Information about Network Services

IT Services provide network services for the University as a whole and also by agreement for University schools, service departments and externally funded projects.

Core network services

These services are provided, hosted and supported by IT Services to enable the University network to function. They include:-
  • Authentication services
  • Network Directory Services (e.g. Domain Name Service (DNS) for the wlv.ac.uk domain of the Internet and Microsoft Active Directory which holds information about the University network as a whole).
  • Allocation of network addresses to PCs, servers and other IT equipment.
  • Networked Printer Support.

Email services

Staff

Microsoft Exchange is used to provide an email and calendar service for all staff. All staff have now been upgraded to Exchange 2010 which offers a number of new capabilities, including increased mailbox storage and a new Outlook Web App (OWA) facility, providing a much better user experience when accessing email and calendars when away from the University.

Students

Student email is provisioned using Microsoft’s Live@edu cloud service, with every student being given a University email address. This cloud service can be accessed from any device that is connected to the Internet. More information about the Office365 email service. 

All incoming and outgoing staff and student email is routed through a virus scanning service and a Spam Identification Service.

Personal Storage services

All staff and students have an allocation of space to store their own information and personal web sites on central servers. This information can be accessed from any University PC and from the Internet. For students and staff using any standard Windows PC in the University this space is their “My Documents” folder. It can be accessed from University wireless networks and from PCs with broadband access to the Internet by “Web drive” software or from any PC on the Internet with FTP (file transfer protocol).

The allocation of space is 4000mb (4GB) for staff and 600mb for students.

More information about using your Personal File Store.

Additional storage for students

As part of their Live@edu account, students also get 25GB of online Skydrive storage.

Web services

University corporate web sites are hosted on servers allowing delivery of advanced web based services.

Web and IT Provision for Externally Funded Projects

The University is increasingly running projects or services which have a significant amount of external funding and require an identifiable website and other IT provision in order to achieve their stated aims. See details of the levels of provision that can be provided by IT Services, and what options are available to the projects when they require a different level of provision.

Corporate Business Systems

IT Services hosts a number of servers supporting University administrative and academic functions. These include, but are not limited to, the virtual learning environments (WOLF), computer aided assessment (Qmark), e-Portfolio (PebblePad), student management system (SITS), timetabling (CMIS), finance (QL), payroll and personnel (Delphi), library systems (TALIS), facilities help desk (FACTS), IT service desk (RMS) and a number of School and Service Department servers. The level of support provided is by agreement with the system owner.

Backup Services

Corporate business systems, E-mail and Personal Storage servers are backed up daily Monday to Friday. A two week cycle of backup tapes is maintained. In the event of system malfunction it is possible to restore databases to their position on any specific day in the previous fortnight.

IT Services DO NOT offer a recovery service for individual user files. It is your responsibility to backup your own personal files and keep your backups secure. Most standard University PCs can support USB memory drives and most have a DVD or CD-writer. See more advice on saving your files.


Date: January 2013
Last Reviewed: January 2013