Engineering/Information Services Computer Committee Meeting

April 10, 2006

Attending: Peter Chamberlain, Paul Erdmann, Bryon Fessler, Matthew Kuhn, Sig Lillevik, Peter Osterberg

The “S” drive and “contrib.” will no longer exist as of May 8 or 9 (or May 15, see below). After that time, a temporary method of accessing files currently on “S” must be used until June 30, the cut off date, at which time the new “P” and “U” drives will be functional. Bryon is researching this temporary method. Possibilities include the use of USB keys or USB hard drives, moving the “S” drive to the hard drive, creating the “S” drive on an external hard drive then syncing with SAN, moving to directory structure, or creating a partition and copying all documents currently on “S” to the new partition. Whichever method is chosen, IS technicians will make individual appointments,which should take approximately 15 to 30 minutes, with the faculty and staff to instruct them how to use the temporary access. Before the appointments, the faculty and staff will be asked the level of help they will need. The IS technicians will also educate the faculty and staff how to back up files during the temporary access period. Bryon and the project planners will discuss the possibility of removing the “S” drive on May 15 instead of May 8 or 9. If this is agreed upon, individual appointments would be made the week of May 15. It is expected that during this transition, there will be several days when faculty and staff will not be able to access the “S” drive.

Students’ accounts will be limited to one-half gig of storage on the new “P” drive. Paul Erdmann will identify the students who are currently over 400 megabytes. Those students will be notified by either IS or the committee and requested to delete files in order to meet the storage requirement. Matthew Kuhn will contact faculty to ask if they want any student accounts left open. The committee will notify students that the “S” drive is being taken off-line.

Faculty and staff storage will be limited to one gig on the new “U” drive. Exceptions for students, such as student workers, will be made to allow them to store on the “U” drive. This drive will have separate subdirectories for civil engineering, mechanical engineering, etc. The “U” drive will initially be set up to accommodate current engineering needs with the capacity to increase as required.

MSDNAA services will continue to be renewed by IS for engineering.

WebDev appears to be a suitable replacement for ftp; however, it is not a file system or replacement for SMB. The SAN drive is not yet ready for UNIX files. Engineering has asked Information Services for three Linux hosts as well as a SAMBA server to talk with the network/SAN server.

Remote Access is being developed so similar office set ups can be duplicated when away from the office. VPN (Virtual Private Network) is for external use through a secure tunnel to access files and folders as allowed. VPN accounts must be justified and approved by IS.

Additional action items:

  • The committee will identify Linux host requirements.
  • Paul Erdmann will ask Kent Thompson to find the size of MSDNAA storage on the IBM servers.
  • Bryon Fessler and Paul will meet with Kent regarding problems with the group drive.
  • Name conflicts must be resolved during “S” drive migration.
  • File share will be created in fall when the system is more stable.
  • Sig Lillevik reminded IS that a flow chart and timeline of the progress of the transition has not been finalized.
  • In the next few weeks, Peter Osterberg and Paul Erdmann will see if Unix LEDIT and Unix PSPICE (which now both run on Solaris 4) will run on a newer version of Solaris or another newer version of the Unix operating system which IS will be willing to support as a replacement.

Prepared by Debbie Speer

Approved by Matthew Kuhn