Director's Blog
announcement

IST has asked me to join a new group they’re forming called the Services Advisory Council, which will act as something of a public utilities commission overseeing IST’s service offerings.  This is a function that has been requested for a long time, dating back at least the Commission on Computing report led by Cal Moore.

I am hopeful that having some direct input on IST’s service offerings and delivery will give us some ability to influence the overall direction, and hopefully the quality of the services provided.

Many campus units are considering removing wired telephones as a cost-cutting measure.  Wired phones have certainly become less important as most of our communications move to email and cell phones, and the budget situation in most departments is severe enough that everyone is looking to save money where ever they can.  Some departments have already begun to disconnect their wired phones and replace them with internet-based solutions; many others are evaluating the idea.

Unfortunately, internet telephony is still immature relative to wired telephony, and there are concerns with any approach, many of which may not be apparent until after the decision has been made.

The biggest concern is in the area of life safety: 911 service from internet phones is different in important ways than 911 service from wired phones.  One major difference is that internet service generally doesn’t work during a power outage, while wired phones often continue functioning.  (This could be critical during an earthquake).  Also, internet or cell phone 911 service does not provide accurate location information to the emergency responders; with a wired phone, they will immediately know your exact building and room, while cell 911 gives only an approximate, 2-dimensional location, and internet phone service may provide no location information at all.

UCPD will soon come out with a policy which requires departments who’ve removed their wired phones to install some number of red emergency phones per floor.  Note that leaving a normal wired phone or two will not be enough to meet the requirements of this policy.  Imagine a scenario where there’s been an earthquake, or someone is having a heart attack; no one is going to think to run over to the fax machine to call 911.  Emergency phones, visible and colored, ideally with a signal light, will be required to address the safety issue.

There are other unexpected issues which arise from internet telephony.  For example, some departments are using a product called MagicJack which you may have seen advertised on late-night TV.  As a product on late-night TV, “the large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.”  The caveats with MagicJack are that you’re basically agreeing to allow them to install spyware on your computer, and to allow advertisers to know what phone numbers you’re dialing and target ads based on those phone numbers.  Creepy.  And at least one department is setting up a full-on Voice-Over-IP (VOIP) PBX, essentially becoming their own 24×7 telecom service provider.  It seems hard to imagine that that will really be a cost savings in the long run.

I won’t tell you not to pull out your wired phones; I know how bad the budget situation is for most departments.  But I will tell you to consider all the implications, particularly around life safety, and take appropriate steps to manage the risks involved.

Most of you have probably heard that Nancy Schimmelman, developer of the Our Unit system used by many L&S departments for faculty searches and graduate admissions (among other uses), was a victim of budget cuts in her department.  Because Nancy handled all of the programming and most of the support for Our Unit, her absence leaves a pretty big gap.

Fortunately, IST’s Applications Services division has agreed to take on support and development of Our Unit.  It will take them a while to figure out the code and deal with some of the issues related to supporting it centrally, so for now they’ve instituted a code freeze–no new features will be added until they understand things better.  You’ll still be able to use the existing system, and IST should be able to set up new instances for departments who aren’t currently using the system.  Our local team of Farnaz Stosik and Caroline Boyden will continue to provide user-level support for L&S folks.

I met with Bill Allison from IST-AS today, and he said that for at least the next 3-6 months, there will be no cost for using Our Unit.  Long-term, IST may require some recharge revenue for support and development of the system; there has not yet been a business model developed.  The goal will be to keep it “cheap.”

Nancy herself has landed on her feet; she’ll be doing IT management for Summer Sessions.

I’ve been working for several years now on a new strategic plan for computing in L&S, and I’m pleased to announce that the first major change related to that plan is due to take effect July 1.

We got a ton of input from our current customers and others within L&S, through surveys, committee discussions, and in-person interviews.  One thing we heard loud and clear was, “I want my own person.”  L&S folks want to get to know a specific IT person in their department, who understands their computing needs, and who they can grab in an emergency.  They want someone who gives them advice and help managing their IT, not just someone who shows up to fix problems.  They don’t want to submit requests to a faceless help desk system, and they don’t want to have nickle and dime charges every time they ask for something new or different.  Departments want a partner, not a consultant.

LSCR’s current structure and funding model will need to adapt to the way that our customers’ needs have changed.  We are perfectly structured to meet the technology needs of 1995: 2009’s demands will force us to look at ourselves completely differently.

