SCS Computing
Facilities

SCS Systems Administrators Group

Minutes from the SCS Admins Group meeting on May 5, 2003

Topics:

Welcome and Introductions
SCS Facilities: Who we are? What we do?
Topics for future discussions
Structure of future meetings
Select time and date for next meeting
Other concerns and questions
The meeting was called to order by Tod Pike of Computing Facilities, followed by introductions of the people attending, along with their affiliation. The idea for the group originated from a suggestion by several faculty members (including Jamie Callan) that Facilities should take a more proactive role in maintaining a dialogue between its administrators and the system administrators in the user community.

More than fifty administrators from Computer Science and its affiliated departments registered from the initial call for participation, and more than twenty five administrators registered to come to the initial meeting. The group will be an ongoing dialog between the facilities group and administrators from the community.

For this meeting, 41 people attended, including 13 from SCS Computing Facilities.

Bob Cosgrove, Director of SCS Computing Facilities, spoke on the topic of SCS Facilities: Who we are? What we do? Please see the slides from this meeting, which can be found in PowerPoint format here, and in PDF format here.

Next, the group was asked to brainstorm a set of possible topics for future meetings, and then to vote on which topics were of highest interest. The results of this process was the following list, including the votes (in no particular order):

2  Recommended PC's and other HW
7  SCS Fac vs. Stock Env / Non Facilities Support and
   Coexist / Sharing and Andrew
2  How to Compute like a Grad Student
0  Recycling Redeployment and Asset/Property Mgmt
4  Best Do (or Do Not) Practices
2  Faculty Orientation / Bovik DB / Wiki
4  Laptop Support and Trip Prep
3  VMWare
99 Security Intrustion Detection
8  Backups
5  Depot
1  IIS SQL security
6  Samba / NIS / NFS / CVS / LDAP services
2  Purchasing agreements on Web
0  Hardware Replacement
2  Short Term Visitors
6  OS Upgrades
4  Disaster Recovery
Based on this list, the topic for the next meeting will be "Security".

The next topic was to decide on the structure for upcoming meetings. After some discussion, the accepted structure was:
  • Monthly meetings
  • Held on the second Tuesday of the month
  • Early afternoon (1:30)
  • To last for approximately 1 hour, depending on the discussion topic
  • Both short presentations and longer seminars are acceptable
  • Anyone (either within SCS or not) can present a topic
  • Have a brief time at the start for announcements of interest to the community
Other points about the structure were that people from the various groups may be contacted to make a brief presentation (5 minutes) about their computing environment. This will be noted on the meeting announcements.

The time and date for the next meeting was set as follows:

Tuesday, June 10, 2003
1:30 PM
Wean Hall, 4623
Topic: Security
There were two other topics raised:

  1. The mailing list is being set up, and by concensus will be announced to the group.
  2. A web site is being set up, and will be announced to the group as soon as it is available.