Present: G. Fuentes, D. Keenan, D. MacLean, T. Marshall Taylor, K. McGowan, R. Park, S. Paterson, S. Speers, B. Yantha
Co-ops: C. Moroz, D. Skinner, R. Thomson
Paper Duty: April – Scott
Dawn
- The weekend and evening helpdesk in Davis Centre (DC) Library will remain open in the Spring term for students and others who need computing support after hours (4:30-8:30pm weekdays, 12:309-8:30pm weekends).
- Authentication for the campus wireless network and Virtual Private Network (VPN) are expected to change from Active Directory Services (ADS) to NEXUS in May. A detailed schedule has not yet been set. No client-visible changes are expected, except for users who have different ADS and NEXUS passwords.
- 3 new on-campus Qualys vulnerability scanners (one in Psychology-Anthropology-Sociology [PAS] 1099A, one in Information Systems & Technology [IST], one TBD) will start operating in May. The same scans as are currently done by the off-campus service will be performed from UW networks. The expectation is that vulnerabilities not visible to off-campus machines will be identified and flagged for remediation.
- Jason Testart reminded Computing Technology and Services Committee (CTSC) that all mobile devices owned by the University of Waterloo and personal devices which access sensitive information are expected to use full device encryption. See IST's page on Data Encryption.
This includes faculty laptops as well as tablets and phones used to store or access confidential or restricted information; Arts Computing Office (ACO) currently encrypts laptops equipped with the TPM chip, including all rollover laptops. At the CTSC meeting, some discussion about the desirability and feasibility of encrypting desktop computers followed. It's feasible for us to encrypt rollover desktop hard drives and not require a password on reboot.
Keith noted that mapping network drives from home, now possible with the campus VPN, is a potential security risk due to our lack of control over home computers.
- IST has provided campus IT support units with documents related to the auditor's IT security report and plans to address issues raised. Both documents are available on the ACO Sharepoint site; their distribution should be restricted to UW IT support staff. Bruce Campbell and Jason Testart are available to discuss the report and plans with groups on request. The next audit is expected to focus on Faculty and other non-central computing support units and disaster recovery preparedness.
- The Student Technology Advisory Committee (STAC) is developing a mobile application strategy; the emphasis is on working with vendors, providing open data, and involving students and researchers to provide uWaterloo centred mobile applications across all major platforms. The March 18 draft is available on ACO's Sharepoint.
Barb
- Staff Rollover update
Half of the 22 new systems have been installed. After the initial frustration with the imaging there have been few difficulties with the installs. - delivery of Thin Clients for Arts Lecture Hall (AL) expected April 25th
- the RAM for the Virtual Servers (an item from the current fiscal year's "wishlist") has been ordered
Keith
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Account cleanup
A number of expired accounts were backed up and removed from Artsnexus. -
Artsnexus/Artsweb account sync
Since the automatic syncing of accounts between Artsnexus and Artsnexus2 (Artsweb) has not been configured, due to the fact that the connection between the two will soon be severed, the artsnexus2 system required removing passwd file entries for those accounts removed from Artsnexus and adding passwd file entries for new accounts added. -
UPS order
A new rack mounted UPS was ordered from Dell to replace some of the aging UPS’s in the machine room. -
Two instructor stations to 180 King St - looking into audio solution
Two Nexus workstations were built and delivered to 180 King St. They will be used as Instructor stations and will be connected to the projection system. The audio performance for these systems is less than ideal and an improved solution for the audio signal is being explored – possibly using wireless speakers. -
Xerox Phaser 8560 printer resurrected
Another Xerox Phaser 8560 Colour printer has been resurrected from parts of a failed printer. This makes three printers that have been rebuilt using scavenged parts from this printer and I suspect it likely has no more viable contributions and can be surplused. -
acocon1 upgraded & Client COnfiguration Manager (CCM) server SSLv2 disabled
On the recommendation of the campus network security group, SSLv2 is deemed a risk and it is suggested that this service should be disabled on any system offering it. It was disabled on the CCM server. Acocon1 was also upgraded in order to be able to provide a more secure SSL version and SSLv2 was then disabled. -
Artsresearch home directory recovered
The home directory of artsresearch is NFS mounted and the previous power outage resulted in the system coming up before the NFS server and as a result the home directory was not mounted successfully. This was repaired and a configuration change was made to help prevent this in the future. -
Print Management pilot
The CTSC Printing sub-committee has initiated the beginning a campus print management pilot project using a selection of viable products recommended in a comprehensive report written by a coop student comparing the available print management packages on the market. The principle factor in the product choice decision was integration with Watcard. -
Psych move to Crumb
Psych’s move to the IST file server “crumb” has been delayed by Psych. This is annoying because it complicates the merging of artsfaculty into nexus and our move to our new fileserver. - Qualys scanner to be installed in PAS 1099a
A Qualys security scanner server is being installed in our machine room. This will allow the security teams to probe for vulnerability issues within the campus rather than from beyond the campus firewall. This should give us a better idea of our true vulnerability.
