ITS Highlights

Web Streaming Growth—For the first time, both the Undergraduate and Medical School commencement ceremonies were streamed live concurrently and also for the first time, both were delivered in the Flash format to allow for cross-platform compatibility.  These events wrapped up a week of streaming activities that included the final event of the 2008-2009 Thinking Out of the Lunchbox lecture series at the Downtown Public Library, live streaming of Pulitzer Prize-winning Senior Day speaker Doris Kearns Goodwin and archived streaming of all four Senior Day “Study Break” lectures presented by Vanderbilt faculty for parents of this year’s graduates.  These events and others throughout the month helped make this the busiest May for streaming since the launch of Streaming Media Services in 2006.
 
Federated Access to NIH Enables Trusted Collaborations—Vanderbilt now has InCommon federated access with the National Institutes of Health and other institutions thanks to new technology implemented in ITS. InCommon eliminates the need for researchers, students, and educators to maintain multiple passwords and usernames. Identity providers manage the levels of their users' privacy and information exchange. InCommon uses Shibboleth authentication and authorization systems to enable scalable, trusted collaborations among its community of participants.

New Website for ITS—In an effort to utilize a content management system, and after much work, ITS went live with a new website on May 31. The new ITS website features a new format including three prominent new buttons for those who are “New to Vanderbilt”, “Need Help”, or need “Services A to Z.” Other new features include a focused search capability just for the ITS website and Quick Links to top search requests. News items and scheduled outages are also featured along with a new section highlighting ITS podcasts – all with RSS feed capability.

Enterprise Identity Management Expands—The next phase of identity management at Vanderbilt is explained in a new podcast available on the ITS website. The University Registrar and academic IT leaders recently provided additional input to this effort.

New Radiation Database for VEHS—Provided project management and IT infrastructure enabling a new home for the Vanderbilt Environmental Health and Safety (VEHS) radiation database. VEHS is required to track all hazardous material stored on the Vanderbilt campus along with its location and users. The new database now resides on enterprise servers in the ITS data center.

Red Phones for VPD—ITS worked with VPD to test and assess Red Phone coverage in their area. The Red Phone system is designed to ensure that strategic locations have a working phone at all times. Based on the outcome of the assessment, additional Red Phone coverage will be added to 111 28th Ave Headquarters building.

Health Plus and HR Active Directory cleanup—Desktop Support worked to configure PCs in these areas to DOA standard naming convention and cleanup the inventory database.  This reduces Active Directory clutter making it easier to identify the PC’s location and owner, enhancing support.

Timing and Ingenuity—On May 26, Desktop Support was notified by Plant Operations that due to a Kronos (time clock) upgrade, they needed a software update on 91 PCs by June 8.   On May 28, they notified ITS the upgrade was moved up and all updates must be completed by June 1.  ITS staff devised a way to successfully push the updates to all 91 PCs – working into the night to make this happen in the required time frame. This was critical because Plant Operations employees would not have been able to access the time clock on June 1 or after.

Dave Matthews, Meet Dave Mathews—When the Dave Matthews Band recently played at Vanderbilt Stadium, the ITS Network Services team, led by our own Dave Mathews, coordinated additional data connectivity services to support the concert on campus.

Microsoft Service Center Operations Manager Audible Alerts—ITS Windows Administrators deployed MS Service Center Operations Manager (SCOM) clients to the Network Operations Center (NOC) with audible alerts.  This deployment will greatly enhance automated monitoring capability for the Windows environment and alert the NOC staff of critical issues.

Windows 2008 Server Configuration Optimization—Windows Administrators discovered that hibernation is the default on all Windows 2008 Server installations potentially consuming large amounts of disk space depending on the hardware in the server.  By optimizing server configurations 8GB of storage was reclaimed for every Windows 2008 server.

Operator Services Stats—Operators Services received 146,376 calls in the call center with a 98.5% answer rate. The team completed 14,277 pager modifications supporting patient care. A total of 363 conference calls were requested and processed through the call center.

