Daniel, Mark, Gordon, Klark, and Eric

• Review minutes from 10-Nov-2008
• Review open tickets

1066 can be used once the electrical is done. Will be back to life but in a smaller form for Windows. Kevin is optimistic that power will be shut down over Christmas. He is fairly certain. In theory, we should still have power through with generators to get infrastructure up. If power does not go down over Christmas, we are really looking at Martin Luther King Day. If it is Christmas, then the building might be down for at most nine days. On half the building is down.

Visited with Paul regarding 124. The software is free. There are two versions made by TI named composer. TI risk processor. TI is willing to donate unlimited version for free (student version is limited 16k limit). Gives a lot of flexibility to being able to use any windows machine.

Paul is going to run the new labs in summer (20-30 students in summer). For Fall, the lab is run by EE department. Daniel will follow up with Paul regarding 124 in Winter switching to Windows using the windows LC-3 software. Paul is also considering to teach 124 exclusively and no longer having EE teach the course.

Paul believes most the student use our labs anyways. The TA office staff are in our building and most likely the EE students are in our facilities as well.

[A] man contacted me today and informed me that they are looking for a time frame that would work for us for them to shut down the chilled water systems in 2255 and 2223. I told them that the ideal time would be during the already upcoming building power outage, but he told me that if the outage was during Christmas break, that would not work very well for them as they need to get this done quickly.

Could you discuss today during your meeting when a good time to take down the airconditioning would be. He also mentioned a portable unit they might be able to let us use. The down time is said to be 4 hours.

Add item to next agenda or even discuss sooner

All of the Dell hardware (workstations, monitors, keyboards and mice) are in 1110 TMCB. We just put a bunch of peripherals and some software down there too. The lab in 1106 should have 9 workstations with

• 2 scanners connected to 2 of the workstations

For each of the 9 workstations we have

• a power strip
• a usb hub
• a game controller (well, we have 3 at the moment. 6 more coming)
• sony vegas
• TechSmith Camtasia

We have 9 copies of sony vegas in 1110 TMCB and the instructions for obtaining Camtasia appear here .

What's the timeline for getting the hardware and software installed in 1106?

1110 has some electrical shop work that needs to be done. I think Dan O's is running that.

We need to give Michael a timeline

• We are short 3 four foot tables (but we do have 8 foot tables if so desired)
• Mark has 4 foot tables (at least two he can trade)
• Bottom-line: need three more 4 foot tables because we only have 6 of these around currently
• There is a power outage scheduled for at least 2 days between Christmas and New Years
• We cannot do anything with 1106 in the current semester (no where to move machines)
• Need to get 1066 ready first (waiting on network wiring)
• Klark can start working on the image

Best-case we can have it ready at the first winter semester. Worst-case we have it running by mid-semester.

Eric: work up a timeline or dependency chain for Michael with a rough timeline

What is the operating system and soft lab assignments for particular courses for Winter 2009? Does the lab assignment affect the open lab machine purchase (i.e., should be purchase machines 3Gb - 4Gb of memory rather than 2Gb)?

Very difficult to balance the Linux and Windows balance. Important to keep the mix so student experience the variety of systems. Dual-boot not an option because it wreaks havoc on the NFS system. Virtualization is an option but we need more memory.

• CS 100 moves to 1066 for winter (around 21 seats with re-arrange)
• Take 1060 and turn it into a Linux lab
• Turn 1149 into an open windows lab
• Everything stays same except 1106

Everything hangs on 1066 to become done in winter (alternate plan)

• Backup plan is put CS 100 in 1060 with 16 seats (we can push to 17 if we pull the printer)
• Make the machines in 1060 be a superset of the standard image for windows
• 1066 becomes Linux
• 1106 stays linux
• When 1066 comes on line, than Graphics Media lab comes on line

Most likely 1066 will be late and not at start from semester. All we need is network infrastructure to use 1066. Waiting for OIT to run the wire. We can run our wire if push comes to shove. We keep the money if we do the wiring.

One more alternate plan:

• Leave CS 100 where it is and load the image to also support CS 124
• Encourage CS 124 students to also run the software on their own machines as it is all free

Klark: you have several options feel free to work up a solution that works best for you.

When is Phil's SAN available? : I still do not know when it will be ready for us to take over, but even after we take it over, I suspect it will take several months of work to get it ready to function as a SAN to function for us the way I want it to.

If it is a longways out, then why not just purchase as SAN? : First of all, to purchase the SAN from scratch would be probably $200,000.00. I think we will need to add some more hard drives to the SAN, and probably update the firmware, and replace some batteries some licensing for the fiberchannel switch etc, but the cost should be closer to $10,000.00

If we are not going to purchase a SAN and Phil's is a long way out, then what is our interim solution? : I was backing up the wiki using snapshots, and that did not work very well. I am now in the process of putting a more permenant solution in place, and I am also backing up the wiki server to my hard drive via a winscp sync. I also use mysql administrator to back up the mysql database server to my hard drive.

: How can we also backup uploaded content on the wiki?

Other thoughts: : I agree that I have been dragging out the backup issue far too long, but I do have some solutions that have been put in place and are being set up and tested right now. I ended up coming to the conclusion that we could not find one backup solution that would fit all of our needs, so I am putting three solutions in place, plus the time machine solution Klark already put together. One solution will be pretty much dedicated to the virtual machine environment, but we can, and will, use it in other areas where it makes sense as well. The other solution is Bacula, an open source solution that will run on a linux server. Both of these solutions are already up and running, but they have not been put into production yet, due to some problems we are working through. The final solution is more aimed at desktops, for those who need that, and we had this up and running and have tested it out for a few months on 4 desktops. It worked really slick, so we are now in the process of rebuilding it with the latest version. That solution is Altiris Recovery Solution, and will be primarily for the windows desktops.