May 8, 2013 DCC Meeting Notes
General Announcements – Chris Grossi
- Dell Rep Leaving
- Key Access 7 needs to be updated by summer
- Workday Compatible Scanner Recommendation coming
- Matlab License is update and new modules coming
- Standard image just uploaded to Dell
Remedy Service Desk Upgrade – Chris Grossi
- Replaced HD Ticket and other schemas
- All using one type of ticket
- Easier to use and pass tickets
- Updated all environment sot Remedy 8.1
- Redefined all services
- Created templates for tickets
- 3 Levels of ticket entry – Unauthenticated, Authenticated with some templates, and full remedy app.
- Looking for users to test and provide feedback (focus group)
- Go-Live tentative for week of June 24
- Wants to be sure that everything is working properly before going live.
VIVO – Jean Rainwater
- vivo.brown.edu
- Developed by Cornell – Federated Program (20+ institutions have gone public with VIVO, 100+ others are in process)
- Replacing research directory
- Data is populated from faculty CV
- Faculty log in to update/edit profile
- Meeting with departments through the summer to update
- Student helpers to provide training
- Hoping to go public this fall – currently need to log in to view
- Cannot host .pdf’s and other such files
- Should use Brown Digital Repository instead
- CV will be downloadable
Workday Financials Project
Scope and Timeline
- Go-Live July 8, 2013
- Financial Accounting and reporting
- Expense reimbursement
- Purchasing and Paying
- Post-Award Grant Accounting (Pre-Award still in Coeus)
- Effort Certification
- More functionality coming over time
Advantages and Chanllenges
- Better management info and analytics
- Unified admin system with HR, Payroll, and Financials
- Very strong “Pace of Innovation”
- New accounting structure and language
- New business processes
- Updated functionality and related tools
- Additional grants functionality coming with August update
What to do to get ready
- “Just in Time” – Communication and training ramps up as deployment gets closer
- Multiple formats for different training and info
- Email, trainings, deployment kits, etc.
- Targeted towards specific roles
- Key financial staff serving as financial partners and assisting with roll out/training
- Training will continue after go-live
- Screencast, hands-on, Q&A, presentations, open labs
- Offered for financial coordinators, cost center, grant managers, grant analysts
- Grants will be similar, but after initial rollout
- Workday moving to HTML5 (IE9, Firefox 3.6, Safari 5, Chrome 11)
- Workday production down the 2 weekends before and after go live and 7/2-7/7
- Internal go live 7/7; Community go live 7/8
Managing Expectations
- Initial roll-out may be unsettling
- Transition may be difficult for some staff
- Additional functionality will be rolled out over time
- Initial focus on functions to keep business moving
DCC Role
- Help with browser upgrades and password resets
- Troubleshoot problems and propose solutions
March 2013 DCC Notes
DCC Meeting Notes March 2013
Announcements—Chris Grossi
1) Keyserver should be updated to version 7 client on all computers by summer. CIS will be pushing to managed machines. Version 7 will not run on OS 10.4 and below
2) Print Server migration did not go as well as planned. Solutions have been found for problem conversions and they are currently working with departments to fix remaining printers
3) MatLab renewal is coming up. An email will be sent out about new toolboxes
4) Please remember to fill out the software survey.
5) Endnote no longer supports concurrent licenses. CIS is in negotiations for the latest version.
6) CIS is finalizing a new standard image. It will be sent to DELL soon. Major revisions are making Chrome the default web browser and making System Restore turned on by default
7) IE10 is out, no testing has been performed with it yet. CIS is blocking on their managed OU’s. Can be added to your managed OU’s by request.
Remedy—Chris Grossi
We have outgrown our current installation of Remedy and will be moving to Service Desk. We will be using the Out of Box install. There will not be as many customizations as the current remedy system. Hope to go live on June 23rd.
Highlights of new system
ITIL Compliant
Web Based, no installable client
Templates for standardized entries
End users will file tickets through forms
Can update tickets through email
There will be ITIL training on campus in April/May timeframe. Training in the new remedy systems should be available in May/early June time frame.
