Department Profile

its in bits occasionally publishes a department profile in place of a staff profile.

Computer Resource Consulting

Computer Resource Consulting (CRC) is always an exciting place to work. The 45 members of the CRC come to the office each morning with plans for the day in mind, but "the best-laid schemes o' mice an' men, gang aft a-gley...."

The CRC provides fee-based desktop, departmental server, and project support to the Stanford community. The February 2008 billing shows that CRC supports 4,129 workstations, 75 departmental servers, and five-and-a-half consultants for project work.

The CRC holds contracts with 20 organizations across campus including the School of Humanities and Sciences, Athletics, Earth Sciences, Vaden Health, and IT Services.

The CRC client base has had three changes since January. The Office of Accessible Education (OAE) hired away their CRC consultant. We were glad to see a client hire a consultant they appreciated. To balance the loss of a support contract with OAE, we were able to add new support contracts for the Procurement Office and the IT Services Tech Training facilities.

The CRC also works with the Tier 2 Help Desk to provide project and OnCall support to members of the Stanford community. Recent examples include upgrading Residential and Dining Enterprises' Sundial clients to Version 10, migrating the School of Engineering Active Directory off of NT, providing Quality Assurance testing for NetDB, and scheduling office hours for Microbiology & Immunology.

There are new requests for various forms of assistance from our clients every day. Stanford staff and faculty dependence on desktops and laptops is high. As problems arise, the sense of urgency from our clients rises as well. The CRC consultants are hired for their ability to balance their technical and client interaction skills. The ability to convey technical issues and solutions to clients—in clear, understandable language—is critical. It takes more than a technical background to successfully work with our clients.

Each day brings new HelpSU tickets and calls. We're never quite sure about the nature and variety of the requests, but we know they will arrive. We'll be ready.

- Shirley Hodges
CRC/Desktop Systems

Tips From Your Admin

Did you know that...

Staff may request an advance to pay for airfare and hotel deposits. All advances for travel must include supporting documentation, such as an air ticket receipt showing proof of payment. The amount advanced may not exceed the estimated cash required for travel.

Staff Happenings

Please welcome Larry Ibarra to the Order Management team.

Larry comes to us with ten years of experience in the banking industry and a reputation for excellent client service. He has received honors and awards for compliance and customer service. Larry enjoys troubleshooting computer issues; that will come in handy as he works with the Pinnacle, CS Gold, and Remedy applications issuing ID Cards from the Maude Trailer office.

Larry will also work with the Cellular support team handling Pinnacle billing and other tasks when he is not working with the 300 clients a week at the Maude walk-up window.

You may not see him very often on this side of campus, but we are thrilled to have him as a part of the team.

- Suzanne Schiessler
Order Management

Comings and Goings

The following people have left IT Services. Please see their manager if you have open issues.

Amy Shek (Kim Seidler)

its in bits welcomes more detailed employee news submissions from all staff. Please submit to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu

Tech Briefings

Tech Briefings

Fridays
2:00–3:30 p.m.

Turing Auditorium

Friday, March 21: Using Open Source Software and Other Freebies
Do you wish you had office applications at home? Is your department running out of funds because you're spending too much on licensing fees for tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Illustrator, and Photoshop?

Mark Branom will demonstrate open source software and other free alternatives. Topics will include OpenOffice.org, Audacity, Picasa, GIMP, Google Docs and Spreadsheets, and Google Page Creator.

Friday, March 28: Windows Domain
In this session, Ross Wilper and Sean Riordan will present the current state, and plans for the future, of the Stanford Windows infrastructure. Find out about the services provided and how you can take advantage of domain services, Exchange support, and RADIUS. Upcoming changes to Windows Server 2008 Active Directory, Domain Services upgrade, and Exchange 2007 support upgrade will be discussed.

Tech Express

Thursdays (once a month)
12:00–1:00 p.m.
Turing Auditorium

Thursday, March 20: Big Fix Power Management
BigFix software is installed on most Windows computers on campus. Learn more about the Stanford Power Management tool that is a new component of BigFix. You can reduce your carbon footprint, save energy, and be eligible to participate in a PG&E rebate program. Ammy Hill will present.

