Minutes of January 31, 2012 Meeting

Present:

Joe Abraham, Stephanie Bartz (recorder), Ashwin Bijur, Nick Gonzaga, James Hartstein, Ken Kuehl, Ed Smith (guest), Darryl Voorhees

Absent:

John Maxymuk, Kevin McGuire, John Mulez, Rich Sandler

Excused:

Ka-Neng Au, Anne Butman, John Gibson, Pam Johnson, Andrew Ruggiero, Chris Singh

Reports and follow-up

IIS Update

1. The port request for the new offices at Douglass been submitted.
2. TSB is scheduled to transition to VoIP in March.
3. Alexander's transition to VoIP has been postponed until the summer.
4. End-of-year equipment requests are being reviewed.
5. PC swaps for staff are ongoing. Machines with specs below a GX620 are being sent to surplus. The SCC still needs to get its computers into the ticket system.
6. KACE is being deployed to track inventory, software licenses, allow remote support, etc., and it will eventually replace the ticket system. TSB and part of Alexander already have the software and it's being included on all new installs. KBOX Agent will appear on the list of installed programs on a computer once installation is complete.

Backup Subgroup

• The backup solution was deployed for all library buildings in early December and there were no problem reports following the installation. The system will be included on all new installs and installer files have also been delivered to Chris Singh and John Gibson.
• There was one report of a failure at Alexander last week, but Nick has since tweaked the settings and has received no further reports. He'll follow-up to be sure the problem hasn't recurred.
• The backup itself encountered problems in recent weeks because of changes to the server at Alexander in December. These problems have since been resolved and backups seem to be working normally.
• Old installs of Master Backup and Windows Backup need to be removed from those computers that were involved in the backup testing process. Nick will send a list of these machines to the UCSes.

Business

Microsoft Access on Public PCs and Netbooks

Tabled until the February meeting.

Remote File Storage Options for Faculty/Staff

Options for remote file storage were discussed due to complaints from a staff member who needs access to large files when away from the office. There is no access to network drives via the VPN.

1. Samba drive mapping for RCI could provide up to 1GB of space, but this is likely not sufficient for this particular case.
2. The possibility of creating a special Zimbra account exists, but this doesn't allow for the editing capabilities that are needed.
3. Dropbox is a free site, but is not secure and not backed up.
4. RUWireless does allow access to the network drives, but this doesn't solve the off-campus issue.

The consensus was that the Samba and RUWireless options would be recommended for most users. The staff member who raised the issue will be referred to IIS to see whether another solution can be crafted.

Mid-Year Report

The mid-year report is due to Mary Fetzer by February 29th. It will consist of reports on backup implementation, training and learning coordination, videoconferencing, and a general summary of PCWG activities. Nick Gonzaga (backups), John Gibson (training), and Rich Sandler (videoconferencing) are asked to have their portions of the report to Joe no later than February14th.

Missing October and December Minutes

Joe will review his notes and submit minutes soon.

Experience Sharing

Hartstein

• James has computers left over after the recent swaps that are available as needed. The GX260s and 280s will be sent to surplus and the GX620s will go to IIS as extras.

Abraham

• Three ports in the reference room have been non-operational since Jan. 2011. Ed will ask Anne to once again contact OIT about repairing them.
• Analog phones are being kept so that they can be plugged into fax machines for emergency use when VoIP goes down. Anyone who has an analog phone that is not currently in use should make sure that it's not removed when VoIP phones arrive.

Voorhees

• SERC now has both a print release station and a scan station
• The scan to location option on staff copy machines will not be enabled to space issues.

Next meeting: February 21, 10:00 a.m. - Recorder; Maxymuk, Bijur…