Selected operational highlights, spring and summer 2004
Jack McCredie, CIO
Services to learning, teaching, and research: Enrich opportunities for
academic activities, both locally and at a distance
Members of more than a dozen campus committees participated in
the information technology strategic planning process, which is being led
by Professor Ken Goldberg and Chief Information Officer Jack
McCredie.
Guiding Principles for IT at UC Berkeley (PDF,
http://technology.berkeley.edu/IT Principles June23.pdf) have been
developed along with preliminary information about critical
opportunities and challenges facing the campus IT infrastructure. The next
steps in the process are to propose specific initiatives, and to
make recommendations to improve the structure of campus IT funding,
governance, and coordination. See Information Technology
Strategic Plan 2004 (http://technology.berkeley.edu/).
WebDisk
(http://webdisk.berkeley.edu/) provides students, faculty, and staff
with 50 MB of disk storage space, file sharing, and web publishing
capabilities. A new version of WebDisk will deploy Xythos's
WFS4.2 software (http://xythos.com/) during the fall
semester. WebDisk technical consulting and support are available via
email at
See the iNews article
WebDisk v2 rolls out to campus
(/bcc/Fall2004/webdisk.html).
Open access computing facilities in several locations were
upgraded over the summer keeping IST on its target of a three-year
equipment replacement cycle for computer equipped classrooms and
computer labs. See the iNews article What's
new at the computer labs
(/bcc/Fall2004/facilitiesupgrade.html). For
detailed information about hours, supported software,
instructional reservations, and policies, see the Workstation & Microcomputer
Facilities page (http://facility.berkeley.edu/).
The U.S. Department of Education's Fund for the Improvement of
Post Secondary Education (FIPSE) awarded the Interactive University Project
(IU, http://iu.berkeley.edu/iu/) a $590,000 grant to continue its
outstanding work. The IU uses the Internet to open UC Berkeley's
unique resources and people to California's K-12 schools and
citizens.
Educational Technology Services staff are working closely with
colleagues in Student Information Systems to design and implement an
electronic grade book application. Currently in its pilot phase, the
project will be submitted as part of UC Berkeley's work on the Sakai project
(http://www.sakaiproject.org/). See the iNews article Online
Grade Book pilot
(/bcc/Fall2004/gradebookpilot.html).
Enterprise information system initiatives: Streamline and improve the
quality of campuswide administrative and academic support systems
The HRMS technical unit in ASD, working with Academic Personnel,
added two new features to the Human Resources Management System
(HRMS) — case tracking and academic personnel history for
ladder-rank faculty. With these custom additions to HRMS, a legacy
system and a paper-based system can be retired. In their place, an
integrated solution to track cases of academic personnel actions,
such as merits, and to review and report on faculty history
are provided through a single, central system to authorized HRMS
users. For more information, see the Office of Human Resources Time-Sensitive:
Academic Case Tracking page
(http://hrweb.berkeley.edu/manage/tscasetracking.htm).
In preparation for the data center move, the central storage
environment for the campus underwent a complete redesign. The new
disk storage systems include a high-availability, high-speed SAN
environment providing disk storage to key campus systems including
BFS, HRMS, BAIRS, CalMail, and others. In addition, a new robotics
tape system replaced the old environment. The new system allows for
high-availability access to all of the nearly 2000 tapes in the
system, with each cartridge holding up to 600 Gigabytes. These two
new systems will enable IST to offer storage and tape services to
systems hosted in the data center and elsewhere on campus.
IST staff, working with an external consulting firm, completed
the conversion of several core student and financial systems from
the IDMS data management system to the campus standard for such
systems — IBM's DB2. This consolidation not only saves the
campus a significant amount of money, but it also increases the
operational efficiency of our production environment.
A new student data warehouse project makes student demographic,
enrollment, and census information available to pilot users.
Additional features are being added as users evaluate the system and
develop a funding model for its ongoing support.
Technical support to campus departments: Enhance the ability of
departments to utilize a broad range of information resources
Working with faculty and staff on the Network Advisory
Committee, staff defined and communicated data collection and
retention standards for sensitive network usage data. The Systems
and Network Security team implemented several improvements to its
incident handling and network monitoring
procedures.
The 2005 edition of the award-winning Connecting@Berkeley CD
contains many additions including personal host-based firewall
software, improved antivirus features, and customized versions for
specific user groups. See the Connecting@Berkeley website
(http://cab.berkeley.edu/) for more information. Also see the iNews
article
Protect and connect your computer: Get the free C@B 2005 CD!
(/bcc/Fall2004/cab2005cd.html).
Staff in ASD recently completed a rapid development effort to
provide Internet-based electronic funds transfer
applications for student enrollment activities
(http://eftstudent.berkeley.edu/). This application reduces paper
handling as well as the risks associated with paper checks delivered
through the mail.
Working closely with the campus procurement organization, IST
negotiated an agreement with IBM to make a selection of its laptop
and desktop computer systems available to campus users at a
substantial discount. In addition, the Scholar's Workstation
launched a new online
order management system
(http://www.tsw.berkeley.edu/eStore/NewFeatures.html) for UC
Berkeley departments.
A campuswide collaboration resulted in the adoption of the Provisional
Data Management, Use, and Protection Policy (DMUP,
http://dataintegration.vcbf.berkeley.edu/documents/ProvisionalDMUP1.1.pdf).