Check the Tech Briefings home page for future sessions and to subscribe to the mailing list.

Check the Tech Express home page for future sessions

 

Technology Training Courses

IT Professional Development Courses

Leopard for IT Support Staff: Desktop Essentials (April 1-2) or (April 3-4).      There are six seats available. This is a two-day course. $950.

Leopard Server (April 15-18). There is one seat available. This is a four-day course. $2,250.

Ruby/Ruby on Rails (May 5-9). There are still seats available. This is a five-day course. $1,800.

VMware ACE (April 22). There are 18 seats available for this hands-on class. $75.

VMware Fusion (April 23). There are 18 seats available for this hands-on class. $75.

If you're interested in any of these on-site training opportunities, send an email to Nancy Baumann.

Tech Training Courses

The full listing of Current Courses is available on the Tech Training web site.

Upcoming Tech Training classes of interest to IT Services staff:

Photoshop Lite, Mon, Mar 24, 1:00–4:30, $195

Excel 2007 Level 3, Tue, Mar 25, 9:00–4:00, $325

Dreamweaver Lite, Wed, Mar 26, 1:00–4:30, $195

Photoshop Level 2, Thu, Mar 27, 9:00–4:00, $325

Dreamweaver & Fireworks for Web Graphics & Photos, Thu, Mar 27, 1:00–4:30, $195

Excel 2007 Level 1, Tue, Apr 1, 9:00–4:00, $325

Adobe Acrobat: The Basics of Using the Full Version, Wed, Apr 2, 1:00–4:00, $195

FileMaker Pro Level 1, Thu, Apr 3, 9:00–4:00, $325

Sign up at http://axess.stanford.edu.

Classes with low enrollment may be cancelled one week in advance. More information on courses, registration, and training is available at the Technology Training Services site.

- Nancy Baumann
Technology Training Services

IT Employment Opportunities

There were four new job postings for IT Services this week.

Req# 29507: Facilities Engineer II, 100% FTE, Range 3P3, Erich Snow, hiring manager.

Responsible for the design, construction, maintenance, and documentation of campus and Medical Center intra-building and inter-building wiring systems. These structured wiring systems can be composed of copper, optical fiber, and/or broadband cabling.

Req# 29509: Facilities Engineer I, 100% FTE, Range 3P2, Erich Snow, hiring manager.

Performs the same job functions as the FE II above, but on a smaller scale. Responsible for the design, construction, maintenance, and documentation of campus and Medical Center intra-building and inter-building wiring systems. These structured wiring systems can be composed of copper, optical fiber, and/or broadband cabling.

Req# 29536: Telecom Attendant Trainee, 100% FTE, Range A00, Carolyn Kane, hiring manager.

The Telecom Attendant Trainee participates in a twelve month on-the-job training program to prepare for duties including performing as the the voice of Stanford, answering main published phone lines for the University, Stanford Hospital and Clinics, and the Lucille Salter Packard Children's Hospital. The Attendant performs critical call functions, including general information, directory, answer and transfer, paging, after-hours on-call contacts, and code call coordination.

Req# 29550: VoIP Services Manager, 100% FTE, Range 1M3, Mark Miyasaki, hiring manager.

Provide leadership and direction for the converged voice and data groups, including technology innovations around VoIP (Voice over IP), Unified Communications, SIP (Session Initiation Protocol), and other projects and programs. S/he will provide day-to-day management of the technical staff, project directions, and budget management.

To view the complete listings or to apply for a position, visit the StanfordJobs web site at: jobs.stanford.edu.

There are other open Information Technology positions at Stanford. To see what other opportunities exist on campus, link to the full list of all open IT positions at Stanford.

Quote of the Week

“A computer can beat me at chess, but it is no match for me at kick boxing.”

- Emo Philips

News

A Note From Bill...

