SMSR: safety
Food and drink
Food and drink are not allowed in the School's server rooms.
SMSR: getting in
Access is normally granted freely to those who manage machines in the rooms, but not to anyone else.
SMSR: remote admin
Your machine will likely be equipped with a Baseboard Management Controller (BMC). This might be called a 'Lights Out Management processor' (LOM) or a 'Dell Remote Access Controller' (DRAC). This allows remote system administration of the machine, a remote console via IPMI, and so on.
There's a dedicated subnet and VLAN for these devices. To use it, please contact support.
SMSR: power
Power is distributed by the 'power bars' attached to the rear of each rack, which present as IEC C13 and C19 outlets. Most machines will be connected to C13 outlets on the power bars and, when your machine is installed, the support team will supply the appropriate IEC C14-C13 power cables.
SMSR: networks
There are four network switches in room B.Z14, and one in room B.01. Each provides 44 1000baseT ('Gigabit ethernet') ports. Ports on each of these switches can be configured onto any of the public or private VLANs available in the building. Each of these five switches has a 10Gbps uplink to the network core.
A port in one of the switches will be configured for your machine on installation. You must not re-patch your machine to any other switch port - they are not interchangeable. Never rearrange, add or remove any network connections.
SMSR: racks
All machines must be rack-mountable; no desktop-style machines will be accepted.
In order to make the best use of the available space, we aim to rack machines fairly densely - unless there is a good reason not to.
SMSR: asking for space
Rack space, power, and available cooling in the self-managed server rooms are all limited. The SRRG (Server Room Resource Group) oversees the allocation of space in all of the School's server rooms. Before you make plans to site equipment in either room, you must submit a Server Room Request Form explaining what equipment you propose to install, how much rack space you'll need, and how much power your equipment can be expected to draw. If the request is reasonable, the SRRG will reserve the space, subject to the School's SMSR space policy.
Software on Virtual DICE
No Virtual DICE for 2025/26
We’re not planning to refresh Virtual DICE for 2025/26, because of resource constraints.
Last year’s version is still available, but its software will be at least a year out of date compared to proper DICE.
If this is a significant problem for you, please let us know.
OpenVPN for iOS
This page explains how to use Informatics OpenVPN on iOS.
Remote Desktop on Windows
The Informatics Remote Desktop gives you a graphical login on DICE, displaying on another computer.
This page explains how to access the Remote Desktop service from a Windows PC. It has been tested on Windows 10 and 11.
You will need to use either the University or School VPN. If you don't, you won't get access to the Remote Desktop service - unless your computer is already on the University of Edinburgh network (for example in an office or a computing lab).