We will take the first step on July 1.  We are not yet prepared to change our financial model–we’ll be looking at that during the coming fiscal year–but we are ready to implement significant changes in the way we interact with our customers.  Here’s how it will work:

For each department we’re supporting, we’re going to create a support team.  That team will work a little like an account team from a vendor; you’ll have one person who’ll be your lead partner, your first contact for any IT request.  In many cases, that person will be physically located in your department or your building (especially if you’re able to provide space for him or her), and he or she will handle requests from both staff and faculty.  Your partner will be backed up by technical experts in all the areas you need tech support; we’ll identify a Mac lead, PC lead, and web, database, or Unix leads depending on the department’s needs.  The goal will be to have one single person handling the bulk of requests in your department, while giving that person the ability to call upon the wide range of skills and experience that LSCR has, in order to solve customer problems.

We will set up a single departmental mailing list, such as “english@LSCR.berkeley.edu,” which will be your primary way of requesting support of any type.  Everyone on your account team will receive your department’s emails, and jobs will be tracked in a queue specific to your department.

I think this plan will provide better communication, clearer responsibilities, and stronger relationships between LSCR and the folks we support.

This reorganization is not related to the budget difficulties we are all facing; we are implementing this functional change without changing our financial model.  That means that for the 09-10 fiscal year, you can expect little to no change in your LSCR recharges compared with 08-09.  Like all departments, LSCR is likely to be affected by budget cuts and salary reductions or mandatory furloughs; the exact impact is not yet known.  We will keep our customers informed when we have any useful information.

We will soon be contacting each department individually to introduce the account team and provide more specifics about how the new scheme will work.

Per Kathleen Valerio’s message, CalPACT and LearnIT are offering free 90-minute demos of Microsoft Office 2007, on March 24, 25 and 26.  (Sign up through the UCB Learning Center on blu).

Office 2007 for Windows, and Office 2008 for the Mac, have interface changes which most users will find disconcerting.  I recently moved to Office 2008 myself, and it took me a bit of poking around to figure out how to return the environment to something I could reasonably work in.  (For a start, close the toolbox, enable the Formatting toolbar, and view in Normal or Draft mode).

The new Office also has a completely revised file format–you’ve probably already received “docx” or “xlsx” files which need to be converted to be read on older versions of Office.  The new file formats are actually a lot better–they are XML-based, which means they’re simpler, more extensible, and should be less prone to corruption.  But, the change will definitely cause problems for collaborators.

Those who use Word or Excel regularly will probably find it useful to attend one of these sessions.

As I noted in a blog post back in March, IST is ending support for socrates.  Since that posting, I have been participating on the Socrates/Arachne Abatement Steering Committee, trying to find a way to remove those servers without adversely affecting teaching and research within L&S.  I am pleased to note that IST has been responsive to our concerns, and has come up with some plans which should meet the needs of nearly all of our socrates users.

IST’s information about the abatement project is available at http://ist.berkeley.edu/services/tam/serverabatement.html.  This project has been dragging on for a while, but now has a fairly aggressive timeline for finally removing those servers.  Most importantly, there is a user forum tomorrow (Tuesday, October 21) at 11:00 AM in Sibley Auditorium; if you have any questions or concerns about the abatement and migration projects, it would behoove you to attend and make sure your voice is heard.

The highlights of the new plan are:

• Web hosting will be outsourced to a third-party vendor (Dreamhost).  If you currently have a “tilde” account on socrates, and your site is simple HTML, you are eligible for free hosting on the outsourced service.  (Most sites on socrates, something like 80% of them, fall into this category).
• Users with more advanced web needs will be able to contract directly with Dreamhost for full-featured web hosting; IST will collaborate with Dreamhost to provide http://hostname.berkeley.edu URLs for your sites.  This hosting will be much cheaper than IST’s enterprise-level web hosting; something like $10/month.
• Merrill Shanks of the Social Sciences Computing Lab is developing a plan to provide access for socrates users or class accounts which need access to statistical and mathematical software.
• People who use pine to read email on socrates will be encouraged to migrate to a modern mail client (we recommend the free Thunderbird client).  There are also options to use pine on your own desktop computer if you really must.  (I recommend against that configuration, for support reasons).

As I write this message, socrates has been down for most of the day for unscheduled maintenance.  This highlights the fragile nature of the socrates system, and validates the aggressive timeline IST is pursuing for abating the system.  The current plan is to migrate all web users off socrates by December 19; if you are a socrates user, I highly recommend that you migrate as soon as the option is given to you.

Overall, I think this process has produced a result that is likely to be more positive both for IST and for the socrates users.  It is unfortunate that it took so long to get to this point, but on balance I am pleased with how IST has responded to our user demands.  Direct messages from individual faculty members played a key role in encouraging and helping develop a better solution.

