April 2010 - Physics-Departmental-Computing

Updated ICT survey form
by David Colling 28 Apr '10

28 Apr '10

Dear All, As actioned in our meeting this week I have updated the ICT survey form (and embedded it into a very simple web page just because I was playing around with what works with googledocs). The form can now be found at http://www.hep.ph.ic.ac.uk/~collngdj/ICT_survey.html As we discussed I have cut out some of the questions and I have actually just copied the summary from the ICT pages for the description. I would greatly welcome feedback on the structure/layout of the form. Feel free to play with it and submit it etc I will just delete early results from before the proper survey period. Specifically: - Is this still too complicated for general distribution? - Are there any further questions that should be cut? - Is there anything that I can do to make this easier to use? I must admit I fear that this might end up being a lot of effort for no meaningful return. If others share this fear then please let me know (via the list so as to allow a general conversation) and, even better, make suggestions as to how this process could be reformed or replaced. We really should feed back our preferences to ICT (we should have done this months ago but I understand that it is still an ongoing process) otherwise we have nobody but ourselves to blame when they cut services that we need. All feedback welcome. All the best, david

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Minutes of the Departmental Computing Meeting 20/4/2010
by Raymond Beuselinck 22 Apr '10

22 Apr '10

Minutes of the Departmental Computing Meeting 20/4/2010 ------------------------------------------------------- Present ------- Elizabeth Lucek - Teaching Carl Paterson - photonics James Spencer - CMTH Adrian Mannall, Steve Rochford - ICT Richard Bantges - SPAT Stefan Scheel - QOLS Carlo Contaldi - Theory Harry Vine - Admin Simon Fayer, Raymond Beuselinck, David Colling - HEP 1. News from ICT ---------------- SAN controller software is being updated (affecting e.g. home directories, Exchange folders). Mail archiving on Exchange is now available (using cheaper SATA based storage). This works easily in Outlook or the web interface. It doesn't work too well in browsers other than Internet Explorer. Archiving will automatically stub anything older than about 3 months. Access is not so easy for Linux or mac users. Searching within archived messages is possible. General rollout of the archiving system is on hold due to problems for some types of user (e.g. Linux or Mac mail clients). Details are available on the ICT web site. 2. Services to be cut --------------------- ICT are seeking feedback on what services could be most easily be cut to save money. Before the meeting DJC circulated a web form for comments which would enable people to rate each item in the ICT SLA according to how important it was considered to be. It was suggested that the form should be modified to exclude items that clearly cannot be cut, e.g. Authentication and Directory Services and Network Infrastructure and that it would be more useful to emphasise what services we think are important, rather than the reverse. It is difficult to assess the impact of specific cuts without information on the costs of services as well as the amount of take up, but this is not easy to obtain. DJC will update the form before circulating it more widely. In response to a question about support for Linux Steve Rochford commented that a lot of the Linux support related to business systems, e.g. ICIS. 3. Volunteer to go to ICTAP meetings ------------------------------------ Following the departure of Kostas Georgiou the department needs to find a new volunteer to attend ICTAP meetings. These meetings consist of ICT discussions with departmental representatives and similarly interested parties. ICT reports on plans, changes to services etc. and listens to feedback or requests from the departments. These meetings are generally more technical than the DUC meetings and typically occur three or four times per year. Whoever attends the ICTAP meetings will also receive the daily email bulletin from ICT which covers any changes to or problems with services. No volunteers were forthcoming. DJC will try to persuade someone. 4. Licensing ------------ Mathematica licensing is being chased up. Wolfram and Imperial solicitors are now essentially shouting at each other. Wolfram alleges we have around 300 illegal users. Nowhere near that many users (in total) have been found yet by ICT. We will look at getting a departmental license server for Mathematica and buying a number of floating licences. (action DJC, AM). Other candidates for departmental licensing: -------------------------------------------- National Instruments suite: Labview IDL - Astro has a special deal which may be coming to an end. (A single IDL licence typically costs ~ £500.) SPAT has 250 IDL licences (legacy) ~ £5.5K per year rolling license cost and could potentially issue licences within the department. These could be node locked or floating licences. It is possible to access the SPAT license server via the College VPN service from outside. HEP uses a lot of finite element modelling (Autodesk). Most of the other departmental users use SolidWorks. There could be some use for per seat licences for occasional users. While there are a few users who use this more or less all the time there are potentially quite a few occasional users in the department. Faculty will pay for next years Intel compiler licences (£2800). Nobody should need to be paying for this. Contention for floating licences has not been a problem so far. NAGlib is freely available to the department (funded centrally). 5. News from groups ------------------- Teaching - no news. There were some comments that dual boot or virtual machine for Linux for undergraduate projects on the teaching lab computers would be useful. SPAT - Trying to get network upgraded to Gbit for moving large amounts of data. (next couple of months timescale.) They have been refused permission to run Matlab jobs on HPC. This is probably a licensing issue. Theory - down a sysadmin. HEP - Just got a 10Gbit link for LHC/Grid traffic. 6. Action list -------------- i) Find a new member for ICTAP meetings (DJC) ii) Investigate the possibility of a departmental license server for Mathematica (DJC and AM) Next meeting: Aim for a meeting towards the end of next term.

