Operational Meeting

Graham, Craig, Neil, Toby

Minor correction - George had given his apologies so wasn't present as well!

Actions completed:

• Answer Ian's questions in Infrastructure report from 14/07/2010.
• Take "user documentation" discussion points back to project group.
• Consider how best to use the new sysinfo.criticality resource.

Actions added:

• All units to set sysinfo.criticality for machines with either medium or high criticality (low is default).

Actions deferred:

• Chase Works about Forum server room air-conditioning.
• follow up on 24/02/10 "home directories" discussion

Report from Computing Executive Group

2. Project planning

   Alastair explained the time schedules for the project planning process for T3 (Sept-Dec).

3. Energy Audit

   Alastair commented on the difficulties that he had in producing realistic estimates from our inventory for the Energy Audit. His report can be found at Green IT wiki

Reports from units.

• Infrastructure.

  1. Forum power-down

     Alastair clarified that we can expect a month's notice.

  3. Forum fibre-channel

     Alastair suggested that Ian should perhaps contact IS (Tony Weir) regarding the proposed plan.

     As a slight aside, Chris commented about the recabling of metropolitan. He had ensured that the fibre channels went in to different switches but they should ideally go to switches in different racks.

• Managed Platform.

  1. SL5.5

     Should you need to keep a machine at SL5.4, you will need to define the DICE_STICK_WITH_SL54 macro at the top of the machine profile.

  2. F13

     COs are encouraged to upgrade to F13. We now have a script (along the lines of exam-lockdown) to assist with lab upgrades and it has been tested successfully. The upgrade of labs to f13 will continue over the summer break. An alias will be setup so that staff can try it out before their desktop is upgraded. We should be encouraging 'early takers' as soon as possible. User Support should co-ordinate some notes on the upgrade for end-users.

• Research and Teaching.

  1. F13

     Most packages should be there and some may be the same as with SL5.

• Services.

• User Support.

Topics for discussion

1. Dropbox installation

   Concern was expressed that by adding this as a package, users would then infer that we would support it. After some discussion, it was suggested that we should find out why users specifically want to use dropbox and also that we should consider writing a wrapper round the script that it runs so that users are warned when they first run dropbox that it is not something that we support along with general warning about security of data.

   Skype was also mentioned as a package that is becoming increasingly popular. It was suggested that we check with ITPF to get their viewpoint on the licence/ditribution issues.

2. Disappearing tokens

   It was felt that this should be left until Neil returns as it is understood that he has been investigating.

AOCB

1. Virtual servers

   Alastair confirmed that dedicated storage has been ordered with delivery expected mid-August. Until then, people should hold back on virtualising further services.

2. CO coffee

   It was agreed that another CO coffee meeting should be scheduled for August. Subsequent to the meeting, this has been arranged for Thursday 26th August at 11am in MF1.

3. Next meeting

   The next meeting should be on Wednesday 11th August in room 4.31.