2. Welcome to the PA Computer Center Directors Meeting Bucknell University March 19. 1998

3. PA Computer Center Directors Agenda 9:00 - 9:30 Arrival, continental breakfast 9:30 - 9:40 Introductions 9:40 - noon Bucknell Presentations (10:45 break) Noon - 2:00 Lunch/discussions 2:00 - 3:00 Campus Computing Tour

4. Bucknell Presentations Information Services & Resources (Ray Metz, VP of ISR) CCS/ISR Organization (Gene Spencer, AD for Computing & Information Services) Help Desk and Problem Tracking Software (Sue Hales, Client Services Group Leader) Network Architecture (John Jantzi, Network) Advisory Committees (Gene Spencer) break Banner Conversion (Gene Spencer) 5 year Replacement Plan for Desktop Computing (Mark Ritschard, Desktop Team Leader) File Services and Triage (Mike Weaver, Systems Integration Group Leader)

5. File Services For our purposes, I’ll loosely define File Services as storing and sharing files.

6. File Services - Goals All Inclusive: everyone is part of File Services Consistent: When I want to get something from the finance office, I know what to expect, because it’s the same as my department Universal Access: from any platform “Easy to use” Secure Reliable

7. Functional Requirements Put personal files that can be accessible from any computer on campus (file storage) –diskless Eudora A place to share files with others (file sharing) –departments –courses –organizations –other collaborations and communities

8. Functional Requirements (cont.) A mechanism to “give” files to others A place for web pages

9. Academic Depts Admin Depts Students A-K Students L-Z File Servers NT Server RAID 5, nightly backups Scalable architecture (We can easily add another student server, if needed) Sized for growth (servers all have capacity for more hard disk, memory) Meaningful names 3 Year Life

10. Folder Structure - People mweaver private public drop_box www eudora stuff (students only)

11. Folder Structure - Departments isr people mweaver etc... private public drop_box www

12. Academic Depts Students L-Z Students A-K Admin Depts

13. isr people mweaver private public Windows 95/NT, via Microsoft Client Macintosh, via AppleShare Unix, via FTP (Also, off campus Macintosh users) “Universal” Accessibility

14. IBM Drive Connections (At Logon) isr people mweaver private public Academic Depts Admin Depts P: R: X: U:

15. Communities & Collaborations (Others with File Services) Campus Organizations –Greening Task Force, Assoc. for Evolutionary Economics Student Organizations –Outing Club, Silhouettes Singing Group, Ultimate Frisbee Club, WVBU, Amer. Soc. Civil Engineers Fraternities/Sororities Committees –ISR Advisory Committees, Parking Committee Academic Projects –Senior Design Project, Collaborative Research

16. File Services Also Includes Application Sharing Printer Sharing Software Distribution

17. Switching Gears ToWeb Architecture

18. Web Strategy Started with a single central web server –this is currently www.bucknell.edu –running on Unix –Apache server Migrating to a strategy of supporting web pages within the existing file services

19. Web Server Windows NT 4.0 Microsoft Internet Information Server 4.0 Multiple IP Addresses and Host Names www.facstaff, www.students, www.departments, www.orgs Allows for scalability - we can easily add one or more additional servers Will become www.bucknell.edu Only contains Bucknell’s top level pages

20. Web Architecture academic depts admin depts students ak students -lz web server

21. Web Architecture - Part II academic depts students lz web server http://www.departments.bucknell.edu/physics physics public www http://www.students.bucknell.edu/smith s smith public www

22. Save a file at u:\public\www\index.html You have a web page! Logon to the network as usual “easy to use”

23. My favorite faculty quote: applause

24. Other Web Servers Existing Unix/Apache server will remain for processing some account management, cgi’s etc. www.library.bucknell.edu for library pages www.banner.bucknell.edu for web access to banner WebCT for courseware support Talking about adding web services to software distribution

25. Switching Gears To Building Reliability

26. Programs –“Triage” Students –Automatic System Checks Includes all systems, not just File Services Documentation, including list of servers and services who’s responsible priority/response expectations hours of support

27. “Triage” Students 3 Students On call from 5:00pm to 8:00am, and all weekend Carry a beeper Trained to provide a first level diagnosis (triage) when problems are encountered during non-work hours

28. “Triage” Students - (cont.) Perform system checks at 9:00pm and 6:00am every day. –send e-mail to themselves –post to a newsgroup –copy a file from each file server –print to lab printers –ping lots of hosts –access servers via AppleShare –visit web pages on various servers

29. Automatic System Checks Had a homegrown system that: –performed checks every two minutes pinged lots of devices copied a file from each server to exercise netbios –provided an audible alert to operators –sent e-mail to appropriate person when a system didn’t respond –worked most of the time

30. Automatic System Checks (cont.) Recently started using a commercial product –What’s Up Gold –Does many of the same things, only better –Much easier to set up –Can also check services, such as NNTP and SMTP –Flexibility in configuring alerts –Support for e-mail, beepers, pagers, and voice

31. What’s Up - Console In computer room Visible to operators Audible alarm when something is down

32. What’s Up - Web Interface

33. What’s Up -Web Interface - Detail

34. The End!