Virtual First
The primary benefit of our investment in virtualization technology has proven to be the additional space it makes available in the Data Center. In addition, the entire University benefits from efficiencies in power and cooling consumption. Virtualization of our servers enables IT Services to better use the capacity of the existing data center space.
Virtualization allows IT Services to reduce the physical resources required to maintain an operating system and makes it easier to provision additional instances of operating systems, thereby lowering costs for support as well. And, virtual technology can provide a level of fault tolerance, depending on the application, by offering the ability to easily redeploy to a new virtual machine if the original one fails.
There may be times when we need a physical server (for example, database servers). When you make a decision, please keep in mind that our data center has physical limits. Our ability to leverage virtual servers rather than use physical ones helps us to extend the data center's life.
When possible, "Virtual First."
- Shirley Hodges
System Administration/Desktop Systems Group
New Version of Remedy on the Way
A cross-functional team is hard at work on "Remedy Refresh 2012" to upgrade our installation of BMC's IT Service Management Suite from version 7.1, which we've used since February of 2008.
We plan to install version 7.7, which the vendor has scheduled to go into general availability in March 2012. Because we only get to upgrade Remedy every four or five years, the team wants to install the most recent release.
Remedy Version 7.7 will introduce these changes:
- The application and web servers run on virtual devices, with the only physical server housing the Oracle database.
- A changed interface removes many of the tabs and displays more data on simpler screens.
- The Remedy User Windows client is replaced by browser access.
- Ad hoc reporting through the Web client (previous releases required the Windows client for ad hoc reporting).
- New integrations with the Oracle eAM application to replace the Pinnacle system interfaces.
The new version of Remedy will go live in August 2012 or during Winter Closure 2012.
The project team consists of:
- Application Support: Anne Pinkowski, Jose Rocha, Tracy Neil, Tim Torgenrud
- Contractors: Suresh Kannan, Steve Kallestad, and Poovizhi Mohandoss
- Systems Administration: Victor Chavez
- Project Management Office: Vacilis Kollias (Project Manager)
- Client Support: Chris Lundin (Project Sponsor) and Thuylynh Nguyen
We'll keep you informed as the team makes progress.
- Chris Lundin
Client Support
Get Cash for Shutting Down Servers
Are you able to shut down servers after your big virtualization and consolidation project? Keep track of those servers and you can get paid for each one that you decommission.
Stanford’s Facilities Energy Management (FEM) group launched a new Energy Retrofit Program (ERP) that pays a rebate per server removed. The typical rebate is $650 per server removed, less $1,957 for each server added. For example, if your newly virtualized environment reduced your server count from 20 to 2, then the ERP program would pay you $9,086.
Are you removing servers but not virtualizing? You still qualify. As long as you remove and decommission a server (hardware refreshes don't count), you can apply for the rebates. Now is the time to make sure you really need all those machines you run 24 hours a day.
Find more information on ERP Express for Server Virtualization on the
VMware @ Stanford web page.
- Joyce Dickerson
Sustainable IT
Free VMWare Training
Want to build your skills for working in a VMware environment? You can now take any self-paced VMware online training class for free. Prefer your training in person? Stanford has secured a special 15% discount for all faculty, staff, and students on all classroom training completed by June 30.
Find out more and sign up at VMware @ Stanford.
- Joyce Dickerson
Sustainable IT
Annual Penetration and Vulnerability Scan Completed
During the first two weeks of December, IT Services worked with SECNAP Network Security Corporation to complete our annual penetration and vulnerability scan. SECNAP executed this scan from outside Stanford to penetrate our systems and identify vulnerabilities in the securing of Stanford data. In the past, this scan focused on the Data Center and Electronic Communication Hubs (ECH). This year, we added the IT Services office buildings and executed the scan during traditional business hours.
During this scan, 1,651 devices were alive and responding. The outcome identified 5 critical and 176 high-severity issues to address. As we worked through the critical issues, three were identified as false positives and the remaining two issues were addressed by retiring a device.
The next step is to identify a team to work through the high-severity issues.
- Shirley Hodges
System Administration/Desktop Systems Group
Business Services Update
Business Services continues to evolve with two exciting new additions: a manager for IT Services’ mobile device business and a manager for vendor relations.
Cell phones and mobile devices. Effective January 11, Nancy Baumann added management of the cell phone program to her scope of responsibilities. Over the past few years, this program experienced a threefold increase in subscribers and became significantly more complex. We now have four carriers addressing campus needs, an external vendor providing support services, and new policy changes to absorb. In addition, we've been changing our business models and moving toward fixed pricing at the organizational level.
Until now, we haven't changed our organizational structure to accommodate and better administer this rapidly changing business. The time is right to make those changes. Appointing Nancy to this new position allows IT Services to leverage her successful track record of managing all aspects of a complex business while ensuring continued growth and financial health. Nancy will report to me in this new role. She will retain her duties as manager of Technology Training and Campus Readiness, and will continue to report to Jim Knox for those responsibilities.
The support team of Nancy Gutgsell and Mellani Miller will report to Nancy. This unites all the elements of service ownership, service management, and operations of this important business.
I want to thank Suzanne Schiessler, who guided the cell phone program to this point in her role as Service Manager. Her advice and counsel on future needs for this important business are deeply appreciated. As she transitions out of the Service Manager role, Suzanne will join the Project Management team full-time and continue to report to Nancy Ware.
Vendor Relations. I am excited to announce that on January 23, Tracy Yuan will be joining IT Services in the newly created role of Manager of Vendor Relations, reporting to me. In this new position, Tracy will coordinate critical vendor relationships, develop and implement vendor-related policies, complete business case analyses to determine vendors of choice, and orchestrate RFQ/RFP and associated processes. She'll also negotiate contracts with all major hardware, services, and cloud solutions providers, including telecommunications, cable TV, servers, storage, and networking tools vendors.
Tracy comes to us from the President’s office at the University of California at Berkeley where, for the past five years, she worked as the team leader for system-wide IT strategic sourcing initiatives for IT hardware, software, and services. Prior to working at UC Berkeley, Tracy spent eight years in various procurement positions at Siemens. Tracy’s office will be in Polya Hall.
- Sam Steinhardt
Business Services
Client Support Quarterly Ops Reviews
Client Support now publishes quarterly ops reviews. These reviews include accomplishments over the past quarter, project updates, metrics, planned work, and open or resolved issues. Future reviews will include our roadmaps.
You can find the reviews in Confluence on the 2012 Academic Year Client Support Ops Report pages.
Please let me or any of the Client Support Leads know if you have any questions.
- Jan Cicero
Client Services
Common Solutions Group Conference
From January 11–13, Stanford hosted the Common Solutions Group conference at Paul Brest Hall. The Common Solutions Group is a consortium of IT leaders from about 25 top-tier US research universities who meet twice annually to share insight on technology trends, service delivery, business models, and policy that affect higher education. Each institution is represented by their CIO or other executive IT leader, along with a lead technology architect.
Typically, there are themes of discussion and some presentations given over the course of three days. A few of the highlighted topics this time were:
Beyond the planned topics for the meetings, it was very helpful to share insights more informally. Of particular note were the number of our peer universities that are adopting Software as a Service products. Sometime these online products replace some legacy product, however, as often as not, they are additional services that didn't even exist and now supplement centrally-provided offerings. Beyond technical insights on implementation, it's equally useful to understand what policy (e.g., privacy, information security) implications similar institutions are considering before adopting such a "brokered" service strategy.
- Bruce Vincent
Strategy and Architecture