LCSR User Group Notes: February 24, 2006

Attending:Hanz Makmur, Charles McGrew, Doug Motto, Thu Nguyen, Don Smith, Lars Sorensen

• Meeting Announcements

  We need to make sure the web site is kept up to date so announcements of this meeting go out on time. Are their any volunteers to take this on?

• Email

  We discussed changing our email services to one of the following two options.

  no ugrad email

  1. mail for faculty, staff, research, CS grad on a single server
  2. we'd discourage opening mail accounts for research colleagues but do so on request

  mail for ugrad majors

  1. mail for ugrad majors - no other ugrad email
  2. mail for faculty, staff, research, CS grad
  3. we'd discourage opening mail accounts for research colleagues but do so on request
  4. We use two servers, you could only have an account on one. One server might house all students or just ugrad majors.

  Thu and Don will survey the faculty, get their opinions, and report to the committee by the next meeting.

• Dialups

  We will discontinue all dialup services. Rick Crispin will determine the "true cost" of supplying such service along with the current usage patterns. Rick, when can we expect these numbers?

  Thu and Don will inform the faculty once the cost and usage are known. They will report back tot he group by the next meeting.

• Insecure Services

  All machines inside LCSR will be scanned for security holes. Researchers will be notified in advance and acceptable schedules will be established.

  Charles will arrange and schedule the scans and report on results by the next meeting.

• SSH ports

  Don W. will develop a plan for restricting access to SSH ports by the next meeting. Once completed Thu and Don will inform the faculty and ask for feedback. Items that need to be addressed include:

  1. how will users register trusted resources (e.g., IPs, domains, etc.)
  2. should policies and practices for desktop and server be different?
  3. what resource will be unrestricted - why?
  4. which clusters (e.g., faculty, cereal, research, grad) will enforce restrictions

• Sellable disk space

  LCSR supports two types of purchasable disk storage. Both are sold in units of 10GB for a period of one year. Space may be bought for multiple years.

  1. RAIDed disk: Loss of data due to hardware failure is extremely unlikely. Files can be restored as far back as 60 days. All data resides on a disk array in the LCSR machine room. Monthly copies of the data are kept offsite for disaster recovery.

     Each GB of online RAIDed storage requires 5GB of disk space to support the 60 day restore capability. To maintain 1 GB of RAIDed online storage 5GB of disk space must be purchased.

     The cost of 10GB of RAIDed online storage is $80 per year (i.e., $1.60 per GB per year for 50GB).

  2. Backup disk: This provides storage for offline copies of online files. All data resides on a disk array in the LCSR machine room.

     The copies are not directly accessible as online files but can be made available within one business day. The amount of backup disk storage needed to back up a given amount of online storage will depend on a user's usage patterns and retention requirements. Backup schedules and retention policies will be designed to meet individual needs.

     The cost of 10GB of Backup disk is $16 per year (i.e., $1.60 per GB per year for 10GB).

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