Core Services Cumulative Monthly Report, September 2003
Overview
With this month, we begin a new cycle of cumulative reporting that reflects
goals developed for the 2003-2004 fiscal year.
Primary areas of activity during September included intense work on the
upgrade from dlps4 to dlps10 and substantial improvements in data loading
function and reliability.
- Refining and Improving Core Infrastructure
- New storage model.
- Sep: Snavely began researching the Linux Logical Volume
Management system as a potential management suite for NAS storage. Marsh and
Snavely are both maintaining lists of promising technologies for NAS service
to seed more focused research.
- Redundant web services.
- Integration of COSIGN single sign-on web authentication.
- Production server replacements/upgrades.
- Sep: Marsh installed and configured dlps10, a replacement
server for dlps4. Marsh, with occasional assistance from Snavely, spent a
substantial amount of time troubleshooting persistent problems with configuring
the storage subsystem before putting the storage online.
- Development server replacements/upgrades.
- Sep: Marsh upgraded ferment to Red Hat 9.
- DHCP/DNS services.
- Sep: Marsh, working with ITCS, transitioned DNS service
from longjing to plumwine.
- Image and OCR processing workflows.
- Sep: Snavely resolved a problem with DVD-R volume name
recognition on lemonade, the new loading workstation, and signalled collection
maintainers that we are ready to begin accepting tests of page image and
continuous tone material submitted on DVD-R media.
- Sep: Snavely resolved reliability problems with data loading
on lemonade related to the use of ssh, incorporated compression into the load
process to marginally reduce bandwidth requirements, and added two additional
CD-ROM drives for a total of two DVD-ROM drives and three CD-ROM drives.
- Sep: Snavely began configuring Samba-based file service
on martini, but encountered persistent authentication problems.
- Digital object integrity.
- Cost model.
- Documentation.
- Security assessment.
- Technology trends awareness.
- Support and Development for Access Systems
- Library management system implementation.
- DLXS.
- Persistent URLs.
- Institutional repository initiative.
- Collaborating with Other Areas of the Library and
the University
- Library/Core Services coordination.
- Integration with campus authentication.
- Miscellaneous/Unplanned
- Sep: Marsh installed the Perl module Net::Z3950, the Yaz
tool kit, and Zebra for the adjunct files project.
- System Performance
- Central Campus server environment
- betty.umdl (MedSearch server): No down time
- coffee.umdl (Oracle server for access control): No down time
- gin.umdl (WebCheckout server): No down time
- hank.umdl (Library Web server): No down time
- myrna.umdl (MIRLYNWeb server): No down time
- opal.umdl (SilverPlatter server): No down time
- tequila.umdl (Metalib and SFX server): No down time
- North Campus server environment
- dlps4.umdl (primary web server for DLPS and public collections):
Down from Thursday, September 11 at 5:45pm to Friday, September 12 at 3:58pm,
on Monday, September 15 from 10:00am to 7:55pm, and from Thursday, September
18 at 1:00pm to Friday, September 19 at 11:20am due to persistent problems
with a new storage subsystem.
- dlps5.umdl (library proxy server): No down time
- dlps6.umdl (Oracle server for access control and usage statistics):
No down time
- dlps7.umdl (Numeric Data server): Down on Monday, September 22
from 9:40am to 11:05am due to a problem with a storage subsystem.
- dlps8.umdl (non-public collections): No down time
- dlps9.umdl (Image Services): No down time