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ICT Services Survey form
by David Colling 19 Apr '10

19 Apr '10

Hi All, As I said I have created a little form to gather people's opinions of ICT services. If people are happy with this at tomorrow's meeting I will distribute it widely through physics staff for people to fill in. The form can be found at http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dDhvWkdTNThGQ1NmTWF1bUZ2U2t… any thoughts or suggestions welcome. All the best, david

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Tomorrow's meeting
by David Colling 19 Apr '10

19 Apr '10

Dear All, Just to confirm that we will have a brief meeting at 2pm tomorrow. The location is Room 532 in the Blackett Lab. The Agenda will be as follows: 1. News from ICT 2. ICT Services - which would we miss least if things have to be cut. I will prepare a google form for this this afternoon just to gather opinions. Yes, this would be easy to subvert but why would anybody bother? 3. Licensing - what software packages do groups use and is there anyway that we can have communal licenses and save some money. To this end it would be useful if each representative could make a list the commonly used software in each group. Perhaps those who cannot make the meeting might want to a summary to this list. This topic was a particular request from our HoD. 4. Replacement of Kostas on ICTAP. This person will get the daily ICT bulletin as well as attend the meetings. This is a very good way of remaining informed as to what is going on and then informing everybody else if there is something important. Any volunteers? 5. Any news/changes in each group 6. AOB All the best, david

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Re: [Physics-Departmental-Computing] [Fwd: Doodle: Link for poll "Departmental Computing Committee"]
by David Colling 16 Apr '10

