DCSMT Meeting Minutes - September 21, 2001

September 21, 2001

Members: Rich Anderson (School of Community Service), Troy Bacon (AVP Finance and Business Affairs and Controller), Craig Berry (School of Visual Arts), Allen Bradley (Computing Center), Bill Buntain (Computing Center), Sandy Burke (Computing Center), Tim Christian (College of Arts and Sciences), Wil Clark (UNT System Center @ Dallas), Jim Curry (Microcomputer Maintenance/Classroom Support Services), Eric DuChemin (Computing Center), Cyndie Harris (Physical Plant), Mike Hatch (College of Business Administration), Pamiela Hight (Libraries), Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner (Student Computing Committee and Computing Center), Paul Hons (College of Education), Abraham John (VP Student Development), Kirk Kelly (Housing), Brenda Kirk (Computing Center), Maurice Leatherbury (Chair, Sr. Director of Academic Computing and Asst. to the AVP Computing and Communications Services), Mike Maner (Computing Center), Gary Mathews (School of Library and Information Sciences), Ramu Muthiah (School of Community Service), Dallas Newell (Registrar's Office), Bruce Pollock (ABN LAN Mgmt), Chris Strauss (Computing Center), Mike Wright (Computing Center), Roy Zumwalt (Texas Academy of Math and Science)

Members Present: Rich Anderson (School of Community Service), Craig Berry (School of Visual Arts), Ginger Boone (University Union), Bill Buntain (Computing Center), Sandy Burke (Computing Center), Tim Christian (College of Arts and Sciences), Mike Hatch (College of Business Administration), Lee Haughton for Cyndie Harris (Physical Plant), Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner (Student Computing Committee and Computing Center), Ben Howard for Brenda Kirk (Computing Center), Judy Hunter for Pamiela Hight (Libraries), Maurice Leatherbury (Chair, Sr. Director of Academic Computing and Asst. to the AVP Computing and Communications Services), Mike Maner (Computing Center), Gary Mathews (School of Library and Information Sciences), Bruce Pollock (ABN LAN Mgmt), David Wright for Paul Hons (College of Education), Mike Wright (Computing Center)

Guests: Philip Baczewski (Computing Center), CR Chevli (Computing Center), Stuart Christian (Computing Center), Chris Cofer (Computing Center), Daren Dugan (Computing Center), Jason Gutierrez (Computing Center), Richard Harris (AVP Computing and Communications Services), Jason Myre (Computing Center), Curry Searle (College of Arts and Sciences), Scott Windham (Computing Center), Mike Williams (Computing Center)

Minutes
Minutes from August 17, 2001 were approved.

Subcommittee Reports

Student Computing Committee
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported that she and Charlie Andrews took several members of SMU on a tour of the General Access Labs, Housing Labs, and Microcomputer Maintenance so they could get ideas for creating the same type environment on their campus.

Mac OS X Support
Rich Anderson reported the committee has not met, but Novell released on Sep. 19 a Native File Product. The committee will address this product when they obtain more information.

Microsoft Campus Agreement
Maurice Leatherbury reported on a meeting with Mike Wright and the Microsoft Representatives on Sept. 18. The topic of discussion was the renewal of the Campus Agreement 2.0 in August 2002 to Campus Agreement 3.0. Copies of email agreements from three years ago were presented to the Microsoft representatives to show that Microsoft had agreed not to count student workers in the faculty staff head count for contract purposes. Other items brought up at the meeting was the fact that under Version 3.0, no operating system upgrades could be sold for home computers. The consequence would be that anyone putting an earlier OS upgrade on their home machine under a previous agreement would have to remove it. The representatives are going to see if they can come back with a compromise on this. Maurice is going to survey other Higher Ed institutions on his listserv to see how they are handling this latest Campus Agreement on their campuses. The Computing Center has not yet decided if it will continue to fund the agreement, but should know by the next meeting date. Mike Hatch wanted to know if the Visual Studio in the Version 3 agreement was the Standard or Professional Version. His faculty has a need for the Professional Version. Mike indicated it was the Standard Version. Mike Wright also indicated the various divisions of campus need to look at products to be included in Campus Agreement Version 3 and if an individual departments meets the guidelines, they could piggyback on the contract for additional products. Maurice then held a drawing for some XP giveaways.

