TUMS

1
TUMS

• November 26, 2008

2
AGENDA - TUMS

• SSB DC Move (Jeff Grieve)
• VoIP Project Update (Jean Savage)
• Infrastructure Updates (Ed Gibson)
• Email enhancements
• Scan Tool Changes
• PDA Working Group (Mike Hulko, Mark Myrick)
• TUMS communications (Jeff Grieve)
• Other Business

3
Project Updates

• TUMS November 26th

4
Data Center Move

• We are DONE!
• Very few bumps along the way
• No un-advertised outages
• No major hardware fatalities
• Only 1 Power supply and 2 hard disks failed as a
  result of the move none of which impacted any
  services

5
Data Center Move

• What did it all entail?
• Over a year of iterative move planning with all
  internal ITS teams and multiple departments
  across campus.
• 16 separate move days between Sept. 21st and Oct.
  28th, 2008.
• More than 300 assets moved over these 16 move
  days.
• More than 50 people directly (and many more
  indirectly) involved with the move from NSC237.
• Oh. and the small task surrounding the
  construction, commissioning and testing of a new
  Data Centre.

6
Data Center Move

• NSC237.Where we came from

Prior to Move
Post Move
7
Data Center Move

• Home Sweet Home

Operations
Server Rack Row
8
Data Center Move
Overhead Cabling System to Server Cabinets
9
Data Center Move
Power systems
HVAC Fire Suppression
10
Data Center Move

• SSB Data Centre Tours
• Open to TUMS Members
• Friday Dec. 5th 200 430 pm.
• Contact us and let us know your coming
• dougv_at_uwo.ca
• x81148
• Thanks to ALL involved for a Great Move!

11
VoIP Deployment Project

• Completed Deployment
• Support Services Building
• Material Sciences Addition
• 1st Quarter of 2009 deployments
• New Sports (TRAC) Facility Building
• Robarts Research Institute
• Seibens Drake Research Institute
• West Valley Building
• ICFAR Building

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VoIP Power Project(Closet upgrades UPS/POE
Switches/Generator)

• Other Buildings in Progress
• Dental Sciences
• Medical Sciences
• Health Science Addition
• Kresge
• Molecular Biology
• Clinical Skills
• Taylor Library
• Chemistry
• Biological Geological
• Biotron Research

13
VoIP 911 Location Lookup

• ITS is developing a 911 application
• Web based display of phone location information
• Data will be pushed to the application
• Cisco Unified Application Engine
• Cisco Unified Communications Manager
• NetDoc cable database
• Prototype completed and reviewed by Western
  Police
• Target completion date End of January 2009

14
Infrastructure Updates

• TUMS November 26th

15
Email Enhancements

• Problem review of the Environment
• SUN engagement to message our concerns
• Action Plan to solution those concerns

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Email Enhancements

• Problem review of the environment
• Service gaps in a small subset of services
  account for the poor perception
• Communications Express (CE)
• Calendar
• Outlook Connector
• This does not minimize the issue. It does
  identify though that the majority of the backend
  infrastructure is stable

17
Email Enhancements

• Problem review of the Environment (contd)
• E.G.
• CE
• Formatting problems after spell check
• LDAP entries become r/o
• Calendar
• Resource calendar ownership
• Reoccurring meetings resources
• Calendar corruption

18
Email Enhancements

• Problem review of the Environment (contd)
• E.G. (contd)
• Outlook Connector
• Who has it?
• Version Control

19
Email Enhancements

• Problem review of the Environment
• SUN Engagement to message our concerns
• Met with SUN team Monday Nov 24th
• Actions defined for both UWO and SUN

20
Email Enhancements

• Problem review of the Environment
• SUN Engagement to message our Concerns
• Action Plan to solution those concerns
• Awaiting for responses to actions items
• One identified concern
• Connector Versions i.e. 7.1. series has
  known issues in our environment (calendar
  corruption)

21
Email Enhancements

• Problem review of the Environment
• SUN Engagement to message our Concerns
• Action Plan to solution those concerns
• Connector Upgrade Plan
• Audit
• Attain list of users from systems adminstrators
• Utilize domain logon scripts to identify users
• Collect names into a communication list
• Request registration and versioning from the
  userbase via a web interface