16 Apr '10

Hi Ray, These are good points and I think that the approach should be items or services that we in Physics wouldn't miss too much. Clearly the medics (say) may miss them terribly. Given that the SLA is long and covers an awful lot of material would it be possible for somebody from ICT to summarise it in a spreadsheet? I know that Dan Moore did this for Maths but that the way he divided it up was criticised and so it would be good to if somebody from ICT were to divide it up as they see fit. If this seems like too much work I will use Dan's division and put into a google form. It would also be useful to have a rough idea how much is paid in each area (just an indication) and this would be far easier if the division was made by somebody in ICT. Regarding your point that many groups would do things themselves if they had to pay for them. I suspect that far fewer groups have the expertise that they had 5 years ago - or rather the expertise is 5 years out of date and so it might be difficult for them to do this. All the best, david Raymond Beuselinck wrote: > Hi Dave, > > On Mon, 12 Apr 2010, David Colling wrote: > >> - In a time of cuts what service do we value least from ICT? The full >> ICT SLA can be found linked from >> http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ict/aboutict/ictslaandkpis >> The last time I asked this I didn't get particularly sensible answers >> (at least from the replies I got from people within HEP). However, this >> really is quite serious and I would be grateful for any feedback that we >> can in turn feedback to ICT. >> > I don't remember if I commented on this before, if so it was probably one > of the less sensible comments. I have had a look through the very long SLA > document to see if I could come up with a sensible suggestion. My first > comment is that it is far from obvious what to cut. The SLA seems to cover > everything that you could possibly think of that could come under the > heading of ICT. > > Given the assumptions imposed by the previous rector (ICT does everything - > you lot be grateful for what is provided) what is the consequence of > cutting something from ICT? > a) we cannot have X at all or > b) we provide X ourselves if we want it. > The answer to that question has a bearing on what people might want to cut. > It is presumably X-dependent. > > It is difficult to gauge the impact of cutting something without the > information on how much each service is actually used and what are the cost > savings of cutting it. There are things on the list that I have no idea if > anybody outside ICT values as a provided service, e.g. support for research > databases and shared departmental storage. Does anybody in physics use > this? It strikes me that groups would probably look at the charges for, > e.g. the departmental storage or backup services and decided it is more > cost effective to do it themselves. So this would be one area that I might > suggest we don't care about and could vote for cutting. On the other hand > I have no idea how much that would save as a fraction of the overall costs > of ICT. > > Given the above caveats I think top of my list to cut support for as a > useless luxury that probably only benefits a tiny fraction of users is > support for mobile computing (specifically Blackberrys, iPhones and PDAs). > I have no evidence, but would hazard a guess that this select group of > users probably generates an inordinate amount of service desk enquiries. > > Are you intending that Simon should come to these meetings? I assume he is > not currently on the mailing list. > > Ray

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Date for meeting
by David Colling 16 Apr '10

16 Apr '10

Dear All, As ever it is impossible to find a date that works for everybody but the current favourite is Tuesday 14:00-16:00 and while Adrian Cannot make it Steve can so we will have ICT represented (which I believe to be important). I will book a room for then. If people have anything that they would like to add to the agenda then please let me know. Also, please have a think about the suggested items from my earlier email. There has been one follow up that I will post to the list. All the best, david

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[Fwd: Doodle: Link for poll "Departmental Computing Committee"]
by David Colling 12 Apr '10

12 Apr '10

Dear All, We didn't have a departmental computing last term despite our intention to have roughly one a term. So if possible I would like to have one next week (I am away this week). At the bottom of this email is a doodle invitation to the meeting, please fill it in with your availability. My preference is to have these meetings around lunch time when they are in term time, but I am less concerned out of term. The four things that I can think of for the agenda are: - News from ICT - In a time of cuts what service do we value least from ICT? The full ICT SLA can be found linked from http://www3.imperial.ac.uk/ict/aboutict/ictslaandkpis The last time I asked this I didn't get particularly sensible answers (at least from the replies I got from people within HEP). However, this really is quite serious and I would be grateful for any feedback that we can in turn feedback to ICT. - Software Licences. We had more fake Mathematica licences than any other department. Now, this is all being sorted out. However, we might be able benefit from sharing other licences. Can anybody else think of any software that we might benefit from being departmental licences? - Replacement Physics Rep on the ICTAP. Kostas Georgiou has left us and so we need somebody to represent Physics on ICT Advisory Panel. - We should probably add a general round up as to activity in each group. Are there other items for the agenda that others would like to include. All the best, david -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Doodle: Link for poll "Departmental Computing Committee" Date: Mon, 12 Apr 2010 20:56:03 +0200 (CEST) From: Doodle - DO NOT REPLY <mailer(a)doodle.com> To: <d.colling(a)imperial.ac.uk> You have initiated a poll "Departmental Computing Committee" at Doodle. The link to your poll is: http://www.doodle.com/8x7ksrqnugznta2s Share this link with all those who should cast their votes. Do not forget to cast your vote, too. (If you did not initiate this poll, somebody must accidentally have used your e-mail address; simply ignore this e-mail, please.) Get Premium Doodle: more features, no ads http://doodle.com/r/enPremiumDoodle

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