Engineering / IS Computer Committee

Engineering / IS Computer Committee September 21, 2006

Attending: Matt Kuhn, Sig Lillevik, Peter Osterberg. Paul Erdmann Excused: Peter Chamberlain

Matthew mentioned this committee was formed by Zia and the main task is to complete the Computer Committee 5 year plan. However, there are 3 immediate targets that we need to concentrate on: Friday, Sept. 29th – determine what / if we need to purchase anything for next year out of our capital budget. Early Nov/December – IS starts the budget process for next year and Engineering normally submits our budget requests the end of November 5 year computer plan – Usually comes together in February, but now is the time to start putting in requests for equipment, etc. by departments

Document scanners for faculty and/or students Paul mentioned that IS has ordered (2) scanners for Sheila for labs, so these may be going into Engineering labs. R – Paul – confirm location of new scanners with Sheila and let Matt know.

Large format printer Requested a “D” size printer, which is 2’ wide. Need to determine if student or faculty will be using it since both cannot use at the same time due to different VLAN issues. However, Paul indicated that in labs, faculty and students can use printers without payment issues, so that may solve the issue of where to put this printer and who can use it. One issue that Paul will need to check is how does accounting work for large format printers? Matthew indicated it “normally” costs 10-12 cents per square foot. R – Paul – find out about printer / accounting / SW capabilities for installing large format printer in Engineering computer lab.

MatLab on Linux Peter Osterberg indicated it would be nice to have, but not essential. R – Matthew – investigate how many we would need and cost to determine if it’s worthwhile to add to our budget request.

Adobe Suite Paul indicated some people were interested in PRO version, which is currently available with Freeware. This seems to be used by most faculty and/or staff that use it. Acrobat 7 has the feature to allow you to edit PDF’s. Peter was looking at getting Photoshop if possible. Paul said lab packs or license with media can be purchased, with the most cost efficient being the lab packs. R – Peter – look into cost, availability and medium of Photoshop EN 313 and EN 109 EN 313 has 24 seats and according to Paul there are no more computers available to increase the number of seats currently. If we needed more, Zia would have to work with Bryon on asking for additional seats. We also need a list of students needing UNIX accounts so Ming can set these up for them. R – Sig – work with Kitty on list of students to forward to IS and email EECS faculty on use of EN 313 and if more seats are needed.

EN 109 currently has 17 computers and Paul said one more will be coming this next month, if not before, to increase the number to 18 as originally requested.

Virtualization Software Matthew uses “VMWare”, which is software that you load on machines and it allows you to load any other operating system on your machine. Works at a low level and it’s not an emulation. Matthew would like to include a copy of this in Engineering’s budget request. Paul indicated there is a free “standard” version that will work on individual machines, but not on servers. R – Matthew – check on free version of VMWare Paul said the best one that works is on the MAC and it can run any operating system on a machine without fault. If interested, he suggested we contact Phil Stockton, the IS MAC specialist. Paul also mentioned that Barbara Brien, new Physics professors, bought a 16 node XSERV MAC cluster with grant money. She said that other faculty on campus would be welcome to use it or find out about it if they’re interested.

MSDNAA Sig has been working with Jenny Walsh and he’s still getting info for her. Timeframe to get this going is early October

Linux Servers Engineering machines 1,2,3 work great, however they are not being used to full capacity because of access issues. Suggestion was made to move these machines inside the DMZ and available only to faculty so they can be used to their full potential. This would mean students would not be able to have access to these machines from home. Faculty felt that would not be a problem. R – Paul – look into the possibility of moving Engineering 1,2,3 to inside the DMZ for faculty access and full capability usage.

Mounting of U and P drives via WebDAV status – according to Paul, this is not available yet. Issues stem from changing software to mounting of files on root and security into the DMZ subnet.

Student printing Students still cannot print to student printers from the Linux side. R – Paul – check on status with Kent Banner Name Pages R - IS - looking into reinstalling banner name pages that separate print jobs on all shared printers in Engineering.

Software Builds for Spring Sheila set up online ordering of software requests by faculty / staff – excellent and works just great! Would it be possible to have this list available for faculty to view to avoid duplicate requests, missed requests, etc in the next ordering period? R – Paul – check with Sheila on making online software list available for faculty to view

Tour of IS Data Center Can we arrange a tour for all Engineering faculty of the IS Data Center? Best times would be MWF at 10:20 if that works with Paul. R – Matthew – email engineering faculty to figure out times for tours of center

Review of 2004-2005 merger Essentially a post-mortum of what worked well, what didn’t, improvements, suggestions, etc of this past year’s merger of Engineering’s computer system with the University-wide system. Paul suggested that he invite other folks from IS that were more involved in the process from the early stages to help get a complete picture and input of the process since he came in towards the end of the planning stage.

Thank you to Paul and the folks in IS for all their hard and arduous work over the summer in making the merger and transition occur and on time!

Next meeting Will be scheduled in October. Will need to discuss what will be requested for this next year’s budget cycle. Software and tech refresh requests can not be included in the budget request, per Paul.

Respectfully submitted, Jamie Strohecker Engineering Faculty Secretary

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