This policy describes the responsibilities for the proper
management, use, and protection of the data resources under a
person's control. Individuals may perform any or all of the roles
depending on their relationship to a specific data resource. See the
iNews article Data
Management, Use, and Protection policy
(/bcc/Fall2004/dmup.html).
Staff evaluated several personal digital assistants (PDAs) to
determine which systems work best within the UC Berkeley information
technology architecture and made their recommendations available to
departmental support staff; see the iNews article Smart phone evaluations
(/bcc/Fall2004/smartphones.html). In
addition, CNS implemented a system for departments to set up and
make very cost-effective conference calls with potential savings of
up to 80 percent compared to other methods.
Production support: Ensure continuous, dependable, high-quality,
effective and efficient production and support services.
After eight years of planning, design, construction, and
ultimately, moving, IST completed the commissioning of UC Berkeley's
new Campus Computing Operations Center. This world-class facility
includes advanced seismic bracing designs, redundant environmental
systems, UPS and generator backup power, and sophisticated
environmental systems designed to provide maximum uptime to critical
campus systems. The move into the new facility was completed over
several weekends in the summer with minimum of planned downtime, on
schedule, and on budget. The center is now open to host servers from
around campus for important administrative, academic, or research
production needs. See the iNews article UC
Berkeley's data center success story
(/bcc/Fall2004/datacentersuccess.html).
The core campus administrative computing environment underwent
an architecture review resulting in the selection of a new IBM
z890-450 series mainframe to replace the older system. Representing
the latest in scalable parallel systems architecture, the new
computer is capable of running multiple simulations of virtual
machines within the single computer. Over the next several months,
the new mainframe will be partitioned and upgraded to the latest
operating systems to create full development, test, and multiple
production environments in preparation for the upgrade of the campus
financial systems in 2005.
IST has launched a project to implement Virtual Private Network
(VPN) service for sensitive administrative applications. Initially
VPN will be used to encrypt the data stream for time input and
payroll inquiry. This project involves new hardware, architectural
changes to the network, and the new mainframe, as well as the
deployment of a client on each workstation using the application.
Currently, the rollout is in pilot phase. For information on the
current client software available during the pilot, see WSS's Cisco VPN
4.0.3 (For Testing Only) page
(http://software.berkeley.edu/windows/vpn/test/). See the iNews article
OPTRS (Online Payroll Time Reporting System) and VPN (Virtual
Private Network) — new acronyms, new services
(/bcc/Fall2004/optrs_vpn.html).
In March, IST completed its first full-scale business continuity
test of a core administrative application — Payroll. This test
was conducted to simulate the loss of the campus mainframe
environment, requiring us to operate from outside the campus. Staff
from HR and IST departments worked together at a remote location to
restore our environment on an IBM mainframe as part of the disaster
recovery drill. See the iNews article Disaster planning accelerates after first hotsite test
(/bcc/Fall2004/hotsitetest.html).
The CalMail email service continued to improve with new features
and architectures added over the summer. The first addition was the
activation of @berkeley.edu addressing for all users of the CalMail
service; see the iNews article CalMail:
Five new features you can use right away
(/bcc/Spring2004/calmailnewfeatures.html).
In addition, staff implemented the ability to add an
additional alias to an account (such as
firstname.lastname@berkeley.edu); see the iNews article New
CalMail alias service
(/bcc/Fall2004/calmailaliassvc.html).
Thousands of users are taking advantage of the new service. Finally,
in late summer, a new high-speed, high-volume storage subsystem was
added to CalMail. The new storage has substantially greater
performance capabilities than the previous storage, as well as the
ability to grow with the increased usage expected with the addition
of subdomains (to be offered later this year). See the iNews article CalMail's
long-awaited storage upgrade completed
(/bcc/Fall2004/calmailstorage.html).
Communication services: Implement and maintain a ubiquitous, accessible,
robust, secure communications and resource infrastructure
Communications and Network Services staff coordinated a
significant effort to make a cost-effective, easy-to-use, and legal
music sharing service available to students. They negotiated a
contract with RealNetworks for a two-month free trial of its
Rhapsody service, and an 80 percent discount following the trial not
available to staff. See the iNews article Rhapsody online digital music service
(/bcc/Fall2004/rhapsodysvc.html). IST
continues to work actively to educate all users about copyright laws
and the appropriate use of the University network.
Concluding a long negotiation, UC Berkeley signed a new
five-year contract with SBC for Centrex service. This new contract,
along with a thorough revision of long distance contracts and
internal recharge rates, will save campus users a significant amount
of money and ensure a stable voice communications environment for
the next several years.
CNS staff completed several infrastructure upgrade projects in
locations throughout the campus and installed new Juniper border
routers, which provide higher-speed and higher-quality data services
to campus users.
IST staff continued to contribute to the development,
management, and operation of the statewide CENIC and national
Internet2 high-performance networks for education and research
organizations.
Organizational development: Build a values-based organization focused
on service excellence
Administrative Systems (ASD) recently redesigned its customer
survey to allow customers to evaluate specific units or specific
systems as well as ASD's overall service. In addition, the survey
asks customers to identify top priorities. See ASD
Customer Survey
(http://shasta.asd.berkeley.edu/CustomerSurvey/survey_login.asp) for
a look at the test version.
Several IST staff members are making great progress in learning
and applying the J2EE architecture and supporting tools. These
efforts enable us to actively explore several open source
applications and to participate in collaborative development efforts
with other organizations (e.g., Sakai, Chandler/Westwood, uPortal,
and others).