January 2013 DCC Notes
Notes by Peter Mello
Announcements: Teri Lynn Thayer leaving Brown University after 23 years. To see the video of the festivities please click here. The password is TLT. Also, Mike Pickett will be retiring as Executive Vice president as if June 30, 2013. We wish them both the best and thank them for all their hard work.
David Sherry is now in his new office located at 169 Angell Street and invites you to come by and visit. He also wanted you to be aware that January was Data Privacy month! There was an event on the topic of Data Privacy on January 28th. Hope most of you attended!
Chris Grossi discussed about this month being Disaster Recovery month and that he wanted to send thanks to all of you out there helping on that project. He also mentioned that they are working on a version of VPN that will be compatible with Windows 8. That will be coming soon. Also, SEE for Macintosh clients is not yet ready for 10.8 ( Mountain Lion) Symantec is aware of the issue and they are working on a working version. No time frame for that just yet.
DELL was on board to talk about their new exciting product lines and to answer any questions we may have had. Aaron Sherman (account rep) and his hardware rep were there to hand out pizza and lots of Windows 8 love. They basically explained that Windows 8 is really Windows 7 under the covers. He spoke of Dell being a one stop shop for all our needs… not just for PC’s but software etc. He also showed us some of the new products coming out in 2013 and their views on Mobile Device Management . One of the new items shown was the Latitude 10- a tablet with some “oomph”. The Latitude 10E was lower priced version of the same product with a sealed battery case, no HDMI and less ports. The XPS 10 was a consumer product with Windows RT as the OS. It does not have domain access. Please note the XPS 10 has no legacy support. They also mentioned other computers in the XPS line, particularly the XPS 13, XPS 14 and XPS 15 and the new Dell 9010 all-in one. The XPS 12 is a tablet/laptop hybrid with full HD and comes with either an i5 or i7 processor. Another item mentioned was the Latitude 6430 ultrabook. Much thinner than most in its class and is 14” with Ethernet and VGA and weighs in at 3.3 lbs. The Dell Optiplex line was also discussed and it’s future. The 7010 will well be available into 2014. They also spoke of the replacement for the 7010 coming in Q3/4 of 2013.
There is no audio available this month due to the subject matter presented by Dell.
Thanks to all who attended.
November 2012 DCC Metting Notes
Notes by Jesse Coutu
Audio can be found here.
Pat Kinghorn
- Showed the DCC presentations webpage
- Asked about the notes/audio – 10 people or so find them helpful
- No Chris Grossi
- Short list of announcements
- TechPlot 2008 shutting down on Christmas
- Nobody using it
- Software survey coming soon – will get email
- Going to convert responses to Qualtrix
- Windows 8
- Helpdesk reports getting questions about it
- Mostly works…VPN does NOT
- Huge backend upgrade to VPN, won’t be upgraded until at least winter break
- Printer Changes
- printserve.brown.edu to pprint – Scott can answer questions
- Sophos issues still
- Issue has been escalated
- Reinstalling client seems to fix the issue
- Sophos Home edition seems okay
- FilesA, FilesB, filesE, filesG all completed
- FilesC & FilesD everything is migrated, quotas updated, permissions haven’t been changed
- Scripts updated to point at DFS Root, not individual File Server
- Will allow to upgrade server in the future
- Normal permissions (NTFS) authenticated users – Full Control
- Quota options
- By the end of the week, project should be completed
- Identity Finder Scans – scans for personal identification information
- Testing to commence shortly
- Snapshot of LUN (backup)
- No action being taken, just to make everyone aware
BSRT – Brown Security Round Table – Paolo and Elvis
- Elvis – Network Technologies
- Group that meets to discuss information security
- Started by Bob Fletcher and Patrick Laverty
- Collaborate with ISG on Awareness and Issues
- David Sherry is the voice of security
- Group is like the Eyes and Ears for David
- Survey for Training Options
- http://brown.edu/go/bsrt
- bsrt@brown.edu
- Possible training for students – Securing UNIX
- Website has link to survey, security blog postings, resources for security
- Presenting at NERCOMP
- SELINUX?
