Minutes - April 14, 2000
1:30-3pm - I.G. Greer Room 224
I. Welcome and Announcements
Jeff Williams called the meeting to order at 1:30 p.m. Members absent were William Griffin, Kevin Howell, Dick Riedl, Len Johnson, Daryl Cook. Guests present were Michael Bennett, Steve Breiner, Jeff Church, Terry Combs, David Hayler, Charles Kessler, Charles M. Kreszock, Ray Pittman and Tom Van Gilder.
II. Review of Minutes - March 10, 2000
The minutes of the last meeting were reviewed and with a minor amendment, they were approved.
III. Update on IT resources performance and outages
Jeff Williams introduced David Hayler (Network Support Services) to the membership to address the recent network outage and developments within the network systems group.
Hayler mentioned that the network outage was the result of an attempt to integrate a new router into the larger network. The vendor claimed that there would be no problems with the incremental incorporation, but including the router in Appalachian’s system caused corruption of the data stored by some switches, which led to an inability to reset the switches using management software. The inability required a manual power cycling of all of the switches on the network, which took until about 1:00 AM to complete.
The router in question has been removed and will be installed later, after reconfiguration of some of the network switches. Router implementation may require reconfiguration of IP addresses for those machines on which the addresses are hard-coded. Only DHCP (that is, Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol,) will work automatically with the new router system; any systems that require hard-coded addresses may need to have their respective system managers reconfigure their subnet masks and router addresses appropriately. Hayler stated that implementation of the routers will occur on or before May 15.
IV. Update on IT infrastructure improvements
Terry Combs (Systems Administration Group) updated ITAC about the new data storage farm and its installation. It has been installed and selected users will begin to migrate to the new platform over the summer months. Combs requested that representatives ask their constituents to clean up e-mail since unread and unused e-mail is using up a substantial portion of disk storage at the University. Combs further stated that certain high-volume users have been moved to a disk pack volume of their own with somewhat limited space.
Jeff Williams updated the group regarding imminent VMS systems upgrades. Williams stated that we will have effectively doubled computing capacity once the new systems have been installed and tested. He also stated that a number of servers (NT and Novell) are being purchased and that a product named “Resonate” will be installed to load-balance and route requests to servers that are available after having checked that the requested services are up and running. Servers that are not functioning properly will not receive usage requests, thereby avoiding time wastage waiting for unsuccessful attempts. These developments should substantially improve response time and service availability from Appalachian systems.
V. Update on web forum page
Jeff Williams next gave an update on a proposed forum for discussion of Campus Pipeline (CP) and, possibly, other software packages affecting large populations of the University community. The current forum (to be deployed soon) for CP will be made accessible from within CP; users will be allowed to post either discussions, position papers, white papers, or opinions on this forum for discussion and debate. Users must authenticate, after which they can post or reply to existing topics. Methods for posting new topics are being considered and investigated at this time. Williams will research the meaning and implications of the “End Date” field in the forum and will report back on that subject. The forum will be cosmetically cleaned and information for access will be sent to the ITAC membership once it becomes available.
Beth Davison (Sociology and Social Work) questioned the ultimate purpose of the forum, that is, how the forum ultimately will be used. Doug May (Academic Computing Services) suggested that the ITAC membership would be an appropriate evaluators of the postings and any need for more research into any topics or issues brought up in the forum. Williams suggested that ITAC should sort through the possible uses of the forum posts, it being an appropriate representative group for such actions.
The CP forum page is now available. Click here.
VI. Discussion - Planning IT at ASU
Jeff Williams then gave an update on information technology planning. Williams suggested that it was time to update the IT plan, last reevaluated two or three years ago. Williams queried ITAC about how we should establish a mechanism for tackling new IT issues and the planning process for same. He then offered to send out a link to the old plan (http://www2.acs.appstate.edu/plan.htm) for ITAC members to view and suggested that ITAC would be an important resource in helping to develop an update for the IT plan. Williams further suggested that the major question to be answered is how do we move forward on the plan, once it has been developed. Charles Kessler (Distance Learning Coordinator) questioned how the plan might be used to improve the IT environment at the University. Williams reiterated his suggestion that ITAC was the appropriate body to both evaluate and lobby for implementation of the IT plan.
VII. Discussion - Should we require students to have access to computers?
Doug May (ACS) led discussion of whether students should be required to have computer access. Charles (Mick) Kreszock (Instructional Technology Center) suggested that other issues must be considered (for instance, computer processing power, memory, and software availability) and that Appalachian should, if it chooses to require such access, set a standard for a required level of computational capability. Discussion continued with Troy McHenry (Association of Information Technology Professionals - Student Representative) stating that availability of computers at university labs was rarely, if ever, a problem, and that there were computers available at virtually any time a student might need them. A general consensus arose that Appalachian should not, at this time, require students to own personal computers but that it would be appropriate to develop an “official” statement to the effect that all students at Appalachian must obtain access to computers for use in their class assignments and educational endeavors - whether such access comes though ownership, sharing or use of university labs was intentionally excluded from the recommendation.
VIII. Obligation to provide central disk space (augment with Idrive?)
This item was tabled until the next meeting due to the late hour.
IX. Update on Human Resource System search
Clayton Cooke (Systems & Special Projects) presented an update on Appalachian�s efforts to acquire a new payroll software system. He informed the group that the acquisition process must be �redirected� to assure that the new system can interoperate with the NC Controller�s regular, standard package. In light of the newly discovered requirements, Appalachian is temporarily suspending the search process while it reevaluates the financial software offerings from vendor, SAP.
X. Other Business
Jeff Williams updated ITAC on efforts to negotiate specifications developing a relationship with a �preferred Internet Service Provider� who can provide discounted ISP services for the Appalachian community. He stated that a formal RFP (request for proposals) has been issued, following a pre-bid conference with potential bidders. Proposals are due sometime near the end of April. A number of options to minimize ISP costs are being considered, with details to be proposed by the bidding vendors.
Doug May presented an update on efforts to address printing resource management. Current directions have investigated the deployment of a system that provides user authentication and a pay-per-print model. This project is being considered in attempts to reduce the rapidly expanding expenditures by various units for print-related consumables (paper, toner, etc.) An evaluation subcommittee has been established (Membership - Doug May, Charles Kreszock, Lynne Lysiak, David Sampson, Michael Bennett, Jeff Craven, Troy McHenry and Ed Pekarek) to assist in the evaluation process. Al Harris (Information Technology & Operations Management) expressed concern that �computer-heavy� majors might, in effect, be penalized in a pay-pre-print environment, to which May replied that the degree of flexibility to address issues such as this is an important factor in the evaluation of solutions being considered.
The next meeting will be on May 12 at 1:30 p.m. A note will be sent out the week before, asking for possible agenda items. The meeting was adjourned at 3:15 p.m.
