After last week's meeting I was supposed to forward this email to the list. My apologies for the delay. All the best, david -------- Original Message -------- Subject: RE: [Physics-Departmental-Computing] Reminder of today's meeting Date: Mon, 2 Nov 2009 11:04:17 +0000 From: Mannall, Adrian B <a.mannall@imperial.ac.uk> To: Colling, David J <d.colling@imperial.ac.uk> CC: Wong, Adrian S L <adrian.wong@imperial.ac.uk>, Quirke, Stephen M <s.quirke@imperial.ac.uk>, Rochford, Steve <s.rochford@imperial.ac.uk> References: <4AEEB1F1.60902@imperial.ac.uk> Hi David, As promised - some ICT News: Staffing: Steve Rochford is the Team Leader for FoNS SK West - unfortunately he's on leave this week so won't be at the meeting. Mo Ali has moved from FoNS SK West team (supporting Huxley and Blackett Buildings) to FoNS SK South. Dan Ott-Mia has been seconded to ICT's Admin and Business School Support group for 6 months to help them with the workload there. Steve Quirke has moved office from Huxley to Blackett to help with day to day support of Physics users - Steve has strong Mac, Linux and Windows skills so should be able to help with most queries - and if he doesn't have the answer immediately to hand he knows where to go for assistance. Networks: Much work is going on within Blackett to reduce the number of Central Wiring Closets and re-cable floors back to these CWCs. Ultimately this will improve the network connectivity for all as the new CWCs are being fitted with the Extreme X450 switches which are capable of providing faster network links to the desktop. The College backbone now runs at 10Gb. HEP have been provided the facility to run a 10Gb link to the Internet to facilitate fast data downloads from CERN and the LHC project. Infrastructure: All College based mailboxes on ICT infrastructure are now serviced from Exchange 2007 servers. This provides greater integration with our telephony as we move forwards over the next few years to VOIP based communications. It also means we won't have to purchase any upgrades to the Voicemail system as voicemail will move to Exchange as part of the unification of communications. Unified Communications - ICT now run Office Communications Server and Live Meeting systems such that there is a "corporate" messaging, voice and video application available across College. This is being rolled out initially to groups who express an interest / have requirements for this. If anyone would like a demonstration / training or to enable their group then please contact Adrian Mannall or Steve Rochford and we can assist with moving this forwards. Email Archiving - ICT has purchased an archiving solution that will enable auto archiving to ICT based infrastructure - thus eventually removing the spectre of lost PSTs, etc. This is currently being bedded in and tested within ICT. An early adopters programme will follow shortly and the system will be rolled out widely after Christmas. NFS services - ICT have NFS servers to provide Linux / Unix accessible home areas on centralised infrastructure. If you have a group who would like to consider moving to this (perhaps your current servers are reaching the end of their serviceable life) then please contact u to discuss this. Mac Support - ICT have been working hard to provide more coherent Mac support. We have again provided opportunities for Apple Maintenance Program purchase (3 years of OS upgrades) and will continue to work towards covering as many people as we can with this. The cost is borne by individuals / research groups - we are not yet at the point of being able to "site license" Macs - partly due to the way that Apple run their licensing schemes and the fact that it takes Apple ages to move things forwards in Europe as it has to go through US based legal departments! We currently continue to purchase many desktop systems through HP. Work has been going on to resolve some pricing issues with the new Z series workstations and this should be reflected in the pricing in the next week or so on the catalogue. If people are considering the purchase of new computer systems then please do ask us for a quote or for help - the HP pricing is very favourable particularly for desktop and laptop systems - upwards of £250 cheaper than DELL or High Street HP prices! Data Centre - ICT continues to offer free hosting of servers in the Data Centre in Mechanical Engineering - should you wish to explore this please contact Adrian Mannall. HPC - The College has committed to funding improvements in HPC over the next three years with approximately £3million being spent expanding and updating the current systems. A new SGI box has recently arrived and will be going into service shortly. If you wish to discuss HPC then please talk to Adrian Mannall and he can put you in touch with the HPC manager in ICT. To conclude - if you are considering any new projects or expansion of existing projects then please do talk to us. We don't guarantee to be able to help with every request but we are here as a service to be used and we will do our best wherever possible to assist you - the department's paid for ICT so try us out and see what we can offer. Regards, Adrian -----Original Message----- From: physics-departmental-computing-bounces@imperial.ac.uk [mailto:physics-departmental-computing-bounces@imperial.ac.uk] On Behalf Of David Colling Sent: 02 November 2009 10:18 To: physics-departmental-computing; Wong, Adrian S L; Quirke, Stephen M Subject: [Physics-Departmental-Computing] Reminder of today's meeting Dear All, It turned out that I had even less email access than I thought when I was on holiday and even if I drove to the nearest town which had a sniff of GPRS signal (3G was not an option) it was not sufficient to sync my mail so my apologies for the late notice. I have room 539 in Blackett booked from midday, and as I said earlier think tat we should start at 12.10 sharp giving people time to get out of labs and lectures etc. If anybody has sent me agenda items I will draw up a formal agenda (I haven't checked my email yet) however the main point is to asses were we are what we want to use these meeting for. There will also be news status from ICT. All the best, david _______________________________________________ Physics-Departmental-Computing mailing list Physics-Departmental-Computing@imperial.ac.uk https://mailman.ic.ac.uk/mailman/listinfo/physics-departmental-computing