are expected to support.

For small-scale simple data storage (up to a few TB), we support use of additional hard drives in any workstation or server (external drives, eg USB, are not supported for permanent storage).

For large-scale (multi-TB) storage, we support a variety of technologies.

• many groups use hardware RAID systems attached to our SAN (storage area network); this can be used to support storage in the 20-100TB range.
• at slightly smaller scale, there is some use of internal hardware or software RAID in servers.
• for specialized use cases, we are supporting Hadoop HDFS for some research groups.

Please refer to this page for more information on our supported versions of unix and the differences between them.