Core Services Cumulative Monthly Report, October 2003
Overview
Significant areas of activity in October included continued work on the
upgrade from dlps4 to dlps10 and forward movement with OCR file service.
- 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.
- Oct: Marsh and Snavely made plans to try to use the storage
subsystem originally purchased for dlps10 on quik.
- 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.
- Oct: Marsh transitioned HTI services from dlps4 to dlps10,
but after several days of full production load, Marsh and Snavely found
problems with the storage subsystem and had to revert HTI service back to
dlps4. Marsh began the purchase process for a Sun storage subsystem (at
substantially higher cost) that should offer better support and allow the
transition to dlps10 to happen as soon as possible.
- Oct: Marsh, in coordination with CAEN, formulated an upgrade
plan for servers which are still running Solaris 2.6, which CAEN will no
longer support starting in 2004.
- Development server replacements/upgrades.
- Sep: Marsh upgraded ferment to Red Hat 9.
- Oct: Marsh and Snavely spent a substantial amount of time
pursuing what appeared to be a problem with a storage subsystem on sangria,
but what turned out to be a bug in file system diagnostics. Marsh upgraded
all potentially affected servers to newer versions of the diagnostic software.
- DHCP/DNS services.
- Sep: Marsh, working with ITCS, transitioned DNS service
from longjing to plumwine.
- Oct: Marsh, working with DSS, formulated a plan to cut
over DHCP services from stella to sake during the upcoming holiday break.
- 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.
- Oct: Snavely coordinated the purchase and installation
of the library's first Gigabit Ethernet (GbE) switch for improved file service
performance on martini. Initial testing confirmed substantial performance
improvements, topping out at approximately 22MB/s sustained throughput.
- Oct: Snavely resolved the authentication problems with
Samba and worked with Hall to begin live testing of file service on martini.
- Oct: Snavely took bill-ko, the old data loading workstation,
offline.
- Digital object integrity.
- Cost model.
- Documentation.
- Security assessment.
- Technology trends awareness.
- Support and Development for Access Systems
- Library management system implementation.
- Oct: Marsh reinstalled Solaris 9 on gracie after a security
incident. Marsh took this opportunity to implement several new security
measures, including the Sunscreen host-based firewall, to substantially
increase overall system security.
- DLXS.
- Persistent URLs.
- Institutional repository initiative.
- Oct: Snavely reviewed Ottaviani's draft of our institutional
repository findings and contributed several comments for changes.
- Oct: Marsh researched requirements for installing DSPace
on sambuca, discovering some difficulty and chains of dependency. Snavely
and Ottaviani agreed to postpone DSpace installation until after the holidays,
while in the meantime putting sambuca to use as a NAS test server.
- 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): Currently being repurposed
- 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):
Unavailable on Thursday, October 10 from 7:20am to 10:30am due
to a problem resulting from a database software upgrade.
- 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 Thursday, October 23
from 11:00pm to 11:30pm for a reboot to effect a security patch.
- dlps8.umdl (non-public collections): Down on Thursday, October
23 from 11:00pm to 11:30pm for a reboot to effect a security patch.
- dlps9.umdl (Image Services): Down on Thursday, October 23
from 11:00pm to 11:30pm for a reboot to effect a security patch.