Silk Web Hosting: Hosting Overview

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Hosting account and access

Web sites on the silk hosting service are placed under a NetID account. For personal or non-production departmental usage, you can use your own NetID. For long-term usage that is not specifically tied to you, content should be placed under a departmental NetID that you own. If you do not already have an appropriate account for this purpose, you can request one.

When site development or maintenance is being performed by someone other than the NetID owner, you should not share the account password. Multiple people can be permitted access to the hosting account by setting up authorized SSH keys.

Sites and hostnames

Every account has a web site accessible via <mynetid>.w3.uvm.edu. If you need multiple sites or would like development or staging versions of your site(s), these are generally available at <sitename>.<mynetid>.w3.uvm.edu.

Silk can also host sites with DNS names under *.uvm.edu or a non-profit domain such as *.org. Official UVM sites should have a *.uvm.edu name.

  • *.uvm.edu names and sites under www.uvm.edu/* must first be approved by the web team in UVM Strategic Communications to ensure they do not conflict with potential university-wide need.
  • Non *.uvm.edu names require you to purchase the domain you want to use from a domain registrar, or have administrative access to an existing domain to change its DNS configuration to point the desired name at the silk service. Contact SAA for more details.

All sites will be provided with an SSL/TLS certificate.

Software requirements and capabilities

Silk can run a wide variety of software written in many programming languages; see various pages of the manual for specifics on each language.

Web applications in languages such as Python or Node.js must support being launched through an app server. They cannot be started as a service that directly listens for network requests. In most cases, this requires at most a small configuration change, but is often not what is shown in “quick start” tutorials.

Many applications require a database. ETS offers a MySQL service called WebDB. ETS does not currently support Postgres.

Quotas and usage limits

Sites are limited to 20GB of disk space to prevent accidental overusage. If you require more space, that can be adjusted.

Most sites are limited to 4GB of simultaneous memory usage. Generally speaking, a site exceeding this limit needs tuning to be usable more than it needs additional memory.

Backups

ETS maintains daily backups of servers, and files can be restored upon request.

Service availability

ETS monitors various data points of the silk servers and responds to most issues within a few minutes.

When required for software updates, silk servers are restarted on Tuesdays between 2-2:30am.

Other service downtimes and changes are shared with the IT-DISCUSS mailing list and the General channel of the IT-Discuss Live team in Microsoft Teams.

Ongoing support expectations

All web sites require periodic maintenance by their owners.

Content management systems

CMS software such as WordPress or Drupal should be kept up to date, with security patches installed. These systems have a support lifecycle that may require periodic planned upgrades, and depend on underlying software that will be updated or retired as listed below.

Custom applications

Applications you have written or modified are your responsibility to maintain and keep secure. Code dependencies should be periodically updated, and you should ensure applications do not depend on software whose support lifecycle is ending.

Standard available software

The software available on the silk service changes periodically as new versions become available and support for old versions ends, which may require updates by site owners. Please check the support lifecycle page for details. ETS will generally make announcements soon before major software versions are retired, but be aware that these end-of-life dates are usually listed on this site years in advance.

Requesting an account and site(s)

When ready, you can request a site. Please include the following information:

  1. The NetID that under which the account will be created. If this is a departmental NetID, one of its owners must make or approve the request.
  2. If you want a specific site hostname, provide that name. If it is a *.uvm.edu name or you want the site to be accessible through www.uvm.edu/*, we need approval from the web team.
  3. If you want additional sites, let us know their names.