Operational Meeting

These were accepted as a reasonable account of the last meeting.

Actions discussed:

• Core switch firmware

  See Inf report

• Review ipaddr and wire headers

  See Inf report

• Write a roles-management documentation

  Change WHO to ALL - comments/opinions to Toby before next Ops meeting.

• Review rack use in IF, AT, KB

  Next pick up is Thu 17th November. Please do not put any kit into B.03 before then. Services Unit need to organise removal of old tape library from KB server room.

• Ensure SL6.8 upgrades are done

  A reminder that these need to be made a priority.

• doodle over Christmas lunch

  Booked for Tuesday 13th December. £10 deposit needs to be given to Neil as soon as possible.

• Produce and circulate advice on whether to upgrade to MacOS Sierra

  Gordon has written initial page but more to be added.

• Set up script to mail out monthly firmware update reminders

  Waiting for new version of dsu

• Investigate options for allowing dynamic quotas to cope with large downloads

  Neil has produced report so Alastair/CEG need to make decision.

• Check out YFS client for self-managed Windows machines

  Gordon will investigate after completing MacOS documentation.

• Review pages in computing.help

  Only a few left!

Actions deferred:

• SMSR power down - Create an 'Emergency' page on computing.help

  Stalled again for 6 months. Waiting on clarity on UPS's

Actions completed:

• Notify COs of exam dates

  See US report

Blog articles discussed:

• Veracrypt

  Is this still required ?

Blog articles completed:

• Blog article on Panopto has now been published

Report from Computing Executive Group

• Nothing to report

Reports from Units

• Infrastructure

  1. Appleton Tower server room power
  2. IPv6
  3. addrwatch
  4. Core switch firmware
  5. Rack PDUs
  6. JCMB CSR PoP switches
  7. ipaddrs_*.h and wire_*.h headers

     Non-/24 files should set netmask_eth0 and perhaps also broadcast_eth0..... George has asked the question "Is there a better way to do this ? If you have any comments/suggestions please reply to George and MPU.

  8. Server reboots
  9. Console servers

• Managed Platform

  • Dirty cow reboots

    This should be a priority.

  • KVM server SL7 upgrades
  • dsu advance warning

    As soon as a new version of dsu comes out, older versions immediately stop functioning. However it's possible that the new version may support RHEL7.3 rather than 7.2 so advice is to get going sooner rather than later!

  • Recent meetings

• Research and Teaching

• Services

  1. (Still) Up for grabs (memory)
  2. SL7 progress

• User Support

  • Exam dates

    Note there is a big exam on Tuesday 20th December. We may need volunteers to help out on the day.

Topics for discussion

• Return to AT

  We had an open discussion, the main points coming from this being:

  • Realistically, only minor changes will be accepted at this stage
  • Any changes now would cost money
  • We cannot predict the future so we should plan for what suits now.
  • There is no general consensus - so we should have a vote with 3 choices:
    1. The current proposed plan, ie losing the open space to two individual offices
    2. Tweaked version where we keep the open space, and subdivide 7.06 into to single offices
    3. No preference

• None

AOCB

The next meeting will be on Wednesday 23rd November 2016 at 10:00 in IF-4.31, chaired by Alison.