Guillermo
- Bacula server
Moved from a Dell Optiplex 745 to a SunFire V20z box. After upgrading network card to 1 Gigabyte per second (GBps) the backup transfer speed decreased. Kernel errors suggested some hardware problem was the cause. -
Moving videos from watarts to YouTube for Arts website
Videos of student stories about international exchange are moving to the Youtube Artsfaculty channel switching the bandwidth load from watarts to Youtube, and making the videos searchable from Youtube -
Desire2Learn event network setup
Temporary created 4 hostnames (artsd2l1 - 4) 15 minutes before a Desire2Learn product release presentation in the HH Theatre, to accommodate for a special D2L device and 3 Laptops. Suggested to call us ahead of time with requirements for future events.
Nevil (was not able to attend meeting)
- nexus/faculties/arts, Renison, St. Pauls clean up
- WatIAM and Nexus April 23rd
- Podium upgrades to Windows 7
- preparing dept share migration from artsfs2/artsfaculty to artscp/nexus
Scott
- HP Multiseat Server demo hardware
HP came to do a demo of their multiseat server and zero touch thin clients. The demo was taken up with attempts to image the server with a version that could join a domain (which failed). It is becoming apparent that this is not a useful product for the Language Lab - St. Pauls conversion to Nexus Project
Scott had a meeting with St. Paul's to begin a Project to convert them to Nexus. Various duties and actions have been sketched out and assigned to people. - 17 Software packages ready for deployment to Nexus/Artsfaculty
- NXSARTSTS: disk ordered, thin clients ordered, software to be updated
Thin clients were ordered and pending delivery, there disk has been ordered and we're awaiting its arrival (needed to replace a failed disk in the array)
Sean
- Accounting and Financial Management Admissions Assignment (AFMAA) Completed, Went very well
- Renison Evaluations, New IST Scanner is very sensitive and some red sheets that previously worked did not work this time. Have to be very precise for Arts evalautions, difficult because Xerox printer has a lot of play
- Online French (FR) 151 Evals went very well
- New Artsonline built, synced over all data, ready to be enabled.
- Weak encryption cleanup
Todd
- Applied Health Sciences (AHS) group used Modern Languages (ML) 113 March 30th (focus group)
- Digitizing for Renison English Language Institute (ELI)
- HP Classroom Manager Demo (NetSupport)
- Projector models for ML 117 tested-two units requested
- FR 151 FR 152 lab test completed
- End of term for lab staff - three returning for Spring term
Lisa (was not able to attend meeting)
- co-op office renovations starting Thursday April 19
- Connect bulk moves to resume mid-May
Co-op Updates:
David-staff rollover systems
Caitie-staff rollover systems; surplus room
Rebecca-lunch session; machine in School of Accounting and Finance (SAF) was infected with a trojan virus; needed to supply a report to IST; newsletter; working with IS and two unmanaged machines they have for students to login to.
Other Business:
IST Professional Development Seminar
Barb mentioned that this week's IST Seminar will review the new models of Xerox photocopiers that will be installed across campus.
Birthdays: April - Sean, March-Bob
We'll be going out to celebrate Bob and Sean's birthdays on the 25th.