Construction Update:

• The first department of the School of Engineering moved in to 1025 16th Ave.  The Future Combat Systems Group moved in to suite 303.  The Vanderbilt network was extended to the location on 31 poles between the Hill Center and the new building. This is also our first installation of analog IP for analog and single line applications such as conference phones, fax machines, and cordless phones.
• Arts and Science Micro Computing Lab moved in to the Center Building.  This allows for this department to reside in 1 location.  They have occupied a suite not occupied by Vanderbilt staff in the past.
• A final walk through of the university buildings has been completed to determine the design of the Sprint cellular coverage system to be deployed for improve coverage.
• Work started on the Sprint Cellular coverage in 100 Oaks.  This location was part of the Sprint University Building Cellular Coverage Project. The anticipation completion date is July 10th.
• The Vanderbilt Departments at Loews Vanderbilt Plaza have opted not to have backup network connectivity to the main campus.  Office of Investments and General Counsel will try to include in the 2011 fiscal year expenses.

Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks – Completed Phase 1 of the initial move to 100 Oaks.  Since this phase began in January, we have moved or installed 1,123 phones.

Wireless Network Expanded – Provided expanded WiFi coverage based on a request from Vanderbilt Student Government (VSG). A total of 8 APs were deployed in Calhoun, Wilson, and Furman Halls. 

10Gbps Network – ACCRE proceeded with further testing of the 10Gbps connection for research networking.  They have been transmitting a steady 1 Gbps rate with peaks up to 5 Gbps.

Sprint Contract Signed – ITS staff worked many hours with Sprint to clarify and outline a new contract that will improve coverage in 81 buildings on campus and 100 Oaks. This effort is an example of the continued cooperation and positive business relationship between Vanderbilt and Sprint.

Special Events – ITS deployed telephones for the Ronald McDonald Telethon at the Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and the Dave Mathews Band concert. There were 439 calls answered during the 3 hour telethon that raised $127,526.00 for the Ronald McDonald House. The concert required ITS to deploy 5 data network connections and 6 voice lines, including work with Ticketmaster to configure their systems for the Vanderbilt wireless network.

DOA Desktop Support – DOA Support completed successful migration of the Printing Services shop floor production application to an upgraded VM environment.  The solution saved Printing Services anywhere from $6,000 to $12,000 for hardware & software upgrades. This included a major upgrade of the production application, and was moved from an out-of-warranty hardware environment to a new Virtual Environment within the ITS Network Operations Center.  Over 120 hours of I.T. labor was provided at no cost to Printing Services. This solution serves the community by removing old inefficient hardware from the Data Center.

ITS Photo Delivery System – ITS worked with Card Office staff to deploy photos to systems that access certain people information databases. Certain VUMC On-Call systems can now display the face of the doctor on call in addition to their name and contact information. This is a much needed enhancement to their systems and processes.

Aid for Financial Aid – Financial aid turned off a physical server located in their office and is now providing file and print services utilizing the ITS provided Network Attached Storage (NAS) and centralized print servers.  Data is now located in the ITS Data Center with all the ancillary services it provides (e.g. cooling, restricted physical access).  Technology Support enrollment Management (TSEM) team, who provides support to Financial Aid,  no longer has to life cycle the server hardware or apply Windows security patches which will lead to less administrative overhead. 

Law School Enhancements – The Law School replaced their two existing SLQ servers with a new SQL Cluster enabling them to provide high availability to all their locally provided services.  ITS provided the additional network ports, storage, and rack space temporarily in order for them to build, test, and migrate existing services to the new environment with very little down time.

Video Conferencing Supports Dissemination of Knowledge – The ITS video conferencing bridge facilitated a Vanderbilt Operating Room (OR) demonstration of surgery using a robotic arm and remote camera.  We enabled connectivity between a Vanderbilt operating room and a facility in Orlando that was responsible for streaming the images to doctors and med students at both US sites and international locations.  The video showed images of what the doctor was seeing through his eyepiece as the surgery was being performed.   Bi-directional audio allowed the surgeon to provide commentary as he was operating, and to hear and answer questions from the remote viewers. 

