Central Services Domain:
Guidelines for Participation

The intention of Central Services is to provide departments that lack such resources or the personnel to maintain their own child domain with a stable, secure environment in which accounts for user workstations may be created. Departments joining Central Services will receive the many inherent security benefits without paying the associated infrastructure costs. Please refer to Benefits of Joining Central Services for further explanation.

The guidelines for participation in Central Services are:

• All of your department's servers and workstations must follow the Acceptable Use Policy of Virginia Tech (http://www.policies.vt.edu/acceptableuse.html) and any other rules that may apply, such as those from CNS.
• You will need to provide two contacts per department or group. Each department or group joining will be placed in its own Organizational Unit (OU), and the contacts will have administrative rights over that OU. The request for the creation of your OU must come from your dean, director, or department head. Your department must fill out the IRM Signature Authorization Letter (http://www.it.vt.edu/organization/isc/irm/forms.html) and place it on file with IRM.
• You will need to meet minimum operating system requirements on member computers of either Windows 2000 Professional or Windows XP Professional.
• Your member workstations and servers should be backed up on a regular basis. For more information, contact lau@vt.edu.
• Your member workstations and servers must have antivirus software installed. The antivirus software must be regularly updated with the latest definitions and patterns.
• Your member workstations and servers must keep service packs and patch levels current.
• All of your Windows 2000 (and later) computers must use the following root Active Directory Dynamic Domain Name System server settings:
• Preferred DNS server: 198.82.162.237
• Alternate DNS server: 198.82.145.6
• Central Services strongly suggests using a screen saver with a password to provide security on computers until you become familiar with locking your workstation.