Committee meeting - February 11, 2021

Carol Lu   
Secretary to the Committee   
February 11, 2021
   
Present: Steven Bourque, Andrew McAlorum, Bill Baer, Greg Parks, Erick Engelke, Paul Miskovsky, Jason Testart, Trevor Bain, Andrea Chappell, Lawrence Folland, Robyn Landers, Adam Savage, Don Duff-McCracken, Pratik Patel

Guests: Dave Hinton

Regrets:  Adam Savage, Daryl Dore 
 
Agenda   

  1. Presentation: Windows Virtual Desktop (Dave Hinton) [30 min.]
  2. Chair’s remarks (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]
  3. Approval of the minutes from Thursday January 14, 2021 [5 min.]
  4. OneDrive migration of network drives (Andrew McAlorum) [5 min.]
  5. IT Sustainability (Andrew McAlorum) [5 min.]
  6. SSH Security (Jason Testart) [35 min.]
  7. Other business and roundtable discussion – all [5 min.]
  8. Next CTSC Meeting [Will be held Thursday February 25 at 1:30 p.m.]

Presentation: Windows Virtual Desktop (Dave Hinton)

  • Dave Hinton gave a demo of Windows Virtual Desktop 

Comments and discussion

  • Students will need to log in to OneDrive the first time they use Windows Virtual Desktop; they will not be logged in automatically
  • VMs can be configured to use different sized machines depending on the department's needs for different softwares (e.g. Adobe Creative Suite requires a larger machine)
  • N: Drives can be mapped for the department if desired
  • Arts Windows Virtual Desktop is currently in production 
  • Windows Virtual Desktop can be used for labs if desired
    • Would not be an option for Engineering as the department has ~400-500 concurrent users with specialized software that is not cloud-based

Chair's remarks

  • Microsoft RDP access has been extended until 2022. 
  • Regarding software purchase approvals in accordance to Policy 1
    • Approvals are not necessary for most routine purchases
    • Purpose of the policy is to protect the University from 'risky' softwares being purchased
    • Suggestions will be made to the Faculty Relations Committee to update the wording of the policy to be more clear
      • Would be beneficial to include examples or guidelines of what requires approval and what does not

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting 

  • The previous meeting’s minutes were accepted as distributed.   

OneDrive migration of network drives (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Andrew gave a presentation on the OneDrive migration project

Comments and discussion

  • Users will need to run the software updates from the Software Centre (SCCM) manually
  • A schedule with migration dates for each faculty/department will be created 
  • User files will still exist on their N: Drive as read-only
    • Users have the option to migrate all N: Drive content to OneDrive by installing the software update
  • Deprecation date for N: Drive has not been set yet
  • Contact Mike Cocker for the migration script
    • Mike may do a demo for a future meeting 

IT Sustainability (Andrew McAlorum)

  • Andrew gave a presentation on the IT Sustainability project

Comments and discussion 

  • Working with Mat Thijssen, project will take place this year
  • Looking to create IT sustainability guidelines to better align with the University's sustainability goals (e.g. guidelines for when computers should be shut down if not in use)

SSH Security (Jason Testart)

  • Jason gave a presentation on SSH Security

Comments and discussion

  •  Computer Science has moved most workstations off the public internet
  • A list of external SSH machines in Engineering was shared with the committee via email
    • Engineering is looking to prevent external access on as many machines as possible

Other Business/Roundtable 

Technology Integrated Services, Steve

  • NetMon is active and live
  • Since netmon uses ADFS for authentication, access to enable/disable a lab lockdown requires a login to netmon.

WUSA, Pratik

  • Looking for API access for Jira Service Management
    • Andrew to discuss with Matt Harford and the Atlassian operations group 

Instructional Technologies and Media Services, Andrea

  • Currently looking for additional data on the apps people are using with Zoom in addition to Zoom user satisfaction levels
  • Please contact Andrea if you have data to share
    • Math has shared survey results with related data
    • Bill to share Arts survey feedback
  • ISS is revisiting security features for video conferencing services (e.g. Teams, WebEx, Zoom)
  • Current Zoom expenditures at the University would cost the same as a site license
  • Would like to reduce the number of supported applications that are similar to Zoom