Marc Doughty – Boot Services, Imaging, and the Utility Disk
- Provide tools to take care of windows
- Standardized images
- Single windows image runs on a number of different hardware types
- Eliminate third-party imaging tools (Ghost)
- Use Open Source software where possible
- Build now to enable better things later
- Boot Services
- PXE booting for PC’s
- Boots to iPXE
- Install Linux
- Install Windows
- Windows PE (utilities)
- Numerous Windows Images available
- Windows 7 Standard Image is Best
- Instructions are on Google at WDS
- Things in the Standard Image
- Win 7 x64
- Office 2010
- Firefox ESR
- CDBurnerXP
- 7-Zip
- Drivers
- Utilities
- Scripts
- Goal is to be less vendor dependent
- Inside C:
- Support folder
- Has a bunch of scipts to make creating your own image easier
- Machine will run installs/boot/reboot multiple times
- Machine can be added to lookup file to get it’s specific name
- AD binding has warning about having “string passwords” for local accounts
- There is no way around this
- Administrator account can’t be used
- Windows PE – Utilites
- File Manager
- Hard Drive Wipe
- Firefox
- Archive Utility
- MyDefrag
- Smart HD Test
- gimagex – allows you to create .wim file
- virusscan – downloads latest Forefront virus definitions and runs/cleans
- PXE only works on the New Networks
Geoffrey Greene – CIS – Service Incident Communications
- Incident is an outage or degradation of service.
- Want to have a defined process
- Duplicated effort
- Not reaching the right technical team
- What the customers want
- More and earlier communication
- More transparency
- Consistency
- The Process
- Incident is reported to Help Desk 3-4357 – email also
- The incident Manager is responsible for communication and the ticket
- Communications are automatically generated from templates
- Tech teams / service owner send updates by email
- For Service Owners
- If your service is down, call the help desk and let them know
- No need to reach out to tech teams
- For Tech Teams
- The tech teams will send an email with subject “Internal CIS Service Alert”
- Reply-All with new information
- Request bridge line if desired
- If you are experiencing a problem, check the blog / CIS website before reporting it
- Overhauling entire CIS website
- Should the website be called CIS or IT@Brown
- Need someone to be part of the CIS Website renovation
- Overhauling Remedy System – ServiceDesk
- Two types of tickets
- Incident
- Service Request
- If you call helpdesk after hours, use option 0 to report incident.
- Problem ticket determines root cause
- Problems can cause many incidents
- Blogs.brown.edu/cis
- RSS reader picks up blog posts
- There is also a twitter feed
Mike Pickett next month
DCC Meeting Notes September 12th, 2012
The audio for this meeting can be found here:
http://www.brown.edu/cis/support/dcc/audio/audioarchive/DCC%20mtg%209-12-12.mp3
Pat Kinghorn – Updates
We have two new members on the DCC Steering Committee! Kristen Soule has decided to return to the DCC Steering Committee after taking some time off. Our other new member is Jesse Coutu.
David Sherry: Security Updates
Laptop Encryption updates – only 46 out of 1000 licenses of Symantec Endpoint Encryption have been used. ISG will be drafting a list of people and departments that they would like to see encrypting their laptops for the best interest of the University. CIS will also be providing Mozy licenses with the encryption software to allow users of encrypted devices to back up their data to the cloud – The Mozy license will allow for unlimited backups.
PCI DSS assessment – Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard – Brown has to be compliant. Higher Ed focused company came in to evaluate Brown and its 52 credit card merchant accounts. Brown is not PCI compliant, and will be rolling out 30 day, 60 day, 90 day, 180 day, and 365 day goals to make sure Brown is PCI Compliant in the future. Although this is not federal law, this standard comes from 5 largest CC companies. They have the authority to fine us if we are not compliant, or not allow us to use their cards.
Cloud Based Data Storage – Dropbox.com is inherently insecure and is for commercial use, not enterprise use. Brown is looking into emerging technologies such as internet 2, Net+, box.net, google drive as approved cloud based data storage solutions
Laptop Loaner program – 6 Dells and 4 Macs have been purchased and they are located at Service and Repair. The Systems are unencrypted, and intended for traveling Faculty that do not want to take their own devices with them. The machines are scanned and wiped after being returned.
