Introduction to Desktop Services

The UCS provides a range of services to support individual desktops around the University, making extensive use of centralised application, print and filestore servers, to reduce infrastructure and management costs to users and their Institutions. The components of this service are:

• Managed desktop machines (formerly PWF) in clusters (the Managed Cluster Service) in Institutions and centrally for all users, with extensive software provision on Windows, Linux and Macintosh platforms. These systems serve upwards of 20,000 users every year, with 35,000 sessions every week during termtime.
• a centralised filestore, fully backed-up and accessible from anywhere in the world, currently hosting over 30 million files (DS-Filestore).
• personal and group web space, which can be managed from anywhere in the world (DS-Web). hosted on and served from the Desktop Services filestore.
• managed printing and print management software, allowing printing from individual machines to managed printers, with secure online payment and detailed accounting. The service currently delivers 6 million printed pages a year (DS-Print).
• applications software management and deployment, both on the Managed Clusters and on central infrastructure which can run applications remotely for individual users (DS-Apps, currently pilot service).
• Annual repair contracts with Institutions for desktop machines (DS-Repair).

Last updated: September 2011