Committee meeting - September 20, 2018

Heather Wey
Acting Secretary to the Committee­­­
September 20, 2018

Present: 

Steven Bourque (Chair), Erick Engelke, David Gawley, Robyn Landers, Keith McGowan, Donald Duff-McCracken, Heather Wey (acting Secretary)

Regrets:

Andrew McAlorum, Trevor Bain, Daryl Dore, Marko Dumancic, Dave Kibble, Paul Miskovsky, Omar Nafees, Adam Savage, Greg Smith, Jason Testart

Agenda

  1. Chair’s remarks [5 min.]
  2. Approval of the minutes of the meetings of September 6, 2018 [5 min.]
  3. IPv4 Address Usage (Steven Bourque) [5 min.]
  4. Other Business [10 min.]
  5. Roundtable discussion – all [20 min.]
  6. Next CTSC Meeting

Chair’s Remarks (Steven Bourque)

  • WNAG will be modifying the UPN, users will only need to enter userid@uwaterloo.ca rather than userid@nexus.uwaterloo.ca when using ADFS authentication, which is the standard for student facing systems.

Approval of the minutes of the previous meeting

  • The previous meetings minutes were accepted as distributed.

IPv4 Address Usage (Steven Bourque)

  • Running low of addresses.
  • Network services will be looking at a strategy.
  • They will be coming to a future meeting to give a presentation.

Comments & Discussion

  • Question regarding IPv6
    • It’s currently used in new buildings (for unmanaged machines). It’s currently available if anyone wants it (they can request it), but it’s limited, not all sites are available on it yet.

Other Business

Update on central redirect server for .forward files for email (Robyn)

  • Question from specific to email from UNIX servers
    • IST mxer will forward userid@uwaterloo.ca to WatIAM MailRoutingAddress.
    • Faculty mail servers can be configured to point to mxer, which is one of the email recommendations being implemented
    • Will follow up with TIS if there is an issue

​Update on email changes (Don)

  • Implementation is still in progress. Steve will send update to the group.
  • WatIAM issues should be reported through RT.
  • userid@uwaterloo.ca is still forwarded to userid@edu.uwaterloo.ca
    • Includes new students.
    • Any email sent to @uwaterloo.ca will be forwarded to whatever email address is in WatIAM.
    • Comment regarding issues with staff as students or vice versa; a service should be behind the scenes doing look-ups.
      • Changes are not currently pending at this time.

Recent phishing attempts and Proofpoint (Erick)

  • Phishing attempt September 19 (about a “payroll schedule”) was not caught by Proofpoint, although it seemed to be an obvious phish. Can emails be stopped or marked?
    • Users did not want that.
    • Such instances should be reported (to soc@uwaterloo.ca) so that ISS can investigate
  • Comment that many students thought a legitimate email about library compromise was a phish and did not follow the instructions.

Roundtable Reporting

CS (David)

  • WatIAM identity at end of term issues. Sponsorship is only recommended for a 3 week period at the start of their term. There is currently no grace period after.
  • This seems to be a concern for others at the table. Sessionals come and go, they don’t necessarily need to need to go to HR.
  • Steven recommended that an RT be created for this to be looked into.

Math (Robyn Landers)

  • Another power outage, Oct.9. Was rescheduled from Sept.19.
  • Met with Sean Mason regarding WatIAM issues.
  • Looking at a new backup service for VMware. Veeam is expensive. The free tool will soon be discontinued. Nakivo is the replacement they are going with.

Steven

  • New VPN will be available soon. It will not have 2FA initially.
  • Investigating more cost effective storage in addition to Netapps space. This may be available as a service for researchers, etc.
  • New version of ONA coming in the new year. Portal team is working on a front end for ONA.
  • CS club would like the latest code for ONA. Steven will ask Bruce.

Engineering (Erick Engelke)

  • Moving to E7
  • Moving from VMware to Hyper-V

Environment (Don)

  • We’ve had issues with a certain switch module in EV3. Steven mentioned that if there are issues they can be replaced.

Arts (Keith McGowan)

  • Added a new machine to our Hyper-V cluster.
  • Issues with WatIAM. Robyn will ask Lori to write up a summary to share. Sponsoring accounts, getting reminders that sponsored account will expire even after HR has picked them up. Steven will ask Sean if he can attend a future meeting for Q&A and demo/presentation of how it works.

Next meeting

The next meeting will be held on October 4, 2018 at 1:30 p.m., in EC2 1021.