Protecting Brown Information Class – This class will not be schedule anymore. It will be on-demand, and the online presentation is available.
New twitter accounts – CISO@Brown and ISG@Brown – Will be publicized during October which is National Cyber Security Awareness Month. Prizes to win for those who follow!
Two step Google authentication is now an opt-in service – This provides an extra layer of Google authentication for individuals who would like to opt in.
Scott Thacher – Community Technology Consortium overview
Scott is the IT Director for the Division of Campus Life and Student Services and Chair of the Community Technology Consortium
CTC – A new group that has been created as an advisory group to Mike Pickett on Big Picture IT strategies, architectures and methods.
This group meets once per month, and serves several purpose, including the vetting of and soliciting feedback from the Brown community about big IT projects that will be affecting the community in a big way. They serve to take community feedback on things that the community wants, that are not currently provided by CIS including but not limited to, Storage Infrastructure, Virtual Infrastructure, andprivate cloud for Brown use, to name a few examples. Membership includes high level members of Brown’s IT community.
Chris Grossi – CIS announcements
CIS recently completed a contract with Qualtrics. More information about this powerful survey tool coming soon
Back to school weekend went very smoothly. The helpdesk had 340 walk-ins in a week.
Some returning students are running into issues with MAC OS 10.6 machines running cloudpath. Deleting the old certificate and installing the new one should resolve the problem.
SAS 9.3.4 is available on software.brown.edu. It is now Unkeyed.
The windows team has brought up a 2nd print server. Any print queue migrations will be transparent. (Except for some MAC users, who may have to change the print queue name.)
Brown has a new Dell Inside Service Representative – Luis Diaz.
He can be contacted at Luis_Diaz@dell.com
800-576-6038 Ext# 513-9343
Changes to the Dell Premier page have been made, the 7010’s, 6330, and 6430 are up there without image. The XPS 13 should also be available on this page shortly.
A new standard image will be uploaded to the deploy server.
Steve Mckay – Software Services updates
The C-Farm server has been upgraded. Mathematica, Matlab, ArcGis licensing is all tied to this server.
Software.brown.edu has been moved to a new VM. This will allow the packaging of programs like SAS to be put into one large file, rather than multiple smaller files.
There is demand for Creative Suite 6. Now that Keyserver is running version 7, Creative Suite 6 can now be packaged.
SAS is now available unkeyed. SPSS will soon be available without needing to connect to License Manager to run.
Matlab – more toolboxes are being added to the license manager
Software.brown.edu will be updated in the future as part of CIS’s web re-design
Matlab 20212B is available – This will be packaged through lab use only.
Nvivo 10 – Being packaged soon.
August 2012 DCC Meeting notes
Notes from the August 2012 DCC Meeting
Notes submitted by Peter Mello
Announcements: Chris Grossi announced that the new Dell hardware will be out on their web page for us soon. They are also working on a new image for us as well. Apple’s 10.8 has been released and so far the testing CIS has done has been successful with most Brown used software. The exceptions so far being Symantec Endpoint Encryption and a slight issue with Sophos. The MyConnection database will be purged by the time you read this. Brown.edu/CIS will go to Shibboleth soon. Adobe CS 6 will be released in September.
Scott Martin mentioned a few FileMaker updates as well. The FileMaker server will go live on the 14th of August. There is also a Filemaker 12 release form if you want to get a copy of FileMaker 12. So far there are 500 licenses but we can go up to 750-1000 if needed.
Adobe: Adobe stopped by and discussed the desire to strengthen their relationship with Brown University. He took questions from the audience and talked about a few of the new features of Acrobat and how Adobe really is all over, between Smart devices, desktops etc. For more information about CS6 and all it offers as well as products for iPads, iPhones, Android devices and the like contact Adobe online for more direct questions on how Adobe can help you contact the Speaker at timothyp@adobe.com or call at 207-318-8302.
Audio for the meeting is available here.
