Introduction

Management and Administration of IT Infrastructures and Services provides an introduction to Information Technologies (IT) infrastructures, their Architecture, Services and Operations, covering topics related to the design, installation, configuration, and operation of infrastructures of systems software, computer systems, and communication networks, from simple networked server centers to large scale Data Centers, with an overall focus on the operational services and capabilities that such infrastructure configurations enable in an organizational context.

The course prepares the students for organizational roles that require interaction with external vendors of IT infrastructure components and solutions, and the knowledge and skills that they need for communicating effectively with professionals whose special focus is on hardware and systems software technology and for designing organizational processes and software solutions that require in-depth understanding of the IT infrastructure capabilities and limitations.

The course also focuses on technical aspects of computer and network privacy and security, business continuity, and the role of the infrastructure in regulatory compliance.

The Lab works of the course allows the execution of experiments related to the implementation, configuration, testing and administration of IT infrastructures, namely of networks, computing nodes, storage and user nodes, as well as Services Platforms, Cloud-based infrastructures and Applications/Tools for Management and Administration of those infrastructures.

The mechanisms to be used in the Lab Experiments and Implementatins are based on "Infrastructure-as-Code" techniques, that is, the different elements of the infrastructure, their interconnections, computing nodes and user nodes are "instantiated" using automation "scripts" and/or "Configuration Management" Tools, and calls to Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) of the services, allowing the instantiations to take place, either locally or in private and public Cloud systems.