OIS
Proposal for a Mac Service
IT-GLM 26th July 2010 Andreas Wagner – CERN IT/OIS
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland www.cern.ch/it OIS Outline
• Background
• Proposal for Mac Service
• From Mac Support to Mac Service
• Next Steps and ongoing work
• Summary
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 2 www.cern.ch/it OIS Background - History
• Mac usage at CERN varied quite a bit over the last decades, e.g. was popular in directorate for some time and with some specific user communities
• In the past due to limited resources the aim was to focus IT support efforts for Windows and SLC
• Mac Support as one-man-show (2005-2009): for several years Mac Support = Patrick Herzog
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 3 www.cern.ch/it OIS Background - Motivation
• Since 2002 Mac OS X – Unix based OS architecture
• Mac HW architecture move to Intel – announced June 2005 – first Intel based models Jan 2006 (15" MacBook Pro & iMac Core Duo line) – Mac OS X 10.6 "Snow Leopard“ (released in 2009) was the first OS X version that did not support the PowerPC family anymore
Mac became an attractive platform for physicists.
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 4 www.cern.ch/it OIS Background - Motivation
Active hardware population at CERN
Active devices seen on the network, July 2010 CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 5 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Service - Proposal
• The existing number of Macs onsite is quite significant
• Despite being sometimes more expensive, Macs fully satisfy a number of user communities.
Proposal to recognize and support the Apple laptops & desktops with MacOS X as a standard CERN platform
• NB: This is not a proposal for a “managed platform” a la NICE, for this users should use Windows (NICE). Mac users will be advices to enable auto-update for OS and applications.
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 6 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Service – Key areas
• Integration – Interoperability with other IT services
• Data protection – Issue of local data
• Structured dialog with Mac community via ITSRM – To identify user needs and wishes
• Address known pain-points
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 7 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Support to Mac Service (I)
• Introduce official support via the Service Desk
– Standard three level support model already implemented since January 2010
– Already during the negotiations for new desktop support contract, that has started in 2010, a dedicated SubSLA for Mac Support was included
– Some cases were already handled via the support contract before, but it was a somewhat grey area since Mac support coverage was not properly reflected in previous contract.
– In view of providing non-standard laptop support via desktop support contract, presently together with UDS a review of all SLAs for Windows, Linux and Mac is taking place to be more coherent for both SW and HW support aspects CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 8 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Support to Mac Service (II)
• Official support via the Service Desk (cont.)
– Applies to “CERN supported Mac OS X versions (n, n-1) installed on Standard Apple Hardware” – Help Macintosh users to install/re-install the operating system software or applications – Help for configuration and use of CERN services (mail, web applications, printing, remote logins, file services, etc.). – Help for hardware failure diagnosis – Help users carry out simple maintenance operations on Macintosh hardware, like adding modules of memory, changing disks or internal components.
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 9 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Support to Mac Service (III)
• Establish link with Apple support to provide adequate technical support for the relevant platforms
• Apple offers three levels of enterprise support contracts: “Select” , “Preferred” , “Alliance” – “Select” (~10k/year): • 10 incidents maximum / year – “Preferred” (~34k/year): • unlimited number of reported incidents, • 24x7 support coverage • Includes a dedicated Technical Account Manager – “Alliance” (~84k/year): • multi-sites i.e. covering several institutes
– Order for “Preferred” support contract was sent on Friday July 23rd
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 10 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Support to Mac Service (IV)
• Facilitate Mac hardware purchases: – Together with FP & GS departments identify the best purchase and hardware assistance possible (e.g. Stores / punch-out / dedicated Apple Web portal)
• Ensure proper interoperability between IT services and popular Mac Applications such (Mail, Web applications, printing etc...)
• Provide good documentation and user help – Provide documentation on recommended configuration of tools and best practices (e.g. fonts to avoid, file extensions, etc...)
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 11 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Support to Mac Service (V)
• Streamline Mac software license provision: – With help of FP, provide attractive licensing for popular Mac OS X software – today: • OS Upgrades • Antivirus • MS Office • Adobe Products: Dreamweaver, Acrobat, …
– other candidates: • Enterprise subscription for Mac SDK (campus license) • Virtualization: Parallels, Vmware
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland Mac Service - 12 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Support to Mac Service (VI)
• Role of support-MacOSX mailing list
– Today used for simple and advanced self help of Mac user community – Works well, especially for specific problems e.g. with peripherals.
For standard requests redirect users to Service desk
Keep as moderated expert exchange forum
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland Mac Service - 13 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Service – Key points
• Ad Integration – AD integration, i.e. use of CERN accounts, to provide seamless access to CERN resources such as files, Websites etc. – Being looked at again after pilot in 2003 (issue of domain name that Mac ignores) • As data protection – Recommendation to place files on AFS/DFS – Evaluation of central backup facility for professional local data, e.g. time-machine etc. • Address known pain-points – NetBoot installation server for OS upgrades
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 14 www.cern.ch/it OIS Mac Service - Resources
• Service Manager: Matthias Schröder (25%) Backup Service Manager: Patrick Herzog (100%)
• Prepare proposal to stop support for SLC on PC laptops to liberate some resources that can be reallocated to Mac Support – For users that want Linux based laptop, move in direction to suggest to use Mac
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 15 www.cern.ch/it OIS Next Steps & on-going work (I)
• Apple Enterprise Support contract in pipeline • Prepare formal Service Specification
• Present new Mac Service to next ITSRM
• Extend further Mac user documentation
• Prepare user communication (CNL, Bulletin, etc)
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 16 www.cern.ch/it OIS Next Steps & on-going work (II)
• Ad Integration – AD integration, i.e. use of CERN accounts, to provide seamless access to CERN resources – Being looked at again after pilot in 2003 (issue of domain name that Mac ignores) • Ad data protection – Evaluation of feasibility of central backup framework for professional local data, e.g. time-machine etc. • Ad known pain-points – Test with NetBoot installation server for OS upgrades
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 17 www.cern.ch/it OIS Summary
• Increasing usage of Mac over the last years • A certain range of assistance was already provided via previous Mac Support
Acknowledge Mac as supported platform
Offer a Mac Service to address the needs of Mac user community
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 18 www.cern.ch/it OIS
CERN IT Department CH-1211 Geneva 23 Switzerland CERN Mac Service - 19 www.cern.ch/it