Administrative Computing Advisory Committee

ADMINISTRATIVE COMPUTING ADVISORY COMMITTEE

MAY 9, 2012

Present:  Jim Fergerson, Joel Cooper, Sue Traxler, Dan Bergeson, Linda Thornton, Julie Anderson, Roger Lasley,

Absent:  Julie Thornton, Rod Oto

Guests:  Austin Robinson-Coolidge, Dave Flynn, Les LaCroix

Agenda:

1.       Review, approve minutes of April 11 meeting

2.       Backup of desktop computers (Joel and/or Sue)

3.       Revising the way we assign student net IDs (Joel and/or Sue)

4.       ITS summer projects overview (Joel and/or Sue)

5.       Adding some Advance information to data warehouse (Julie Anderson, Jim)

6.       Discuss a possible summer meeting (Do we need one?)

Approve minutes of April 11 meeting:

Minutes from the April 11, 2012 meeting were approved.

Backup of desktop computers:

Austin Robinson-Coolidge and Dave Flynn joined us to talk about the state of Live Backup and get input from the committee on next steps to take.  The current state of Live Backup has been problematic and it’s not sustainable.  The company, Attempo, has been difficult to work with and gives us no assurances that purchasing faster storage will solve our problems. Live Backup is nearing end-of-life and a number of server warranties also expire in June.  Technology has changed since we implemented Live Backup, so it’s time to call the question.  What do we do next with respect to desktop backups?

After doing research, Dave and Austin laid out five options with pros and cons for us to consider.

1.       Crashplan - $86,000 upfront cost, for server appliance and 1000 licenses. 

Pros:  great desktop client, vendor supported hardware

Cons: expensive initial investment, no way to grow storage

2.       CrashPlan  - $93,000 expandable appliance, controller appliance, 1000 licenses

Pros:   add storage as needed, great desktop client, vendor supported hardware

Cons:  Expensive initial investment

3.       Live Backup - $35,000-70,000 (unknown), replacement storage, a lot of unknown costs.

Pros:  lowest upfront cost, infrastructure in place

Cons:  unclear how to fix, client has low functionality, may require additional SAN.

4.       Cloud based storage - ~ $38,125 for  10,000 licenses (minimum) unlimited storage,  other costs unknown

Pros:  Would replace some of Home/Collab/Courses, accessible from most anywhere and most devices

Cons:  Not actually backup, manual process to put files there, privacy concerns

5.       Hard drives on desktops - $100,000 for 1000 1TB external drives

Pros:  self-service and high degree of client control

Cons: high failure rate, no redundancy, hard to maintain and support.

Our discussion centered on where faculty and staff store files now, storage and backup of large data files, mobility – faculty need to take their data with them, and addressing training.  The group favored going with one of the CrashPlan options.  Dave and Austin plan to also bring this topic to the Academic Computing Technology Committee next week to get their input.

Revising the way we assign student net IDs:

Les LaCroix joined the meeting to give us an overview of revising the way we assign student net IDs.  Even with our small student body, we have to reassign previously used login names.  Over the last decade, students have registered their Carleton e-mail address with an increasing number of external systems (Facebook, Google), causing problems for students who receive a reassigned login ID.  We end up renaming the student’s local accounts, which is a disruptive process to the account holder and expensive in terms of the number of ITS staff who need to get involved. 

Austin surveyed his student workers for feedback and he reported that there was no clear consensus from the responses he received.  We have two potential deadlines coming up:

1.       Right away, if we are making changes this year.

2.        Mid-June, if we are moving ahead either this year or next which will affect alumni net IDs of current seniors

After discussion of the formats presented, the committee favored format #1:  take a student’s last name and add a sequence number and truncate the last name if necessary so that the login name is 12 characters or fewer.  No letters from the first name would be used.  Examples were:  smith1, smith2, lee1, lee2.  They also suggested writing up a policy about the new process.  Les will also take this topic to the Academic Computing Technology Committee next week for their feedback.

ITS summer projects overview:

Joel Cooper briefly talked about the projects that will be taking place this summer.   He is not sure we are able to do the entire list, but was looking to know if there was input on whether any of these were a more significant priority.

1.       Faculty/Staff desktop backup system upgrade ($100,000)

2.       Redundant border router ($40,000)

3.       Redundant firewall ( $70,000)

4.       Data center infrastructure improvements

-          Second utilities path out of CMC ($15,000)

-          Transfer switch backup for the Data Center ($19,000)

Adding some Advance information to the Data Warehouse:

Discussion was deferred to another meeting.

Discuss possible summer meeting:

Our next meeting is scheduled for June 13^th.  After discussion we decided to schedule another meeting for early August. 

Meeting adjourned at 3:10.

Submitted by, Candyce Lelm