Meltem Kurtman
Acting Secretary to the Committee
October 11, 2013
Present:
Dave Wallace (Chair), Meltem Kurtman (Secretary), Bill Baer, Bruce Campbell, Andrea Chappell, Marko Dumancic, Erick Engelke, Bob Hicks, Bill Ince, Dawn Keenan, Dave Kibble, Robyn Landers, Paul Miskovsky, Carl Nagel, Terry Stewart, Jason Testart
Regrets:
None.
Agenda
- Chair's remarks (Dave Wallace, Chair) [1:30-1:40pm]
- Approval of the minutes of the meeting of September 19, 2013 and business arising [1:40-1:45pm]
- Proactive disaster recovery planning (Bruce Campbell) [1:45-2:15pm]
- IDM Roadmap project update (Jason Testart) [2:15-2:45 pm]
- Updates [(2:45-2:55 pm; Various]
- Email (Bruce Campbell)
- Active Directory (Bruce Campbell)
- Green IT (Marko Dumancic)
- IT Security (Jason Testart)
- Campus Firewall project (Bruce Campbell)
- Student Printing (Bill Baer)
- IT Strategic Plan (Andrea Chappell)
- Organize for Success (Bob Hicks)
- Other business [2:55-3:00pm]
- Next Computing Technology and Services Committee (CTSC) meeting
[Will be held Thursday, October 17, 2013, at 1:30 p.m., in Mathematics & Computing building (MC) 2018A.]
Chair's remarks (Dave Wallace)
- The Gartner event which took place yesterday was well received. There was interesting information about the future of education and what combination of technologies we have to pay attention to. The slides of the session will be posted.
- Met with the auditors and will work on a follow up. There will be only one net audit in the next two years. Disaster Recovery is one of the things we are working on.
Approval of the minutes of the meeting of September 19, 2013
The minutes of the meeting of September 19, 2013 were approved.
Proactive disaster recovery update (Bruce Campbell)
Campbell talked about the following:
- Adding redundant components: Reduces the probability of complete failure, but response to total failure still involves complete rebuild and restore.
- Disaster recovery (DR): Disaster recovery plan (DRP) is different than fixing broken servers.
- Information Systems & Technology’s (IST's) vision and approach to disaster recovery
- Contrast to traditional approach
- Requires a highly available primary data centre
- Despite near 100% availability of Tier 3 data centre, still vulnerable to rare events
- Vision and approach
- Evolving to multiple lower tier data centres
- Individual centres can be completely shut down; no longer require redundant and dual path electrical supply
- Simplifies DR planning and testing
- DRP is no longer a separate activity, part of normal IT operations
- Service redundancy approaches
- Pairs of servers provide dedicated functions
- Redundant externalized storage
- Virtualization with redundant servers and redundant storage. Layers of abstraction between operating system and hardware.
- Redundant virtual servers with redundant storage
- Multiple buildings
- Redundancy is solved once at the storage layer
- Not all applications are good candidates for virtualization
- To meet DR mxpectations
- Redundant data centres in two different buildings
- Redundant servers, storage, and backups
- Mechanisms:
- Use high availability features of service
- Virtualize as much as possible
- Handle remaining cases with redundant hardware to synchronize
- Use high availability features of service
- Virtualize as much as possible
- Handle remaining cases with redundant hardware to synchronize
- Progress
- Still largely reliant on a single primary data centre (MC 1061)
- Adding generator to MC 1061
- Have offsite Domain Name System (DNS)
- Have offsite splashpage (web site) that can be put into service if all of University of Waterloo is down
- Discussions with business units complete, and RTOs/RPOs for major services established
- DR planning for new services now part of normal activities
- Investments in some key infrastructure areas planned or complete
- Investigations into technologies planned or complete
- Exploring reciprocal arrangement with another university to host online backups of netapps (backups of data only, no capability for full hosting of all servers and storage)
- If our primary data centre were lost today:
- Some services would continue uninterrupted
- Some services could be restored relatively quickly
- Some services would take weeks to months to restore
IDM Roadmap project update (Jason Testart)
Testart noted that he was hoping to be further along in the project. There are about half a dozen people working on it and two more positions were added as a result of the Organize for Success project. The group is looking into how we do security around student and HR information. What are the functional requirements? The goal is to learn, come up with definitions and apply the knowledge to other areas. They will meet next week to draw out the lifecycle of a student and review the project charter. They are aiming to have the mapping done by the end of the calendar year.
Updates
Email (Bruce Campbell)
Return path audit. Admissions group is the only one using it. Approaching various departments for their bulk email.
Active Directory (Bruce Campbell)
The group had another meeting. Colin Bell will come speak at the next meeting.
Green IT (Marko Dumancic)
No report.
IT security (Jason Testart)
End of support for XP is next year; Microsoft will be offering support for a fee.
Campus Firewall (Bruce Campbell)
Met with engineering today, will meet with Environment tomorrow about open ports that are just sitting there. Erick Engelke came up with an idea to empower people to help themselves. If we do it, it will be available to the whole campus and it will empower some people to deal with the situation themselves.
Student Printing (Bill Baer)
Getting a head count of students on campus. Sandra Laughlin is helping. We are using the same approach we used for Microsoft Campus Agreement; i.e. a part-time student does not count as one student.
IT Strategic Plan (Andrea Chappell)
The audit continues; the auditors are focusing on the structure and the steps we took. They have the ideal process; they will see how ours compare to theirs. We are getting updates on the IT activities to update the document by the end of the month, and also working with Natasha Jennings on a communications plan. The IT Governance Subcommittee met yesterday; its members are Andrea Chappell, Dave Kibble, Wayne Oldford, Mario Coniglio, Peggy Jarvie and Pascal Calarco. The Subcommittee is looking at the Online Expenses System, WaterlooWorks, GAP, and TRELLIS.
Organize for Success (Bob Hicks)
There will be Open Houses, on October 16th for IST staff and October 17th for the campus community. Dave Wallace will show the new organization chart.
Other business
Engineering will offer one Terabyte of space per faculty member at no cost; more space would be available for a fee. This will be their new N drive, and they can use it for whatever they need.
Next meeting
The next meeting will be held on October 17, 2013, at 1:30pm, in MC 2018A.