Systems Staff Meeting Notes
March 7, 2008
March 7, 2008
Present: Thomas Bielicke, Cynthia Bowker, Will Chaney, Logan Clapp, Debra Fetzer, Winston Harris, Bobbie Meng, Chris Nicolich, Mark Sullivan, Stephen WilliamsAnnouncementsReview Minutes of 2/29/08
- Smash Brothers Brawl comes out this weekend.
- Weather report: storm and tornado warnings.
- Home Show at the O'Connell Center this weekend.
- Reorganization discussion.
- Evaluations: warned of ranking creep.
- Support Service Meeting recap: MSL is getting new carpet installed on the 5th floor over Spring Break. They also have an AC problem that is being addressed. Budget cut - $1.3 million from the Libraries next fiscal - for a total of 10% over two years. Administration is soliciting any ideas on how the Library can save money. One possibility is the elimination of the OPS budget and/or exempt staff working more hours. Bill recommends checking out President Machen's Web site regarding the state of the University - budget, etc. Lay-offs are not off the table.
- Middle Manager's - reorganization discussion. Blog policy sent out.
Ongoing Systems Updates
- Network #4 - remove it.
Equipment Received/Installed/RepairedLiaisons
- MSL laptops - none of the batteries in the laptops they sent us would work with the charger. Turns out, another university was using the charger with the wide-screen model. Now GovConnection is going to replace our MSL laptops with the wide-screen model. We will have to reimage them.
Networking
- Machines that are getting turned off are not getting updates. Need to determine if users are turning them off or if it is the power settings.
- Systems training - good edition on ESX's, switches and SAN rollover last week. Group A goes next week. Topic: security SANS. Logan notes he found the Microsoft Online Academy - has good training.
Software Projects Status
- Backup Exec server - had to be restarted - it didn't like it. There's a new version out - Backup Exec 12. We will try to upgrade during spring break next week.
- McAfee - testing resulted in discovery of machines turned off. We are close to ready to go live - next week.
- DiskXtender - need to decide where to install and give volume number before the license can be used.
- SAN - working on file server - has some issues - misconfigured DNS. Once it works, will move DLC first then the Web server. Want the failover seamless so the user won't know.
- Data on NT2R - much will be migrated to Disk Xtender. NT2R will become the store of old data, with a pointer on the user's machine to retrieve. Will have a tape copy of NT2R and the backup will run monthly.
- CJK image - Logan met with David Hickey on Monday. The language pack from Microsoft is available for download - multi boot, single machine. The request was for Chinese - this will be the initial language.
- Central Exchange server meeting - March 19.
- Public printing - on hold.
- VM backups - VSX strategy - separate USB drive solution. Would provide portability.
DLC Greenstone Issues
- Blogs - anonymous comments allowed.
- Wiki - testing net traffic use of SSL.
- Grover - Software tab is almost finished. Network and ordering is next. Could conceivably be released by July '08.
- Tracking database - Tom made changes and Erich approved the new version. The redesign of the Tracking database - v. 3.0 - (Web version) is in the design phase.
- Greenstone - new version is still getting out-of-memory exceptions, but it is catching it better - easier to debug. Mark is working on it.
- Lori Driscoll is passing around the affiliation proposal - getting comments. It is under review. Lori will be gone for 1½ weeks. Jim Stevens may have a second proposal for large groups that visit for a day or two.
Student and Department
- Working on the network monitoring tool. Hope to roll-out next week.
Systems Security Management
- Spring break is next week. Students will be gone.
- Meeting held.
