IT@Brown: News & Resources

An audio recording of this meeting is available here.

Announcements – Chris Grossi

We’re down to two weeks left for the Symantec Antivirus license. CIS is tracking and running reports of machines that are still contacting the SAV server. ISG has sent reminders to departments that have many remaining SAV clients. We need to get full migration completed by the end of March to both ensure active and current client security, and to be in compliance with our licensing agreements and protect Brown from a license audit and penalties.

CIS has been working with SAS to extend licensing across campus, they are close to being ready to un-key SAS licensing. Standalone SAS will be available to departments before the end of the semester. Anyone using a keyed installation of SAS will need to uninstall their preior version and reinstall the new unkeyed version. Students are included in the licensing and can install SAS on their own computers.

By the end of this patch cycle, Windows machines managed in the CIS SCCM system will have their Microsoft updates managed by SCCM.

As part of Brown’s Dell contract, Dell will be running a Recycling Day on Friday 20 April (Earth Day weekend) to allow Brown-owned and personal equipment to be dropped off for recycling. Details are still being worked out, look for more information from CIS soon.

Qualtrics Online Survey Platform

Representatives of Qualtrics, a commercial service offering very high-quality hosted online survey building, deployment, and reporting, presented their platform. Their core features are:

• Sophisticated surveys made simple (built by a PhD survey researcher)
• 86 question types
• Advanced logic available
• Provides University control. delegated administration
• FERPA. IRB, PHI, HIPAA compliance – SSAE 16 Certified
• University owns the data
• Collaboration available with other researchers in the world even if they don’t have Qualtrics at their institution
• Extensive training and documentation both in using the service and in general research survey design

If you have any questions about the features and benefits of Qualtrics, feel free to contact Ryan Jackson, their representative, at ryanj@qualtrics.com.

CIS is looking for feedback to see who else in the University would be interested. Send your feedback to Stephanie_Obodda@brown.edu. If you have direct feedback regarding the usefulness of Qualtrics to your department, you can also complete the CIS survey that is collecting departmental interest in the platfom.

Doug Wilkinson – CIS Network Technology Group (NTG)

NTG is comprised of:

• Network Security
• Network Engineering
• Network Operations

Any network tickets should be assigned to the Network Operations group, they triage and reassign as needed.
CommOps remains unchanged, still handle dead ports, tap requests, etc.
Projects update:

• Internet Border to OSHEAN – upgrading infrastructure to prepare for a future migration from redundant 1G to redundant 10g
• 5400 firewall decommission, reaching out to departments who are behind these obsolete devices
• NSZ moves
• PBX and SIP upgrade, now complete. SIP features and phones are in testing and will be deployed in new projects in the near future.

Doug’s slide deck is available here.

ANNOUNCEMENTS – Chris Grossi

Brown’s new Dell 3 year contract is close to completion and will shortly be signed.

There has been a change in our Dell Reps. Contact information can be found on the My Dell link on the Dell Premier Page.

CIS is working on streamlining the Dell computer ordering process with the Bookstore. They are also pursuing the idea of the Bookstore keeping an in store inventory of standard machines. This would be a great benefit to departments for those “emergency” situations.

CIS is currently in the testing phase for the new anti-virus client for Brown owned PC’s and hopes to have it out within the next 30 days. Just a reminder that MS Security Essentials can not be put on Brown owned computers or computers running an enterprise copy of Windows. Looks like it is going to be Sophos for the Mac.

Office 2010 support is coming. Classes are in the works.

All users of Maple need to standardize on one version (v15). The sooner we can get our users on that version, the better.

ITG (Instructional Technology Group) will be offering 2 training classes at the end of the month on CANVAS (Brown’s new MyCourses replacement). They will offer sessions on October 26 (from 1-2) and October 27 (from 10-11). The group will also be debuting Canvas at the November DCC meeting.

CCV (CENTER FOR COMPUTATION AND VISUALIZATION) – PRESENTATION BY JOHN HUFFMAN

John Huffman, Manager for CCV User Services and Applications, went over the services offered by the CCV and said that they are willing to talk to anyone who wants to use the facility. In addition, the CCV staff are available for hire on a consulting basis. John also mentioned that the Cave is currently closed for renovations and they hope to have a new state-of-the-art cave up and running by the fall of 2012.

You can view all of the CCV service offerings on their home page or click here for the CCV slide presentation.

Click here for an audio recording of this DCC meeting.

Meeting notes submitted by Gary Bryson.

Aaron Sherman
Account Executive – New England
Dell Inc- Major Public Accounts
978-973-6582
aaron_sherman@dell.com

Inside Support – Brian Ullestad @ Brian_Ullestad@dell.com
Customer Service: 800-274-7799 or http:dell.com/public-ecare
Tech Support: 800-822-8965
How am I doing/Comments or questions: Eric_Platz@dell.com

Pat commenced the DCC meeting with sincere thanks to all the many qualified DCC’s who submitted their names to volunteer within the DPRM group led by David Sherry and the IT leaders group headed up by John Spadaro. Pat stated that the choice was a difficult one because there are so many qualified applicants among the system administrators and DCCs on campus. Jackie Newcomb and Julia Frizzell were selected to work within David Sherry’s DPRM group and Margaret Doll and Don Rogers will be assisting John Spadaro in the IT leaders group. Pat encouraged those persons who expressed an interest in serving these groups that there would be many future opportunities for their help.

Chris Grossi then addressed the group with some brief announcements. He first stated that the VPN connection to Adobe CS4 was shut off on February 28th. Chris mentioned that the Adobe product usage levels out to approximately 70 concurrent uses, but they have sometimes spiked as high as 110-120. Geoff Greene was to meet with a group of executives at Adobe to negotiate licensing costs.

