Date: 2015 September 23 2:30-3:30PM.
Attendees: G. Oakham, D. Rogers,T. Xu, M. Boulay, R. Gornea
W. Hong, M. Hu, S. Wang
1. Review minutes and approval
Michael asked that the minute of April 9th can be approved as listed on physical website if there are no objections.
2. Common IT issues Discussion and Follow-up
Michael indicated A/C units were running issues in server room this summer because of construction and weather reasons. The cluster has been shut down couple of times to avoid high temperature risk. Michael said the construction has been completed by end of August, the A/C units have been running very well since then. The cluster and all infrastructure servers are running stable now.
Dave sent Michael email in summer to point out there are broken links in department website. Michael investigated our department website has lot of referencing links to school’s website such as in section of head, foot…etc. Carleton main website has been changed recently, consequently, which caused those reference links broken in department website. Most of broken links belong to this type, also, there are some content missing which cause broken links. Michael said he met with our website developer--Yeremia regarding this issue. Since Yeremia is in the middle of rebuilding website for faculty of science, he might have to look at this later on. Wade said web content modification is not part of technical team’s responsibility. Michael asked if we should setup web content committee. Gerald said Joanne is the web content administrate. Razvan claimed he is the faculty member in charge of department website now, and he will work with Joanne on those broken links after meeting. Also, Michael learned from Yereia physics website will be rebuilt after faculty of science’s new website being published to public. Wade said it is in the plan, but there is no detailed time line for that since physics department website is more complicate than other departments’ websites. Gerald said it may be good idea to wait the new website rather than spending time to fix those broken links now. Dave said the free tool he was using can’t list the entirely webpage tree, and also it can’t check on his personal page since his home page is sub-site of physics website. He was asking some more efficient tools to check broken links, Wade ask Michael to write some script tools (probably python) to help Dave.
Michael brought a concern about copyright infringement notice happened recently. One student downloaded around 313Mb copyright infringement material from one Entertainment Company through bit-torrent from one of research labs’ wireless router. The Entertainment Company’s agent discovered that the download was from IP, which belongs to Carleton University, and CCS tracked down the IP belongs to Physics department. Thus, CCS forwarded the copyright infringement notice to Michael, Stephen and Wade, asked IT group to response by providing user, download timestamp. CCS asked the lab supervisor’s name if the user couldn’t be identified. Michael said we have been dealing this incident with CCS for 4 days. We responded CCS that we can’t identify user since the wireless router has been widely used in department so there is no supervisor response for that. And the D-Link wireless router has been moved out from the lab. Michael said the reason to raise this concern to computer meeting is to make everybody aware of this since the Copyright Modernization Act, updated the Canadian Copyright Act regarding copyright infringement notices (2015 January). For more detailed information, please see government website: http://strategis.ic.gc.ca/eic/site/oca-BC.nsf/eng/ca02920.html. CCS requests a response in either case within 5 business days. Wade said it maybe time to modify the account request physics account updating with the copyright infringement policy. Michael asked if he should send this out to everybody. Gerald asked Michael to write him an email draft to explain the case and he will send out.
Michael indicated the HP printer in the 3rd floor mailroom is running hardware (paper-feeding motor) issue (too noise) now, and this printer is out of warranty already. Michael said Stephen found the same paper-feed motor as spare part from one old printer, it maybe good to replace the motor to see if it can fix the problem. If the paper-feed motor can’t be fixed, we should consider purchasing a new printer for replacement.
3. New Faculty Members IT Requests
Razvan raised concern about web-base calendar system to facilitate department seminars and events booking, which will allow seminar and event organizer to schedule seminar and event from web, avoid conflict. Wade explained how the current room booking system (icalendar) which is to create calendar in thunderbird lightning calendar, and synchronize with php calendar, which publish on physics website. However, it requires third-party plugin (thunderbird lightning calendar). Razvan preferred entry and edit calendar through web interface. Tong also mentioned google calendar. Razvan would like to host internally other than externally. Wade said he used to setup owncloud system to centralize calendar, which may satisfy Razvan’s needs, however, he still had some bugs to fix, which may wait month or two. Razvan said it is not so high priority and it is worthy to wait one or two months if the owncloud can be setup.
Michael presented 3 IT request items from Mark’s research associate as follows: 1. Requiring 10TB storage for DEAP project. 2. Using queuing system. 3. Moving server to our server room in the future. Mark clarified the 10TB is maximize estimate, realistically, it maybe around 2TB storage. Michael presented all storage servers (cisk,tusker,and ngoma) disk inventory. Wade said if it is 10TB, we have to consider purchasing new disks, if it is just around 2TB, we may find space to accommodate, but it will require some operations such as shrinking current data pools and re-create new pools. Mark asked if there is backup on storage. Wade said there is no backup for data area, but he explained all disk pools have been configured by 6 physical disks with RAID 6, which means data losing only happens when two physics disks are running issue simultaneously.
Michael explained new queue system is implemented as resource-owners have high priority on their own resource, lower priority on another resource. Gerald explained to Mark that all cluster servers were contributed by different research groups and asked if Mark is interested to purchase some servers to add to the cluster. Mark said currently he is using the cluster at McGill, which is part of Computer Canada. Gerald said that it could be starting by contributing small amount money to purchase servers. Wade provided an example theory group purchased 24-core servers to cluster with around $6,400. Mark said he would think about that, currently he just wants to focus on the storage first and runs some basic data analysis locally. Michael asked if he could provide guest.q for Mar’s research group. Dave said the guest.q is supposed for people to use our queue system without any resource.
Mark said that a software developer from his team might request to move server from Queens to Carleton in the future. He will talk with him after he arrives to Carleton.
4. Ever-green Project Discussion.
Michael listed all out of order cluster servers in recent two years (lost egs 19/20/23 lost in two years ago, lost atlas28 this March, lost atlas32 this August), and he emphasized the most of cluster servers are over 6 years, which require new replacement gradually.
Gerald indicated Atlas group has some funds to contribute on ever-green project for server purchasing.
Michael said Rowan also expressed interest to make some contribution. Dave confirmed EGS group likes to purchase a server similar to the server purchased last year by theory group. Michael asked if another groups are interested on the contribution on the ever-green project purchase. If so, it will be a good idea to arrange a big purchase to get the best deal from vendors. Razvan said Kevin might have interest. Gerald asked Michael to send email to call for server purchase to see if anyone or group likes to make contribute on ever-green project.
5. IT Infrastructure Changes
There is not updated on this item in this summer.
6. AOB
No AOB.
7. Proposal next meeting
Michael asked time to schedule next meeting, Gerald said computer meeting is supposed to run monthly base. Michael said he would setup doodle to schedule next computer meeting.