Operational Meeting

Minutes of the meeting held on Wednesday 11th November 2020 on-line

Present:: Ross Armstrong, Richard Bell, Neil Brown, Tim Colles, Chris Cooke, Alison Downie, Ian Durkacz, Graham Dutton, Mitchell Hunter, Adam Kirylczuk, Mohammed Javaid, Stephen Quinney, Iain Rae, Gordon Reid, George Ross, Alastair Scobie, Craig Strachan (convener and minutes)

Minutes of the last meeting
The minutes for 4th November were approved.
Actions discussed:
- Review VMs and delete unused/unwanted ones
  Slow progress so far. With the introduction of a charging model for VMs, Units will need to be more aware of the resources they are using.
- Review "nograce" entitlements
  RAT have completed this.
Actions added or revived:
- Alastair to ask IS how they manage server room incidents.
- All Units to review Nagios use.
Actions completed:
- Raise issue of Mosh service at CEG
  CEG agreed that if a Mosh service was to go ahead, it should be as a development project. Craig therefore replied to the original ticket (RT103876) conveying this decision. The requester replied that this service was no longer needed by him. Craig will submit a dev project so that we do not lose sight of this.
Report from Computing Executive Group
- Inventory
Reports from Units
- Infrastructure
  1. Server room access arrangements
  2. Forum Gas Suppression System
    Ian asked if we had a date for when the system would be enabled.Alastair stated that the system would not go live until the training material for the system had been completed and that at present, there were still some issues that needed to be clarified.
  3. EdLAN
    Neil asked if we should be alarmed about the Fortinet firewall blocking some website certificates. The view of George and Alastair is that this is an error in the firewall configuration. Alastair asked if IS were investigating this issue and George replied that this was his impression.Neil observed that it only seemed to affect people on site though George repliedthat he knew of one VPN user who had been affected.
  4. AT server room power work
    Neil asked if the level 9 issues might be because the level 9 electrics were tied in with the plant room power. George thought this unlikely.
  5. KCMB power work
  Stephen asked how the work on the server room A/C had gone. George replied that there were some issues with B.01.
- Managed Platform
  - SL7 xrdp
  - SL7 updates
- Research and Teaching
  1. New Software
  2. Shergar
  3. SL7.8 Progress
- Services
  1. EdPrint
  2. AT space - atabeast
  3. New tape library switch over
  4. groups.inf performance
  5. SL7.8 progress
- User Support
  1. Office365 moves
    The first batch of moves seems to have gone smoothly.
  2. Office desktop Ubuntu upgrades
Topics for discussion
None.
Items for the Computing Systems blog
AOCB

Ian asked if there had been any clarification of what level of support would be required W/B 21/12/2020 in view of the University's generous holiday gesture. Alastair replied that he had not yet had a chance to speak to Joy.

Ian also asked what level of resourcing for learning technologies support could be expected moving forward. Alastair replied that this was unclear at present.
Next meeting
The next meeting will be on Wednesday 18th November 2020 online at 10am.

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