Overview of CNS projects for the summer

Summer for many parts of the University is a slow time--many professors are off doing research for the summer, students are at home or at work, and the campus is relatively calm and peaceful.

In Computing and Network Services, however, our pace picks up as we take advantage of the reduced demand on our services to implement, change, redo, and reconfigure. Summer in many ways is our busiest time of the year.

We'd like to share our list of summer projects. Some of these will require systems to be unavailable at times, and we will be posting a more detailed schedule with specific downtimes shortly, as well as notifying the Drew community in advance.

1. Student Networking upgrades -- some of the network equipment in the residence halls is over 5 years old. We will be replacing all switches, hubs and routers in all the residence halls with up-to-date, Cisco switches, supporting full 100 megabit Ethernet to every network connection. We will be making Gigabit Ethernet connections from every residence hall to the central networking core, and replacing core networking equipment in Holloway. The bulk of this work will occur in the month of July and will not require extended downtime.
   
   
2. Wireless Network Upgrades -- We will be installing wireless networking in the Dorothy Young Center for the Arts, selected undergraduate residence halls, and extend the wireless network in the Hall of Sciences.
   
   
3. Storage Area Network upgrades -- We installed a Storage Area Network (SAN) in early 2002, and it has been very effective, both in increasing reliability of the campus network, and lowering our cost of purchasing new servers. We'll be doing a number of upgrades to increase the capacity of the SAN and update to the latest software. These upgrades will occur this month; and most will not cause any downtime due to the redundant nature of our SAN infrastructure which allows us to replace and upgrade parts of the SAN while keeping the rest running normally.
   
   We also will be installing an additional tape backup library to the SAN. As more systems are put into the SAN and disk space is increased, our backup needs have increased with it. An additional tape library will allow us to have the online capacity to continue doing backups of all critical systems.
   
   
4. Novell NetWare upgrades -- Novell is expected to release NetWare 6.5 this summer, which will bring many improvements in the quality and variety of the services we can offer. We hope to install this software if it becomes available in July. If it does not, we will work with a patch update to NetWare 6.0. These updates will require minimal downtime due to us being able to upgrade cluster nodes independently.
   
   
5. Email server upgrades -- The server running email is now over 4 years old, and is a Sun Solaris server, the only one of its kind on campus. We will be replacing it with a Linux server running Novell NetMail. This server will have disk storage in the SAN to improve reliability, and using Linux will allow us to run additional services like spam filtering. This upgrade, which will occur in late June or early July, will require a few hours of downtime to email as user files are moved over.
   
   
6. Linux server upgrades -- CNS uses Linux servers to provide Web pages, Web applications, and backend network services. We will be upgrading the operating systems on these over the summer to allow for better enterprise management of the servers. New servers will also be installed to provide for better network management and monitoring. This work will be ongoing during the summer and will only require downtime of specific servers for about an hour.
   
   
7. Windows server installs and upgrades -- CNS's Windows servers currently provide Active Directory authentication to clients and database services. We will be adding and reconfiguring servers to add streaming media services, new helpdesk software, new scheduling software, a replacement to the Library database server, and Blackboard. Windows Server 2003 will be installed wherever possible. Installations will happen mostly in June and July, and as most of these installs are new services will require no downtime.
   
   
8. Server room reconfigurations -- Our server rooms in Brothers College and the Learning Center house lots of sleek, modern equipment in them, as well as outdated and obsolete equipment. Over time, abandoned cabling, power connections, and equipment accumulate and need to be removed. In addition, our standardization on rack-mounted servers means we need more racks in which to install new equipment. We will use some weekends in June to move furniture and servers, restring power and network cables, and generally clean up server rooms to support our current needs. This will require downtime as servers are moved and reinstalled, although advance planning will minimize the amount of downtime per server.
   
   
9. Student computer selection, configuration, and distribution -- From now until August we will be going through the process of providing over 450 incoming students the 20th Computer Initiative computer. A vendor and computer will be selected by the end of June, and computers will be configured during July. Final delivery of the units to Drew is in early August, and distribution to the students occurs on Saturday, August 30th. This year, we are exploring methods by which we can customize and preconfigure computers for each incoming student in advance, hopefully eliminating the need for any end-user configuration whatsoever.
   
   
10. Helpdesk improvements -- We have purchased a commercial helpdesk software package, and will be implementing the solution over the summer. This is a replacement to our own internally-developed package, and will supplement our internal inventory managment. What this will mean is more organized call logging, escalation, and problem resolution. Customers will be able to get answers to software questions in email or over the Web. Answers to commonly-asked questions will be placed in a user-searchable knowledge base, thus reducing the need for calls to the helpdesk. Managers will be able to monitor call completion times, incidents, and make sure no one's issues fall through the cracks. Calls that need assistance by a full-time employee will be assigned to them, and they will be able to see all outstanding issues they need to deal with. To support our use of the new software, we will be rearranging and redesigning the workflow at the helpdesk as well.
    
    
11. Internet Connection Upgrades -- We will be increasing the bandwidth of our Internet connection, and improving our firewalling configuration for maximum security and configurability.
    
    
12. Windows XP upgrades for faculty and staff -- We have many computers on campus (any Compaq desktop that is a Pentium III 650 MHz or faster) that are currently running Windows 98 but could run Windows XP with an inexpensive memory upgrade. Our current Microsoft license allows us to install Windows XP at no additional cost. We will be using CNS student employees to perform as many Windows XP upgrades as time and scheduling allows. Windows XP offers greater performance, better ease of use, and significantly more stability than Windows 98.
    
    
13. Zenworks for Desktops 4 -- The latest version of Zenworks will also be installed this summer.

We've got a lot of work ahead of us, but it's all about providing the most up-to-date and stable solutions to the Drew community. Sometimes upgrades cause disruptions in service, but we feel the downtime is a small price to pay for the benefits of the upgrades. CNS is committed to planning and testing as much as possible to minimize negative impacts of planned maintenance.