The MatLab license dilemma is still in the process of being resolved. A solution to this problem is hoped for with increased funding for more licenses. The optimal resolution would be for a site license, however, the cost of this might be prohibitive. Chris demonstrated the peak use of MatLab through the course of a two week period, showing the DCCs a graph revealing the crash that happened during vacation week. It was determined that heavy simultaneous demand in multiple departments such as Computer Science, CLPS, and Applied Mathematics were the ultimate cause of the crash that occurred. It was not known that so many courses would have need of so many licenses. Given the need for MatLab, there is no dispute that something proactive must be done to address the campus needs. Since a site license is approximately an additional $20 – $25K annually, it would be too big of a burden for the CIS budget. It is hoped that grant support can be obtained, and to this end, Clyde Bryant has been informed of the shortage and OVPR’s help has been sought. Chris stated that he hopes those departments who use MatLab prolifically might be able to allocate some department or grant monies to the purchase of more licenses. Recently, more licenses were purchased by CIS and Computer Science, however at 375 concurrent copies being implemented it is apparent that unless a site license is purchased or more individual licenses are procured, this resource will continue to run into difficulties.

Chris then mentioned that some migrations from Novell department files services to the new Windows file services have been accomplished, with still more underway.

There are upcoming ITSC training sessions available.

Chris introduced some interesting facts which can be found on the Dell Premier site and encouraged us to contact Christine_Stewart@dell.com for information regarding custom quotes and standard specs. He also mentioned that when a user name and login are established, one is able to view their recent order and status. In addition, Geoffrey Greene and Tony DeGregorio have formed a working group for the purpose of ascertaining what are the optimal specifications for Brown computing at the best prices, with the goal fixed toward standardizing computing resources on campus.

The question was raised if Lo-Jack software could be added to the standard image. David Sherry mentioned that if he had to decide between Lo-Jack and encryption he would choose encryption, since the cost of potential loss of data would be exponentially greater than the loss of a single machine. Reference was also made regarding the periodic laptop engraving that is offered by Police and Security. Normally Morning Mail announces where and when the next engraving will take place.

Stephanie Obodda then took the floor and spoke about Google’s future plans for merging Google Apps for Education with Google Consumer Apps. Those of us who use personal Gmail accounts are already familiar with Google’s Consumer Apps such as Picasa and Maps. This merger will also enable users to log into either their personal Gmail or Brown Gmail from a single login window. Some potential conflicts arising from account names are anticipated, and solutions are currently being reviewed. Stephanie also mentioned that Consumer Apps would not be fully supported by the HelpDesk.

Ken DeBlois was next on the docket with a brief presentation about the progress of BrownSites. Sites are currently being migrated to the Drupal content management system. Among them are Admissions, OVPR, the Graduate School, BioMed, and Classics. There exists a Wiki describing Brown Sites which can be found here. In addition there is a BrownSites pilot website that users can browse through, in order to gain more information and practice. The BrownSites demo page gives many benefits which I have copied here.

BrownSites:

• Is Web-based. You don’t need special software; it works with any web browser.
• Looks and Feels like the new Brown University website.
• Allows for use of Multimedia.
• Pulls in Calendar Events from events.brown.edu.
• Shares News with an optional news feed: let users subscribe to your news.
• Has Public & Draft modes: preview changes instantly, publish when ready.
• Tracks Page Revisions. Revert back to a previous page versions easily.
• Has Roles for Reviews, Contributors, and Editors. Make colleagues “Contributors” to draft content, “Reviewers” to see drafted content, or “Editors” to publish updates.
• Core files are Upgraded and Maintained regularly by the Web Services team. No need to upgrade software, Web Services does it!
• Gains New Features regularly.
• As Web Services rolls out new widgets, modules, and features, they’ll be available to sites.
• Has Flexibility and Robustness to Customize.
• You can contract Web Services to add online directories, resources, applications, slideshows, and almost anything you can dream up to your site.

There are three roles for those who are responsible for departmental webpages: (1) Reviewer (2) Contributor, and (3) Editor. The reviewer has the right to view the pages and the Contributor has the privilege of drafting contents, but the Editor is solely responsible for the actual publication of the pages.

Web services desires to work closely with departments who seek to migrate their webpages. For more involved features and customizations there is a charged fee.

The final presentation was given by Scott Martin regarding the DNS service switchover which is to occur by June 30th. As a part of the network redesign project, Brown has moved its primary DNS services to a private IP number. Any computers configured to obtain IP addresses dynamically via DHCP will not need any changes. Any computers with static numbers should be updated to use this DNS server address: 10.1.1.10. This is an anycast address that fails over to multiple servers, so there is no need for two separate DNS server entries.

The previous DNS servers at 128.148.128.9, 128.148.128.11, and 128.148.128.130 are to be phased out, most likely by June 30th. More information will be coming soon, but all departments should begin reconfiguring any statically-numbered computers to use the new server address.

Our March DCC meeting was devoted to Dell’s yearly presentation to the DCCs. Our long time Dell Account Manager, Shannon Boelter, announced that he was leaving Dell and would be replaced by:
Laura Licciardello
Account Executive – Northeast Region
Laura_Licciardello@dell.com
401-965-6024 cell
401-245-8802 office
Brown University also has a new Software Product Specialist
Jason Shepard
Jason_Shepard@dell.com
508-982-2169 cell
If you have any questions feel free to contact them directly.

Chrissy Stewart will be taking over from Chris Avery as our new Dell inside rep on February 2. Over the past year they have been backing each other up during vacations, etc. Each will continue to be back up for the other but each will only be supporting a single AE. Chrissy’s contact infomation is listed bleow.

Read the rest of this entry »