Computing Service Newsletters
Computing Service Newsletter 237 (July 2008)
Progress Report
The Progress Report made by the Computing Service to the ISSS in May 2008 included the following items not covered elsewhere in this or earlier Newsletters:
User Services
There were just over 5000 incoming network probes in April with MS SQL services as the most popular. Towards the end of the month the University had a targeted scam email, searching for 'cam' passwords. This first attempt was limited and only one person replied. The scam mail continued into May with much larger attacks, but again very few people were taken in.
Institution Strategy
The welcome news that ongoing central funding for the Small Institution Support Service post will be forthcoming reflects both the quality of the service provided and its value to the University.
Google were invited to discuss their Apps Education Edition with University information services staff.
Network and PWF
Planning for over one hundred CUDN upgrade backup circuits has been completed. This planned work will extend over the next year.
The primary core of the telephone system has now been signed off as completed.
The list of PWF software upgrades for next academic year includes about 80 application changes across the 3 PWF platforms (Windows, Macs and PWF Linux) and requests were received from 12 departments.
The Windows team have been continuing to investigate ways of improving application delivery and have been evaluating the Terminal Services facilities in Windows 2008 Server, with a view to using these to provide Office 2007 in UCS teaching rooms in the short term and for making applications in general available to users of personal (non-PWF) machines in the longer term.
Members of the Small Systems group have again been working to support the Examinations for those with Special Needs in the Titan rooms.
Unix Systems
Unix Support and the Development Team have begun work on the redesigned Streaming Media Service upload web system as part of the move from a pilot service to a fully live one. The new interface incorporates the lessons learnt from the past year's trial service.
The DSpace training instance has been converted to use Raven as its authentication system rather than the built-in system. Following successful testing on this system the live service will in due course move to using Raven too.
The Webmail system has been adapted to use templates. While they currently reflect the original design, the freedom granted will allow the interface to be modernized and other changes made more easily.
The Unix Support NFS server (which also provides its material via the web, SMB, rsync) has been extended to include two more Linux distributions (CentOS and Scientific Linux) and the RPMForge software repository.
A virtualisation system has been built, complete with cross-site redundant storage for power and cost saving.
Technical User Support
Members of Hardware Support were able to recover data from a number of students' USB pen drive devices that had suffered accidental damage. On average, Hardware Support is successful in recovering data from approximately 75% of failed hard drives, but 99% of USB pen drives.
The week 21-25 April recorded the busiest week ever for the UCS Videoconferencing Service when it hosted a total of ten videoconferences to destinations including Singapore, Pakistan, Japan and the USA, via both IP and ISDN.
The Macintosh Support team have extended their pilot of the Macintosh Software Update Server (MacSUS) service to CARET after an extensive internal pilot in the UCS. Two other departments have also been invited to join this pilot.
The title of this document is:
Computing Service Newsletter 237: Progress Reports
URL:
http://www.cam.ac.uk/cs/newsletter/2008/nl237/progress.html