April 2014 - Physics-Departmental-Computing

Fwd: Withdrawal of the Yosemite Laptop Backup Service
by David Colling 24 Apr '14

24 Apr '14

FYI ... -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Withdrawal of the Yosemite Laptop Backup Service Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2014 15:28:45 +0000 From: Metcalfe, Christopher J <c.metcalfe(a)imperial.ac.uk> To: ICTAP Members <ccs-dept(a)imperial.ac.uk> [cid:image003.jpg@01CF5F11.18EB4BB0] Withdrawal of the Yosemite Laptop Backup Service What's changing? On 30 April 2014 the Yosemite Laptop Backup Service will be withdrawn Why is this happening? As of 31 March 2014 the supplier of the software used for the laptop backup service stopped supporting the product, meaning that there will be no more bug fixes or security patches. The future of the service was discussed at ICTAP (the ICT Advisory Panel) who decided that there was no need to offer the service from this point. As a result we are keeping the service running for an extra month to allow people to migrate off and then we will be shutting the service down on 30 April 2014. Who will be affected? This will affect anybody currently using the Yosemite laptop backup service. If you have a Yosemite Desktop-Laptop Backup icon in the bottom right hand corner of your screen you will be affected. It can also be running on desktops as well as laptops. What this means This means that anybody using the Yosemite laptop backup service to protect and restore their files will no longer be able to do so. You will have to remove the Yosemite Desktop-Laptop backup software from your computer. For anybody still seeking a laptop/PC backup service, Crashplan (http://www.crashplan.com) offers a cloud-based service for Windows, Linux, Macintosh and Solaris machines. (NOTE: this is an external service provider who will charge directly for its services. As such, anyone using the service must sign up and be bound by Crashplan's own terms and conditions). Timing This is happening on 30 April 2014 Support/Contact The withdrawal of the Yosemite backup service was previously discussed at the February 2013 ICTAP Meeting<https://workspace.imperial.ac.uk/ict/Internal/About%20ICT/ICTAP/2013/februa…> and further details can be found here<http://bit.ly/1i8K9JJ>. If you have any concerns in advance of this change, or need any help removing the Yosemite Desktop-Laptop backup software, contact your local Faculty Support Manager or the ICT Service Desk who will be happy to help. Chris Metcalfe Technical Manager - Architecture Information and Communication Technologies Level 4, Sherfield Building Imperial College London South Kensington Campus London SW7 2AZ Tel: +44 (0)20 7594 7286 Fax: +44 (0)20 7594 6919 E-mail: c.metcalfe(a)imperial.ac.uk<mailto:c.metcalfe@imperial.ac.uk>

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Departmental computing meeting next Monday (14/4/14)
by David Colling 14 Apr '14

14 Apr '14

Dear All, I now have to go to CERN on Tuesday and so as Tuesday and Monday are jointly first in the doodle poll I thought that we should set this for Monday. ********************************************************* Please mail the list if you cannot make this. If enough people are off because of the school holidays then we will have to move untila after Easter but if this can be avoided it should be. ********************************************************* One of the things that I agreed to do after our meeting with Mike Russell today was to put together a rough document about the Departments Research Computing needs. This includes HPC, storage, network, HTC, etc etc. So if I could ask people to start to do this for the different groups it would be very good. Are there specific items for the agenda? Best, david

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Meeting with Mike Russell and doodle for a departmental meeting.
by David Colling 07 Apr '14

07 Apr '14

Dear All, Having spectacularly failed to schedule a meeting in the last two weeks I would rather like to fit one in before easter if we can. So there is a doodle poll at http://doodle.com/98y5xzpgu5gq2rns for people to give their availability. Also (perhaps more importantly), Jo and I are meeting with Mike Russell, College's CIO tomorrow. He has been in post since Novemeber and I believe is carrying out a strategic review. Are there specific things that people would like me to raise with him? My feeling is that college covers the teaching side of what is needed pretty well and that the research side of computing that has more variety, but I may well be wrong. So if people could could take a moment to note their likes and dislikes (what is important to them, what they couldn't do without, what they think could be done better etc), then I will try to pull together some common themes for tomorrow. Best, david

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