22
Email Enhancements

• Problem review of the Environment
• SUN Engagement to message our Concerns
• Action Plan to solution those concerns
• Connector Upgrade Plan
• Control
• Provide update communication targeted at
  registered users of the connector
• Define a process to ensure new users are included
  in this registration process

23
Scan Tool Changes

• Retina scanning software currently acts as
  scanning engine behind the RAMP scan reports
• Changes in the license model associated with this
  product has positioned the product as not
  economical
• Decision has been made to transition to Nessus
  nessus.org (GNU product)

24
Scan Tool Changes

• We recognize the comfort factor associated with
  current RAMP interface
• The intent of the deployment is maintain the RAMP
  interface the same as it was prior to this change
• i.e. Only a backend infrastructure change the
  user interface should stay the same
• Scheduled roll out Jan 09

25
PDA Working Group Update

• Mark Myrick
• Mike Hulko

26
PDA Working Group Update

• The PDA Working Group has worked with a variety
  of different devices, some of which include
• Palm OS
• Blackberry
• Windows Mobile
• Symbian OS
• Mac OS X

27
PDA Working Group Update

• Some of the challenges that weve experienced
• OS builds
• Vendor or ISP specific versions of an OS
  including upgrades.
• WiFi performance is difficult to
  troubleshootlimited adjustments with regards to
  TX/RX power settings

28
PDA Working Group Update

• Challenges continued.....
• Authentication models. Open, WEP, WPA and WPA2
• Some PDA Wifi enabled devices were all designed
  to support open connectivity.
• uwosecure is WEP enabled. eduroam is WPA/WPA2
  enabled. Both of connections depend on a devices
  ability to handle dynamic keys and certificate
  management.

29
PDA Working Group Update

• PDA Support on Campus in the past has come from
  the Helpdesk, ITSOnsite and the PDA Working
  Group.
• it is provided with a best effort attempt given
  the ongoing development in this area.
• Documentation can be found on the PDA website.
  http//pda.uwo.ca

30
PDA Working Group Update

• Common Complaints
• Unable to see signal
• Unable to connect

31
PDA Working Group Update

• Basic functions of a wireless device
• Transmit power of sending signal
• Receive sensitivity to a consistent signal in
  order to operate at a certain rate
• Transmit
• Laptop typical wireless cards is between 30mW
  and 100mW
• PDA low powered devices and are usually 12mW to
  15mW weaker
• Receive
• Laptop average receive sensitivity is between
  -76dB and -82dB for an 11Mbps connection
• PDA generally not published.

32
PDA Working Group Update

• eg.
• As an example, an ORiNOCO Gold 802.11b "Classic"
  card has its receive sensitivity posted as
• -94 dBm at 1 Mbps
• -91 dBm at 2 Mbps
• -87 dBm at 5.5 Mbps
• -82 dBm at 11 Mbps
• In theory this means, in order to operate at 11
  Mbps, this card must be consistently receiving a
  minimum signal level of -82 dBm. Any less and it
  is likely to drop to one of the lower rates if
  you get as low as -94 dBm then the connection may
  drop altogether.

33
PDA Working Group Update

• Factors to consider
• Radio waves behave unpredictably. The signal will
  fade out due to multipath effects (radio waves
  that bounce off objects and increase or decrease
  the signal that is received). The further the
  receiver is from the transmitter, and the more
  objects between them, the higher this effect will
  be. Walls, people, electronic equipment,
  rain/snow/ice/fog are effective at decreasing the
  signal level.
• Another factor is noise. This is "background"
  radio-frequency that the receiver can "hear" but
  needs to reject. Sources of noise include other
  wireless networks, cordless phones, microwave
  ovens, radio hams, medical equipment.

34
PDA Working Group Update

• UWO Design parameters
• Transmit power typically 30 mW
• Cell size based on -82dB
• RF Shape to optimize available RF
• Device agnostic

35
PDA Working Group Update
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PDA Working Group Update
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PDA Working Group Update
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TUMS Communications
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TUMS Communications

• Project Board Useful ?
• Future Topics (January and beyond ?)
• VOIP 911 Application
• MFD Security Setup
• Data Deduplication
• eCommerce / PCI Audit
• IT Around Campus Volunteers ?
• Next Meeting January 28, 2009