Home Use of McAfee Antivirus

The initial contract UNT made with McAfee Antivirus software covered all faculty, staff, and students. When the contract was renewed through the DIR contract, we did not realize that there was a limit on the number of copies available: 6000 for PC, and 1000 for Mac Mike Williams is now looking at the cost of expanding the coverage to a higher number of copies. Home use was covered also under the first contract, but not under the DIR contract. Mike Hatch had questions about McAfee's effectiveness with the latest NIMBA virus. He had 174 Pegasus Mail infected files caused by a drive being mapped to allow a faculty member from another area to access his files. The other faculty member's machine was infected and it was passed to COBA.

Power Usage of PC's on Campus

Maurice Leatherbury brought up this topic for Jim Curry. Energy Management had statistics on power usage by PCs based on keeping the PCs operational 24x7, and the number of PCs from two years ago. The Energy group started looking into an increase in energy usages for PCs and how it is impacting the heat load at a rate of $32 per year for power and air conditioning. Jim is running some tests, as well as having other areas like College of Arts and Sciences try shutting down the monitors when idle to save electricity. Will report back when have some more concrete findings.

Internet Bandwidth on Campus

Bill Buntain reported that we are seeing high peaks of utilization and are looking at short term fixes to leverage uses. The cacheing server has been down while awaiting a patch. May purchase an additional packet shaper to manage bandwidth to allocate usage among applications. Outbound in dorms very high and needs to be looked at. HB1545 exempted Higher Education from some purchasing requirements, including going through GSC to get additional circuits. This will give UNT leverage when handling problems. AHE offered the possibility of using their gigapop, and CR Chevli is on the committee looking into this.

Mobility Docking Station

Maurice Leatherbury distributed information about a laptop docking station to see if anyone was interested in the product.

Mainframe Firewall

Charlotte Russell was called away and could not report on the mainframe firewall. When it was inquired as to what this item was referring to, Stuart Christian said there is available dialup access to the Administrative Mainframe that includes caller ID and callback system. Bill Buntain reported they are looking into a VPM solution. If need further information about the Admin dialup access, contact Mike Wright.

Old Business

None

New Business

None

Status Reports
Craig Berry had a virus in one of his servers.

Bill Buntain reported on latest information on Wireless lab equipment. The Wireless equipment is dependent on the VPN solution, so until VPN is decided, they will proceed with testing wireless equipment between 3 companies.

Mike Hatch reported a problem in COBA using ghost to refresh machines on a frequent basis. Having a high failure rate, so will probably discontinue refresh. Soft Track metering is in place to block use of unauthorized software.

Tim Christian reported on being part of a grant from the State Department to training representatives from Nigeria for four weeks on how we operate our computing resources. They will be spending time with his area, teleconferencing, the Library, the Computing Center, and will have EUID accounts created so they can have email as well as SmartForce accounts.

Jason Gutierrez reported he is starting to test native file access.

Jason Myre reported receiving new hardware to replace GW1, GW3, and GW6. He will be contacting the appropriate people when the equipment is to be changed over.

Daren Dugan reported they are making progress in getting all 4.11 Novell machines converted to 5 by December.

Judy Hunter reported that they are busy rebuilding their web server. The problem was not the SAN but the data in the SAN.

Maurice Leatherbury reported that the bids were due back last week on the EIS project. Due to the trajedy, the deadline was moved to September 26. They had 25 people at a vendors conference for implementation services. The software and consulting company will be selected soon.

The meeting was then adjourned at 11:20am