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Servers and Storage

Computing and Network Services manages a variety of servers to support a range of services and applications. These require data storage and regular backups. A few major systems are outlined below. To read about our servers and storage in more detail, please go to the Systems and Networking section of CNS Live.

Causeway

Causeway is the name for Computing and Network Services centralized networked file and print services system. Causeway improves on single-server configurations by providing centralized, redundant, and highly available file storage and printer services. Using Novell NetWare 6.5 and Novell Cluster Services, work is no longer disrupted by a single server outage. Computers automatically reconnect to the server that takes over for the failed server. This allows us to have a virtually uninterruptable server infrastrucuture, with at most a brief pause as services reconfigure themselves automatically.

We provide campus-wide network storage with a storage area network, which gives us the provide reliable service, to do fast backups, and to easily add more storage. Default disk quotas are 100MB for students, 500MB for faculty and staff, and 3GB for departmental workspaces. Space available for ATTIC courses is increased greatly from our older systems.

To take advantage of these enhancements, users will no longer need to know physical server names, instead Causeway names for volumes and servers are used, that point dynamically to the appropriate physical servers.

Network drives (F:, G:, K:, M: , N:, and P:)l remain as before, with the added benefits of redundancy. Drives O: and U: will represent all departmental space and user directories respectively. Each volume has its own server, with server names that are named after the default drive letters. These tables will help with understanding the layout:

Drive Letter

Mapped Location

Description

F:

\\causeway_u\users\username

Home directory

G:

\\causeway_o\depts\deptname

Departmental directory

K:

\\causeway_p\courses\current_term

Current course directory

M:

\\causeway_m\campusapps\

General applications

N:

\\causeway_m\campusapps\atapps

Legacy academic application space

O:

\\causeway_o\depts\

All departments

P:

\\causeway_p\courses\

All course terms

U:

\\causeway_u\users\

All user directories

Chalmers

Chalmers is our NetWare 6.5 cluster for the Novell GroupWise email system. We have a four-server cluster, each running a "post office" and other services. This is also hooked up to our Storage Area Network. We can have two servers fail and still maintain services, as long as the SAN disk array is operating.

Other servers

In addition, CNS maintains the campus web server hardware and software, a two-node database server cluster, our campus DNS and DHCP servers (critical for network operations), and many more. We are currently managing have over 30 physical servers and more than 20 virtual servers

 

  
 
 
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Page last updated: 26 April 2006