Over the last several weeks, and particularly over the last couple of days, you've heard quite a bit about changes to IT Services.

We continue to move forward with our Service Portfolio review—analyzing which services are solid, which need to improve, and which many not be appropriate for us to continue to provide. At the same time, we are realigning our organization to be more responsive and productive, and we are implementing budget reductions as a way to reduce expenses and the cost of our services.

These changes will allow us to significantly increase the quality and value of our services for our clients. We know that they are looking to us to prioritize the critical items on our strategic plan, and I sincerely believe these are the very concrete steps we need to take to meet that expectation. Our clients will welcome these improvements.

I have said many times that there are three main ways that organizations advance. The first is to have great people and to support and encourage their continued development. The second is to have logical workflow and processes around services that integrate and build on one another. The third is to have solid structural alignment that groups similar functions and promotes communication.

I strongly believe we have assembled a great staff, and we are looking to improve it with a few key hires. The Service Portfolio review is aimed at strategically prioritizing and integrating our services. The organizational realignment is structured to align us into logical technical, client support, and business support units to improve our productivity.

While IT Services does not manage its business for profit as corporations do, we do manage it with an appropriate focus on expense. We want to run our services efficiently and at the lowest cost so that we are not unnecessarily drawing funds away from the University's core mission of teaching and research. We must be able to demonstrate to our clients the value of everything we do.

As we move toward improving the support we provide our clients and toward increasing our contribution to Stanford's goals, I realize the upcoming changes can be energizing and exciting as well as unsettling. I have been very impressed with how many of you have readily understood the need for these changes and are eager to move forward. That said, I also recognize that many folks feel worried or uncertain in the face of this change. I urge all of us to take the time to talk with one another and to honor whatever our colleagues may be feeling. By treating each other with grace and dignity, we can make these changes even more effective for ourselves, for our clients, and for Stanford.

- Bill Clebsch
IT Services

Integrated Email & Calendar Project Goes Wiki

With a goal to be more collaborative, the Integrated Email & Calendar project is piloting the use of a wiki to share information amongst the team, track project status, and facilitate online discussions. The wiki is available to all IT Services staff. It includes information on the Project Plan, has a discussion thread about what to name the service, provides links to Zimbra technical documentation, and it contains notes from key stakeholder meetings.

The wiki works in concert with the Integrated Email & Calendar Project page and Docushare to provide different varieties of documentation to different communities. The project page provides information to the broad campus community. The wiki is open to all IT Services staff. Finally, documents intended for a narrow audience are stored with unique permission groups in Docushare.

The wiki uses MediaWiki, a free software package originally written for Wikipedia. A wiki is software that allows users to create, edit, and link pages together. Wiki is the Hawaiian word for fast.

- Ammy Hill
Campus Readiness

Managing Stanford's Wallet

The last major software deliverable for the Kerberos migration project is a replacement for the venerable, but Kerberos 4-based, system for managing credentials for machines and services at Stanford.

This week, we are rolling out the Wallet: a new and open source system for managing credentials. The Wallet is a system for managing small pieces of sensitive data, like Kerberos keytabs. It will eventually be expanded to manage other types of highly-sensitive data such as certificates or database passwords. It stores these pieces of sensitive data centrally, as well as authorization data about who is allowed to download each piece of the data.

Our initial rollout of the Wallet uses NetDB information as the authorization source for host and WebAuth credentials. If you are listed in NetDB as the administrator, user, or a member of the admin team for a given server, you can download a host keytab (useful for AFS access) or a WebAuth keytab (required for running a WebAuth server). Other types of credentials (credentials for services and for obtaining data from Stanford's LDAP servers, for example) can be requested via HelpSU.

Future plans for the Wallet include support for additional types of secure credentials including database passwords, certificates, and data for managing a public key infrastructure (PKI). Although the current main interface is based on top of remctl—a Stanford-developed, Kerberos-based remote procedure call layer that is becoming widely adopted throughout the greater Kerberos development community—the software is modular enough to be agnostic about its transport layer. We'd also like to add a REST-based interface in the future to make the Wallet completely independent of an underlying Kerberos infrastructure.

