Attending: Landen Bain, Pakis Bessias, David Ferriero, Nevin Fouts, Ed Gomes, Alan Halachmi, Patrick Halpin, David Jamieson-Drake, Ken Knoerr, Roger Loyd, Melissa Mills, George Oberlander, Lynne O'Brien, Mike Pickett, Rafael Rodriguez, Edward Shanken, Robert Wolpert, Steve Woody, Chris Cramer, Chris Meyer, Kathy Pfeifer, Jen Vizas

Announcements:

The proposed VoIP pilot in engineering is on hold for present.

SISS update

  • Topics:
    • Billing (reduced from 4 hours to 30 minutes),
    • processing student receipts (reduced to 10 seconds),
    • production of check sheets (improved by33%).

  • Chris Meyer provided update on SISS performance. PeopleSoft is not tuned for a specific database. Duke has hired a consultant to tune Duke's Oracle database, which underlies the SISS application.

    As a result, significant improvements in end-to-end processing speed have been realized, including:

    The SISS team will begin increasing the number of concurrent users soon above the cap previously set in increments of around 20 at a step. Upgrade to Haht 5.0 (application development environment) has solved the memory leak problem. Haht is used to implement ACES. PeopleSoft is used to implement SISS. The consultant will be using toolkit to monitor performance going forward.

Student Computing Lab Upgrade and Recommended Computers for Students

The proposed upgrades to the public student computing labs were reviewed as well as minimum recommended configurations for incoming undergraduate students. The plan is to have these recommendations and plans finalized by early April.

Duke IT Security Officer Update

  • Topics:
    • external security checks/assessments,
    • investigation of PKI,
    • virus education and associated technical strategies,
    • ways to perform regular automatic checking for viruses on servers,
    • pre-configuration of student software images to automatically perform updates to virus software/data,
    • help information on what both users and administrators can do,
    • security training for administrators (through L&OD),
    • and policies for data transfer,
    • privacy,
    • etc.

  • Chris Cramer, Duke's new IT Security Officer, started his new role in January.

    Chris is considering needed projects and services such as

    Chris, Herb Commodore, and Rob Carter can be reached via e-mail to security@duke.edu.

    A Security Advisory Committee is being reconstituted and is having a kickoff meeting in March.

Modem Pool Update

  • Topics:
    1. graduate students,
    2. occasional travelers, and
    3. emergency access.

  • We have been losing terminal servers on the modem pool due to hardware failure. We currently have 96 ports operational (64 Express + 32 Extended Access) and are considering a proposal to use Linux server + Kerberos to directly access/manage modems (bridge).

    Under the proposed plan, we would replace existing older modems with 64 high-speed modems to create a 64 port Express only service to provide limited service for

    We are also resuming discussions with vendors regarding discounted high-speed access (cable modem, DSL, etc.). Eddie Shanken noted that the proposed approach would be helpful to graduate students.

There was no new business.

Meeting was adjourned.