LSCR has hired two new employees this month to fill vacant positions.

Craig Carlson joins us on the “Tilden” desktop support team.  Craig comes to us from UCSF, where he was working as the front-line desktop support person in the Pediatrics department.  (Coincidentally, our open position was created when Mical Wilson took a job at UCSF.  It’s all interconnected.)  Craig will initially be sitting with Mary Wielski in Wheeler Hall, and helping support the Tilden departments in Wheeler, Dwinelle, Barrows, and the PowerBar building, among others.

Ray Spence has joined our Unix team, replacing Julie Ashworth, who took a position at the Helen Wills Neuroscience Institute.  Ray comes to us from LBNL’s NERSC research computing facility, where he was in charge of some of NERSC’s infrastructural Unix systems.  Ray’s primary office will be in Evans Hall with Igor Savine, but he will also have space in Le Conte where he can hold office hours.  Ray’s primary responsibilities will be Unix systems outside the Math department, mostly in Physics and the biological sciences.

We’ve submitted our recharge proposal for 2008-2009.  As of this point, there are no significant changes to our lines of business; our rates in all lines of business are going up slightly (4-9%), mostly due to increased salary expense.

The new rates are:

• Annual Desktop Support: $1410/year (was $1290/year in 07-08, $1320/year in 06-07)
• Unix and server administration: $89/hour (was $83/hour in 07-08, $75/hour in 06-07)
• Web and database development: $77/hour (was $70/hour in 07-08, $70/hour in 06-07)
• General hourly work: $75/hour (was $70/hour in 07-08, $69/hour in 06-07)

(See our “What we do” page for descriptions of these services.)

Our strategic planning process is nearing a close, and we are beginning work on a significant reorganization of LSCR’s business.  We expect to develop a significantly improved financial and support model that better meets the needs of our customers and the College.  I think we’ll have something specific to talk about in the next month or so.

As announced in two previous postings in July 2007 and February 2008, PHP 4 has reached the end of its development life; security issues require us to migrate to PHP 5, the currently supported version.  We’ve been working on migration issues for the past several months, and we believe we can migrated based on our original target date of May 1.

To ease the transition for our users, we have devised a way to allow two web servers to co-exist on the same machine.  (Geek aside: to do this, we’re using Apache’s reverse proxy directive, ProxyPass).  Our current plan is to put the PHP 5 -based server into production on Wednesday, April 23 at 5:00 PM; we will continue to keep the old server running so that any sites which have problems under PHP 5 can continue to run until their code is fixed.

In most cases, code that works with PHP 4 should work with PHP 5, but there are exceptions.  We know that the development framework LSCR has been using for our web team’s internally-developed applications (such as our department directory, news+events system, and course listings) does not work under PHP 5; we are in the process of migrating our code to the Zend framework.  If you are one of our web customers, we will be contacting you about migrating your department’s applications to the new framework.

If you are managing your own PHP code, or your own installation of a PHP tool like WordPress or drupal, it might be a good idea to test your code on our development server, which is already running PHP 5, sometime before April 23.  Mail sysadmin@LS if you’d like to get set up on the development server.

If you do nothing, your site will be migrated on April 23, and it’s possible that it will work just fine, but we would recommend that you check and test for problems.  Most problems should be minor and quickly fixable; if you have major problems after the migration, contact sysadmin@LS and we can temporarily put your site back on the old server to give you time to deal with the issues.

I posted last July that PHP 4 is nearing the end of its life, and that therefore we must begin migrating our sites to PHP 5. PHP 5 is largely compatible with PHP 4, but I expect that most sites based on older code will need at least some modification to work properly under PHP 5.

The final version of PHP 4, version 4.4.8, was released in January and was recently installed on our main web server. The PHP development team has committed to providing security patches for 4.4.8 until this August; after August, using PHP 4 will be a violation of the campus minimum security standards. That situation gives us a fairly hard deadline for migration, and we’d like to be migrated well before then.

We have set up a development web server running Apache 2.2.8 and PHP 5.2.5 to allow departments to test their sites with PHP 5. Contact sysadmin@LS if you are interested in getting set up on the development server.

Our target date for cutting over to PHP 5 will be May 1, 2008. At that time, we’ll put PHP 5 in production on our main server, and any of your PHP code which is incompatible with PHP 5 will break. I expect that most sites will continue to work fine, with perhaps some small glitches, but it’s impossible to know unless you test your code beforehand.

We’ll be sending more communications about this change-over as it approaches.