The Kerberos team has already received multiple queries about the Wallet software from the greater Kerberos community. Although there are secure credential managers available commercially, this is the first one we're aware of that fully supports Kerberos. We have high hopes that this software will see broad adoption across our peer institutions and other Kerberos 5-based sites.

The Wallet software was officially released to campus on March 12, 2008. Kerberos 4 will be retired on May 15, 2008.

- Jonathan Pilat and Russ Allbery
Shared Application Services

Limited Rollout of BigFix For Macs

Last Friday, a select group of Mac OS X users in IT Services, the Office of Public Affairs, Psychiatry, and Earth Sciences received their first system updates via BigFix. Included were patches for:

  • iPhoto 7.1.2 (for Tiger/Leopard/Panther)
  • Security Update 2008-001 (10.4.11 PPC and Intel platforms)
  • Mac OS X 10.5.2 Update

Users were prompted to reboot their computers to complete the patch installations. The prompt appears after the BigFix client installs the security patches on the machine, reminding users that a reboot is required to complete the updates and patches. The BigFix client will not force a reboot until the user takes action.

While Windows users on campus are already familiar with the program, this is the first time Stanford has deployed patches to Mac OS X systems via BigFix. The BigFix Enterprise Suite is a commercial software package and accompanying service that Stanford uses to secure the campus network by ensuring all Windows and Mac systems receive security updates efficiently and reliably.

In the past, users were responsible for installing security patches on their own systems. Even the most diligent, who patch their systems on a regular basis, sometimes miss important patches. Failure to keep all systems patched can place everyone on the network at risk. BigFix provides efficient patch deployment to all campus systems running the BigFix client with minimal user interaction. Since BigFix was introduced to Stanford in April 2004, there have been no campus-wide network security breaches thanks, in part, to BigFix’s ability to deploy patches in a timely manner.

After the limited rollout to select departments, Stanford will make BigFix available to every Mac OS X user on campus later this spring. Additional communication will be directed through the Big Fix service page and Essential Stanford Software, as well as via the Expert Partners mailing list.

- Ammy Hill
Campus Readiness

Belly Up to the BaRS

When it comes to backup, as the saying goes: "No news is good news." Lately, it has been "Bad news travels fast." You may have heard the "bad news" about long backup times and hung processes with the backup servers; please let me share with you the good news.

We have a key project nearing completion to evaluate virtual tape libraries (VTL), and we have high hopes for the cost savings. VTL will reduce dependencies on tape media, have a smaller floor space footprint, and lower overall equipment costs. It will bring performance improvements to the backup system that make a VTL solution very attractive.

In another part of the effort to lower costs, we have taken on a library consolidation project. The intent is to move from five libraries to two. One has already been eliminated. Those who pass through the first floor of Forsythe Hall may recall the large black cabinets under the stairwell.

Several upgrades have been added to these projects. We have pulled eight of the newer tape drives from the older systems and have re-installed them in one of the remaining libraries. We will also upgrade twelve SCSI drives to Fiber Channel drives to improve performance and simplify our system. If you would like to learn more about the BaRS service, please visit the service page.

We have recently moved one of our most congested backup servers (BARS4) to a new server that is more powerful. This will put the performance of that server back on track. Jai Sharma tells me that he has seen backups that used to take nine hours to complete finish in less than two hours.

Tilak Dhar (project lead) has been working with Jai Sharma, Rosa Leung, Cliff Yee, and the rest of the team to create consolidation timelines that will enable the Forsythe Remediation project to reclaim some significant space for additional racks. There has also been some excellent work on pushing the VTL project forward, and planning the other low-cost upgrades that have been badly needed to relieve some of the pressure on the backup system.

Since no news is good news, here's to hoping you don't hear anything about BaRS for some time....

