Minutes Waterloo Polaris Advisory Group (WPAG) March 21, 2001

Attendees:

Regrets:

Submitted items:

Q: (Nevil) Sysctl problems with ordering.
A: (Nevil) A Co-op student pointed out that MS J++ is not working in Polaris. Is either expired or the license is not working.

(Ray) Yes, it is not working. On my own machine I find the error message saying missing DLL. There is also problems with Visual Studio and Sysctl.
(Jim) The terminal server issues - licensing on the server - the connection goes up the AD to the one server. Also, the license is encrypted on D: drive, which gets erased. The next subsequent logon by the user takes another license.
(Nevil) The registry location for Terminal Server licensing from W95 clients can be
found at HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\MSLicensing. This affects Polaris 95 machines due to the reset registry at logoff.

Q: (Nevil) Nexus domain plan participation and expected requirements.
A: (Ray) The name of the Win2K domain has been decided, to be called Nexus. This will go by Waterloo Nexus, with the Domain being Nexus.

(Bruce) Lexis-Nexis is similar, which has been used as Library/Web Software for searching indexes, papers and journals.
(Hon) The library discontinued that software last week.
(Bruce) The name change has not been discussed by USIST.
(Nevil) When we made this recommendation to USIST, I believe USIST stated that we do not report to them.
(Ray) They had heard our recommendation on the Tape Backup issue some time ago. This is a history thing that may have been forgotten.
(Bruce) Does the A in WPAG mean to advise?
(Ray) In this issue, they stated they were not to deal with, that we should send the recommendation to the University Active Directory (AD) group and they will advise.
(Bruce) Our ideas of access to AD is not considered acceptable as part of our membership in the University AD. I believe the AD domain and Nexus domain will be separate. This is a good time to think about any disadvantages, ie. the two domains will have a trust relationship.
(Erick) I do not think that we will be loosing anything. AD was split in two from the start, one based on centralization and the other decentralization.
(Nevil) What are the requirements?
(Hon) In Engineering Computing, all of our DCs are dual processor machines.

M/Bs: The fastest CPU that the P2B-DS will support is the P3-800. If you want to use any CPU
faster than the P3-800, then you will have to consider the ASUS CUR-DLS or the ASUS CuV4X-D/CuV4X-DLS. These boards are dual boards using non-Intel chipsets. CUR-DLS is using ServerWorks ServerSet III chipset and also their top-of-the-line dual board while the CuV4x-D/DLS are using VIA 694XDP dual processor chipset.

I have never used any of the above boards so I can not make a recommendation. ASUS is using the CUR-DLS board for their low to midend servers. The CUR-DLS comes with integrated ATI 4M RageXL video, Intel 82559 LAN and support for 4G of memory. CuV4X supports 4G of memory and comes with UDMA66/100 controller.

There are no Intel chipset-based dual processor board for CPUs higher than 800MHz using SDRAM. If you want to use RDRAM, there is the P3C-D board. You will need to use a CPU converter card (converts a FCPGA CPU to fit into slot 1 bus) as well as Rambus DRAM. If you use SDRAM with this board, it will crash due to the 820 MTH bug.

NICs: There is only one that I will recommend: Intel Pro100 using 82559 chipset.

Memory: Memory are very inexpensive right now. I just bought 512MB SDRAM for $220 Cdn. The more the better. :) Memory speed depends solely on your CPU bus. PC100 memory for 100MHz based CPU and PC133 for 133MHz based CPUs.

HDDs:  I will only recommend IBM's SCSI HDDs. Seagate and Quantum may be good alternatives but IBMs are still the best. The DMVS line is 2 years old. They have a new line 73LZX using glass substrate platters. Ultra2W-80 and Ultra-160 controllers are pretty much the same price these days. I recommend getting the Ultra-160. Most new disks are all U160 disks.

Cases: Full tower with 300W P/S.  Model Acer HX08. Acer has been changing their lines of cases. I think this one is it or equivalent to the ones EC is using now.

• The board that we are presently using for dual CPU is ASUS P2B-DS (with onboard 80MB/s SCSI-3) and single CPU are ASUS CUSL2 or ASUS P3B-F.
• NICs: Intel Pro100+Management (with Wake-On-LAN) and Intel Pro100B+PCI (without WOL). Both cards are using the i82559 LAN chipset.
• Memory: 256MB SDRAM for member servers and 512MB for DCs.
• Hard drives: IBM DMVS Line 18G and 36G. 10K rpm with 4MB cache.
• Video: Any will do. EC is ATI Rage Pro with 8MB AGP.

For each faculty, I see at least 2 machines (main AD server and member server). At least an 800 dual processor and as much money as you can put into it. The Gig processors were initially having problems due to not enough power. A 300w supply allows for a solid machine. I see no real difference on the Ultra's for SCSI, but do advise having 2 drives mirrored.

Q: (Nevil) Can we add q:\gen\utl or an equivalent to j:\utl on the Q drive?
A: (Ray) Yes, this does exist already in a path on Development. When would you like to see this installed?

Q: (Hon) I will be taking down some of the core W2K Polaris servers and will be moving them to W2K Nexus. Doing so will cause a slight hiccup with the DNS server since all the servers are pointing to Eng2k first then to Eng2k-1 or Eng2k-2 as well as WINS.
A: (Bruce) I would like to propose a target date for the complete elimination of Polaris. In 1.5 years (2002) to aim for a planned deadline. Engineering has a new lab of 120, and another lab of 100 coming. Engineering will move as fast as it can to turn-over labs to Windows 2000.

(Nevil) Art's does plan to have two labs in the summer.
(Bruce) We have done some timing tests and we are pleased with the speed. Logins do seem fast.
(Hon) As faculties move to Windows 2000, an eye should be kept on the NetApp space. This will start to increase as users start using Windows 2000 labs.
(Ray) Roaming profiles depend on what apps have been run, and this really determines how much increased space is needed. The tendency for user file space has been 'My Documents' and 'Application Data.' This may work well on a stand alone, but with Roaming profiles, it is all of this that is copied. This includes the whole mail box, etc. The log off procedure does not have the ability to say anything except that 'You have run out of Disk space.'
(Hon) We are currently getting around some of this with Samba mounts.
(Erick) Another problem with Roaming profiles is if it encounters a crash or reset. Roaming Profiles, are not copied in this case and are left on the HardDrive.
(Bruce) Engineering has increased it's NetApp Filer capacity with a new shelf populated with 24 Gig drives. This brings the total number of shelves to three on EngFile.
(Hon) In dealing with the domain flip, I am not sure which DC to use, you may notice a hiccup later on, and then maybe not. In any event, Nexus will be up in the middle of next month.
(Bruce) Only ! or !! Admins should be able to have access on the servers in the new Nexus domain. We should also only have 1 to 2 admins per faculty. I believe Ray will be giving a course on the structure... of the network.

Information items:

(Tim) The Samba printing for office machines.
(Bruce) This is working with the account system. You can switch to CAS.

Created by: sempson@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca 2001/03/28
Revised by: sempson@sciborg.uwaterloo.ca 2001/03/29