IT Services Newsletter #6

Welcome to the first newsletter of 2009 - there is a lot to report as it has been a very hectic period for IT Services. With apologies if some of you already know some of this information. As always comments and feedback welcome.

Launch of power management solution - saving energy and greening IT

A power management solution has been implemented by Alastair Wills which affects all of the student PC "clusters" located in Richmond, Chesham and JBP Buildings. The total number is around 350 computers. A web page provides students with the locations and availability of all these computers in real time and it can also be viewed on mobile devices (smartphone etc) and on plasma screens in the JBP Building.

It is an extension to the system which automatically maintains each of these student computers. So as well as managing the cluster computers on a room by room basis when to maintain themselves (e.g. to download software patches or new versions of application software) we can also set machines on a room by room basis to shutdown after a variable period of time and also at what time of night they should shut themselves down. They don’t however shut down if either there is someone logged on or they are due to maintain themselves that night. The nightly shutdown can be set for individual days so that where rooms are open 24 hours a day (for example all of the computers in JBP Building) we may leave them on but during the weekend they will shutdown when the rooms are locked.

Based on the ICT Energy Footprint toolkit, and making a number of general assumptions about power use and existing use of standby modes for PCs and monitors, this has probably delivered an annual 15% saving in electricity usage equivalent to 10,000 kWh (estimated about £1k per annum)

E-Learning Showcase and IT Futures Events

During January there were 2 events organised by our colleagues in the Centre for Academic Practice which involved a number of people in IT services. The first event was an e-learning showcase and I was as one of the "rapporteurs". You can read my observations on this event here.

Change Management Programme

This programme is now up and running and Peter Bollands has had introductory meetings with a number of people. You can find the documents for the project initiation meeting which provides a fuller explanation at H:/Exchange/ProjectManagement/Projects/IT Services Change Management/.
One of the tasks that Peter facilitated in January were four self-assessment workshops based on the Information Systems Management and Governance framework. Robina Chatham provided a half day workshop for LSS Board members at an event on January 9th titled "understanding each other and the art of influencing". Jermyn Consulting have begun the business continuity work and met with Jeff Lucas at the end of January to begin that process.

Positive feedback on Office 2007 roll-out

A number of members of staff have recently commented on the proactive and professional way in which the roll-out of Microsoft Office 2007 has been handled including the training and software upgrade components. Thank you to all those who are involved in this activity.

Supporting services over the Christmas/New Year period

As you know students and staff returned on Monday January 5th this year with an immediate start into examinations. This means that students were busy revising and accessing learning materials throughout the Christmas/New Year period. All major IT services remained available throughout this period for access both on-campus and off-campus. In addition, major electrical works at the Emm Lane campus meant that backup generators were being used to power services including our wide area network links to JANET and the Internet. My thanks to those people who agreed to be available on a call-out basis over this crucial period for our students

Major successful changes during Christmas "at risk" period

A number of major changes and upgrades were implemented during the agreed at risk period including launch of new data storage capacity (for staff filestore on Novell), upgrades to the email service, hardware upgrades to the SAINT test, development and web environments, and Blackboard software patches. Thank you to all those involved in planning and executing these major service changes.

Successful launch of Computer Aided Assessment Sunray Cluster

The facility on F Floor Richmond Building will already be familiar to many of you involved in setting up and commissioning the service. Initial feedback on the pilot launch of the facility has been very positive although making it happen required a very significant amount of resources - people and computer hardware - and while the student experience was excellent there are many things to sort out before the service can be launched on a production basis. Congratulations to Sara Eyre and her project team on making this happen on time.

Service Status now more transparent
T
here were also some service disruptions in this period including a day without the email service and a service interuption during part of a weekend on the University web server. Many staff have commented on whether we could arrange for a day without email on a more regular basis! Seriously, this was a very major disruption and we are grateful to Geoff and his team for resolving the problems without losing any of our emails, and also others who managed to keep excellent communications via the web and telephone to keep people informed. The new service status page was a huge success with thousands of "hits".

Note about Dates for Summer 2009 re-sits

Agreement was reached at the Learning and Teaching Committee at the end of January that the Summer resits would move to week commencing 17 August (noting that Clearing 2009 starts on the 20th August). Sara wanted to alert in case staff are affected by this e.g. support for online exams.