Notes from the June 2012 DCC meeting
Notes submitted by Stephanie Han
Announcements:
Pat Kinghorn announced that there was a FileMaker one day conference meeting at MIT next Wednesday, June 20th, 2012. If anyone is interested, please e-mail her, and she will send along further information.
Chris Gross announced that Maple 16 will be released shortly. Chris mentioned that Dell did fix some of the issues which were problematic on the premiere page, such as the default login going to their software page, and not to computer equipment. Dell is in the process of rebuilding the information on their software page. Chris was going to send around a Google spreadsheet to all of the system admins and DCCs to ask for suggestions on what types of software should be included on this site.
Chris also told the group that he and Scott Martin had met with some folks from FileMaker regarding an on-line training series initiative. This series appears to be an excellent and inexpensive way to gain needed training.
David Sherry: Password Strengthening Policy (10+)
David Sherry then introduced the new password policy to the DCC community. With the onset of Workday, and Oracle Identity Management (OIM), David remarked that it was an ideal time to implement a campus wide initiative for the strengthening of passwords. The reasons for strengthening the Brown network passwords are due in part to the increased amount of confidential information available to both faculty and staff, through for example WorkDay and Banner. Also Brown’s ability to qualify for funding and grants also mandate that the password policy be upgraded. Compliance with the Level of Assurance with InCommon (Shibboleth), which would raise our level from Bronze to Silver. Due to these requirements, the password convention must be bumped up from eight characters to 10 or more characters. David Sherry stated that there would be a grace period whereby members of the community could begin this process. Eventually it will be necessary for each person in the Brown Community to verify their identity by logging into the Oracle Identity Manager, where the password change will take place. David is encouraging that this process commence on June 20th. Passwords will have to be changed annually. At the 351st day, notifications will be disseminated to Brown users as a reminder to change their password. The password must be changed before the expiration date, or a user may lose the ability to authenticate into Brown resources. Near the conclusion of his presentation, David Sherry distributed a pamphlet to the DCCs with specific information regarding the password policy. For more information please visit: www.brown.edu/go/passwords
Scott Thacher: Community Technology Consortium (CTC)
Scott Thatcher gave a brief presentation on a new initiative entitled, “Community Technology Consortium.” He remarked that the CTC is an advisory group which directly communicates to Mike Pickett on issues voiced through the IT community here at Brown. The purpose of this group is to promote coordination and communication across IT’s strategies, architectures, methods and priority. It is hoped that this consortium will assist:
Identifying and planning top priority collaborative initiates within Brown.
Allowing Brown-wide IT best practices and standards to be jointly developed
Fostering innovation and allowing ideas and solutions to be broadly shared.
Coordinate support transitions of IT leadership, during times of emergency.
Serving as a technology advisory group.
Providing advocacy for issues of the IT community’s concern.
It is hoped that the Consortium will have a web presence sometime in the future. The membership includes: Tony Allison, Andrew Ashton, Jeff Coady, Jaime Combariza, Monty Combs, Cliff Hirschman, Chris Keith, Paul Koussa, Jennifer lane, David Mycue, Kristen Soule, John Spadaro, and Scott Thacher.
Tom DuValley: Red Hat Server License
Tom DuValley presented the campus-wide site license for several Redhat products, including server, workstation and clustering software. This service will be managed through a Red Hat Network Satellite service providing:
• Licensing
• Hosts and serves out all software
• Hosts and serves out all software updates
• Provides Kickstart management
• Config file management
• Update management
• System profiling
Workstations and servers for all Brown faculty, staff and students will be licensed at no cost. Vendor support will be available to all those who are licensed. The way to install this system is via Kickstart, which is accomplished through the Campus PXEBoot service.
Brown’s particular satellite is called Hubble, RHN.brown.edu, and is great for system administrators, because it provides a central management hub for all of these systems. If a department wants to manage their own machines, they get their own log in and their own account.
Please visit https://sites.google.com/a/brown.edu/brown-rhn-satellite/ for further documentation, and for specific satellite documentation please visit https://rhn.brown.edu/rhn/help.
Audio capture and presentation PDFs can be found at: http://www.brown.edu/cis/support/dcc/dccpresentations/
