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Philip Baczewski reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that they had met on October 6. Yancey Yeargan reported on planned security changes for the ID Management LDAP servers. In order to increase the protection level for those servers and the data they contain, they will be moved behind a firewall and only authorized systems and individuals will have access to those servers in order to query data. Related to this discussion, Charlotte Russell stated that UNT's general council’s office had issued a ruling that EUIDs are protected information and are subject to additional protections from public release. DCSMT passed a motion to express to the IRC the negative impact that this ruling may have on UNT's ability to conduct its mission. EUIDs are currently used as student e-mail addresses, and access IDs, but are not useful for obtaining information without an accompanying password. DCSMT would like the IRC to seek clarification on this ruling to determine if an alternate or compromise position is possible. The Chair asked for a copy of the official ruling by the general council’s office and asked Philip Baczewski to bring as much information as possible to the next IRC meeting.
Jon Nelson moved that the minutes of the September 19, 2006, meeting be approved as distributed; Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner seconded the motion and the minutes were approved.
Patrick Pluscht reported for the Learning Enhancement Planning Group that the contract for the purchase of Live Classroom is still in Legal. He said he plans to bring this up to the Attorneys when they visit the IRC in November. The Chair asked that any IRC member who has had an issue with the Legal office bring specific questions to the next IRC meeting so that they can be addressed by the Attorneys. Patrick continued that when Live Classroom is finally purchased it will be used with WebCT and as soon as the product is available they will send out an announcement and will plan for training classes to be provided. They have begun to identify their preliminary LMS (Learning Management System) selection criteria to see what their next migration path is … whether it’s the next version of WebCT, whether it’s a fused product by BlackBoard or another of several primary options which include Desire to Learn, Angel and Sakai. They anticipate that once they look at some of the constraints they are facing, regarding the hardware we already have in place, and the expertise we have to support it (which are primarily Unix-based, with at least two of those programs being windows-based programs), they will have to consider a great deal of input from various constituencies. This process may take 12 months, he acknowledged that they have to decide where they need to be in the next 18 months, which may be the time they will be forced to migrate. Patrick stated that he didn’t have figures for distance learning enrollments but expects them next week.
John Hooper reported for the EIS Planning Group and explained that the outage on Friday morning was related to a Brocade switch and then the Saturday morning power outage caused more problems. All of the staff worked long hours over the weekend to get everything back up, and there is more work planned for tonight. There are still issues to be resolved concerning the Brocade switches on campus. John reported that they are close to awarding a contract to a vendor to install the CRM product to use for graduate admissions and prospecting. They are also working on an RFP for the implementation of new budget software they purchased. They are also working on trying to figure out what a hardware refreshment cycle should be, and hope to be able to consolidate some of their equipment needs with newer equipment and technology. Uwe Rossbach asked how much the refreshment of the equipment will cost. John stated that he wasn’t sure of the cost at this time. Maurice interjected that the initial cost of the EIS equipment was around $4 million and they don’t anticipate the refreshment would cost that much.
Regarding the Darwin/Oracle issue, John Hooper distributed a handout showing an outline of the system components and connections and who they are managed by. He explained that David Meek is the DARS Coordinator. The current issue arose after a crash of a server in CITC that contained pointers to the Oracle database that supports DARwin. The crash was not recoverable so it was moved to a new server and instructions were given on changes that needed to be made on the DARwin clients to use the new address during business hours. John explained that this was an unusual event, and information about it was communicated by CITC to NETMAN and by David Meek to his contacts. Diligent efforts were made to get things back up as quickly as they could. In discussion that followed, Uwe Rossbach asked that it be communicated to users just who they should contact if there is a problem, in the future. John stated that David Meek in the Registrar’s office is the lead in this area and would be the one to call. John also commented that they hope to see some improvement to the entire system when the new version of DARwin becomes available. There was further discussion regarding the timing of planned changes to the DARS system and it was pointed out that there is a DARS advisory group that meets with David Meek. Novell Netware and GroupWise move proposedMaurice Leatherbury announced that CITC is considering moving the campus off of Novell Netware and GroupWise. There has been a sub-committee in DCSMT studying the technical issues involved in a Novell to Microsoft Windows migration. Maurice made a power-point presentation which outlined the reasons for considering this change. Maurice explained that he is pushing for a decision on this because he, like all other UNT departments, has been asked to make a 3% cut in the CITC budget. One point made was that the State Department of Information Resources is encouraging state universities to have interoperable systems and therefore recommends the use of a standardized network operating system and DIR specifically said that universities should consider moving off of Novell. In addition, Maurice explained that it is difficult to find third party software that will work with Novell and CITC has run into this problem repeatedly as they have sought to acquire new backup software, network monitoring tools and Email archiving and retention tools. He pointed out that the Novell Netware product costs UNT/HSC around $220,000 per year and that comparable licensing of Microsoft Exchange would cost less than $30,000 for the first year only. He stated that the number of Exchange servers that would be needed would be about the same or less than the number of GroupWise servers being used now. He explained that since using Novell for many years, UNT has accumulated funds in an escrow account with Novell which will allow a buy-out of the Novell products that UNT will need to continue using. CITC will operate the Exchange servers and will fund replacement licenses of Windows server software. CITC will offer host servers for servers migrating from Novell to Windows, including back-up, at a fee of about $1500 per year per server. Plans would be to migrate to Exchange next summer and to Windows servers next fall.Maurice stated that Active Directory is key to all of this migration and CITC is working on it at the present time. Bids have been requested from implementation services companies to help with this migration. Cengiz Capan asked if the decision had already been made and commented that if it had, then he believed there should have been more communication about this before a decision was made. Robert Nimmocks remarked that the bottom line is “money,” with a move like this being a result of the DIR’s directive for universities to cut costs. In further discussion, Maurice explained that the problems with using other software with Novell has become a big factor in deciding to move off of the Novell Netware platform. Some other comments about the proposed change were concerns about the loss of skill sets that have been developed over past years of using Novell. Other concerns expressed concerned the interface of Active Directory with the new system, the need for coordinated timing and training. The Chair urged members to send their questions and comments to Maurice Leatherbury and asked him to post his answers to everyone. There being no further business the meeting was adjourned.
* For a list of IRC Regular and Ex-officio Members click here.**DCSMT Minutes can be found here.
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