OIT Technology Meeting - March 2006

Announcements

Mary Ann Chianelli, MSSG
The IT Vendor Fair will be held on Wednesday, March 8, from 10am - 3pm in the Busch Campus Center MPR. A complete list of vendors is available at http://itvendorfair.rutgers.edu.

Josh Hogle, MSSG
The University's contract with Mcafee expires on June 30th. Those wishing to voice an opinion on alternate antivirus vendors should email antivirus_support@rutgers.edu.

Susan Schwerdt, MSSG
There have been major changes to the SPSS licensing scheme.

1. Each computer running the SPSS software must have its own license (i.e., if you have an office computer and use a home computer or laptop, you will need to purchase a license for each).


2. When you run the "Authorization Wizard" for any of the SPSS modules (i.e., Tables, etc.) you will need to choose "Authorization via Internet to get License" which will allow only ONE installation per authorization code.


3. The Authorization Code for any SPSS Module is only valid for ONE installation. Any action that would require a reinstall of SPSS will require the purchase of a NEW license. Re-use of the existing license is not work.

Additional vendor changes to SPSS licensing:

Limited quantities of SPSS modules are available on the University Software Portal. These modules, including SPSS Tables will ONLY work with version 14 of Base, Advanced & Regression. Once the current module inventory is depleted, these items will no longer be carried. Future purchases will require departments purchase directly from SPSS. Please contact the Rutgers SPSS account manager, Trista St. John at tstjohn@spss.com.

This is the last year that SPSS Base, Advanced @ Regression for any version prior to 13.0 will be available on the Software Portal. Also, please take note of the expiration date on your license certificate; dates vary across the product line. If you have any questions, contact software@mssg.rutgers.edu

Tom Grzelak, OIRT
Sakai Training for UCSs will be held on March 15 and March 31. Please visit the OIRT website to register.

Polycom videoconference demo is slated for all three campuses on March 9th. Please visit the oirt.rutgers.edu website for more information and to register.

The April 4th symposium on Cyberinfrastructure is open to all IT staff. It will describe many of the technologies researchers are being encouraged (and in some cases required) to participate in. IT staff that support research may be particularly interested in the topics being discussed. Please visit the internet2.rutgers.edu website for more information and to register.

Presentations

Sakai
Gayle Stein, OIRT
Sakai is an open-source collaboration and learning environment for education and research. The pilot ran from September until the end of the December, with over 60 faculty and between 8,000 - 9,000 registered users. The results were very positive. User feedback indicated it was worth pursuing and student required little help with it. It does, however, have a need for more instructional design staff. The University is currently waiting for the final product emerging from the WebCT/Blackboard merger before making an official recommendation on a CMS. The first Sakai, fully-online, no-credit course, offered by Jewish Studies, has been slated for Spring 2005. Integrated audio/video streaming and podcast tools are in the works. OIRT is currently putting in place a fault-tolerant soft rollout of Sakai for Fall 2006.

SAN Infrastructure
Tom Vosseler and John Amodeo, FAS
Legacy FAS infrastructure consisted of single servers per unit with local RAID storage and backups to a tape robot. Server failures required immediate attention, upgrades required downtime. They needed a scalable, high-speed, reliable system. NAS options ran between $40-65k, SAN solutions were ~$95k.

A SAN solution was selected, which included 1TB of drive space, 2 storage processors, 2 FC switches, 8 HBA's, on-site installation and 4hr. parts replacement. 3 LUN's were provisioned, along with a hot spare. The SAN OS spans the first four disks. Switches are zoned to maintain data integrity and to prevent simultaneous writes from multiple machines/databases. The Novell infrastructure was reduced to 4 clustered servers, mounting data and users from the SAN. The backup server and tape robot were reconnected. Linux machines are clustered using heartbeat for high-availability and STONITH for data integrity.

Another TB of SAN was added, along with a 3.5TB Apple xraid SAN for backup. The old backup server and tape robot were removed. More clusters were created from the existing machines. Services such as IMAP, PostgreSQL, WWW, MySQL, and several others were provisioned to dual-machine clusters. Netware proved to be an effective NAS Front End as it supports several popular protocols such as CIFS, NFS, WebDAV, etc. Several clusters mounted their data from it. A new 7.5TB AX100 SAN device is on the way. The XRAID will be moved off-site (next door) and remain on the SAN for backup.

John and Tom also conducted breakout sessions on the Linux and Netware aspects of the SAN respectively. The presentation is available in a Powerpoint document.

BACK TO TOP

© 2005 Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. All rights reserved.