- Dan Stillmaker
Backup and Storage

PT&S Survey

Every year, Parking & Transportation Services conducts a short survey (only three to five minutes to complete) to better understand the commute patterns and transportation needs of the Stanford community. The information gathered in this survey will be used for planning purposes and to improve our programs and services. All responses attributable to an individual will be kept confidential.

Survey invitations are sent by email. If you do not receive a survey invitation by April 4 or if you have questions, send an email to commuteclub@stanford.edu.

After you complete the survey, you will have an opportunity to enter a drawing for one of the following prizes:

  • One $1,000 Grand Prize
  • Ten 4GB iPod Nanos
  • Ten $100 cash prizes
  • Ten StanfordCardPlans (accepted on campus at Peet's, Jamba Juice, Stanford Bookstore, and more)
  • Ten Pairs of AMC movie tickets

The deadline to enter the drawings is April 30, 2008. Thank you for participating. We value your input.

- Parking & Transportation Services

The Family Giving Tree Thanks You

I wanted to pass along this letter I received from the Giving Tree organization. Reading the stories from the recipients of our donations makes the time we spend planning this event very worthwhile. Thank you again for your generous contributions to the fund raiser. The holiday planning team looks forward to participating in the Giving Tree Toy Drive again this year.

- Caren Kammeyer
and the Giving Tree Team

Thank you so much for supporting the Family Giving Tree’s 18th Holiday Giving Program. This year, with the help of 948 hosts like you, we were able to serve 60,000 children through 258 local social service agencies. We estimate that IT Services provided 93 gifts and $1,836.48 in monetary donations. What a difference you have made in our community!

As Family Giving Tree Host Coordinators, you rarely get a chance to hear from the people who benefit from all of your hard work. Please enjoy the following stories/quotes from our recipient agencies.

“Our children are all Autistic. They were so very excited to receive the gifts. One little boy started to cry because he got what he wanted. He was hugging his Lego set. They all sat down and were so involved in their toys that the room was quiet. That was a great thing. The teachers and staff were happy about that. The children were thrilled. We had eleven little boys come up to hug and thank us. That thanks goes to you, the elves, who make this possible. Thank you for everything you do for these children."
- Trish Canepa, Pine Hill School

“Thank you all so very much for incredible gifts for the children of our Center. I wish you could have seen the children's faces light up when they each received their very own (big!) gift. Many of our children have had to endure great hardship throughout their young lives and they rarely have the opportunity to imagine, dream, or create as all children ought to do. Your gifts bring such joy to our families, offering them the chance to step out of their harsh reality for just a moment to remember the importance of play. With deep gratitude and appreciation,"
- Susie Carter, WDDC Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator

Without the organization and hard work of our host coordinators, we would have never been able to help these children. We know that being a Family Giving Tree coordinator takes valuable time and energy that could be used elsewhere. We appreciate everything that you do and the impact Stanford University and IT Services has made in our community. We look forward to working with you next year, and hope you will join us this summer for our Back-to-School Drive. Thank you!

- Jennifer Cullenbine
Queen Elf

Amy Blue Awards

The Amy J. Blue Awards honor staff members who are exceptionally effective, supportive of colleagues, and passionate about their work.

Nominations are being accepted now and must be received by midnight, Wednesday, March 26, 2008.

You may submit your nomination electronically through the online form.

You can read more about Amy Blue as well as see prior recipients. We look forward to receiving your nominations of staff members who embody Amy's spirit.

- Chris Griffith
Chair, Amy J. Blue Awards Committee

About its in bits

A regular summary of IT business, news about personnel, and pointers to other information of interest to IT Services staff. Coordinated, compiled, and published by the Communication Strategy and Standards Team. its in bits is published on the first and third Wednesday of the month.

Submissions are due by Noon on the Friday before the scheduled issue, to itsinbits-submissions@lists.stanford.edu for consideration. its in bits is distributed via email to its-all-staff@lists.stanford.edu and the subscription list itsinbits-subscribers@lists.stanford.edu People outside of IT Services can self-subscribe via mailman.

The next its in bits will be published on Wednesday, April 2, 2008.