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School of Medicine Match Day! – ITS Streaming Services coordinated a support effort to help assure successful video-streaming of the Med School’s Match Day event on Thursday 3/19, in which 4^th-yead med school “seniors” learned where they will go to do their residencies after finishing med school.   The streaming event was produced by staff of the Med School Media Center using their MediaSite recorder and the MediaSite server hosted and administered by ITS. 

During the event, various systems were monitored by ITS Streaming Services, ITS Network Security, and VUMC Network Security.   ITS Streaming Services also coordinated with ACCRE to defer some planned network traffic that would have contended for bandwidth at the Med Center security perimeter during the event.The streaming event was a clear success. 

During its 90 minutes from 11:00 to 12:30, 677 different IP addresses connected to the Media Site server to view at least part of the event.  At peak load, there were 362 connections to the server, amounting to 105 Mbps of streams to viewing clients.   Viewership peaked at 11:38 AM.  In addition, in the first hour following the event there were 152 connections made to view all or part of the archive of the event.In pre-event planning, bandwidth contention at the Med Center security perimeter was judged the greatest risk to the streaming. 

At 12:16, traffic through the Med Center firewall and IPS reached 580 Mbps of 600 Mbps available, with 8 ms latency.  (At this point connections to the Media Site server had dropped to about 300, using 82 Mbps of bandwidth.)  This was the greatest contention observed during the event and did not appear to affect the quality of the stream. 

New Mailing List Software – On March 4, ITS completed the transition to a new email list service. This brings Vanderbilt’s email list collaboration ability from a decade and a half old to modern technology adding numerous features, architecture options, and capabilities. ITS migrated 2053 active email distribution lists after deleting more than 650 lists no longer in use. The transition to the new service was coordinated with 674 list owners.

To assist list owners and support providers, three help sessions were held in the first ten days of service along with daily FAQ messages and extensive information on the newly updated listserv website. The new service provides subscribers, moderators and owners with a more functional and well documented web interface. Three types of pre-defined are available: announcement only, moderated discussion, and un-moderated discussion.

The new service has tools to deter spam and maintain subscriber lists. Multiple owners and moderators as well as a dashboard with list usage statistics are also features of the new service.

ACCRE – In collaboration with VUMC Network Computing Services (NCS), the Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Science (VUIIS), and the Advanced Computing Center for Research and Education, ITS worked to enable an extremely large computing backup job to run across the network from VUIIS to ACCRE without traversing security perimeter devices (firewall and IPS), between the VUMC and VU networks where bandwidth is at a premium. Implementation of a new central data server at VUIIS necessitated a new full initial backup of about 12 terabytes of data on the backup service operated by ACCRE.  ITS and NCS built a temporary network path from Hill Center to VUIIS, effectively extending the 129.59 network into the VUIIS facility.  Across this link the backup job was able to run at the extraordinary speed of 70 MB/s or 550 Mb/s, with no impact on the traffic passing between the two networks.

Admin phone upgrade – One month after a major upgrade to the telephone system and all is well. No new issues, new (and old) phones are being deployed without incident, work orders are smoothly being processed, and there is nothing really to report from subscribers.The expanded ability to support IP Telephony will become more and more evident as departments opt for that type of service. Planning is also underway to implement a change to the internal voice network protocol change to NEC's Peer to Peer Fusion technology.

Research Grant Support – Associate Professor Clare McCabe’s DURIP (Defense University Research Instrumentation Program) grant proposal has been approved for funding.  ITS provided a letter of support for this application, as well as other pending research grant proposals by others at Vanderbilt. ITS plans to support this grant by offering space in the data center – an ever shrinking resource. This is a great illustration as to how computational research is thriving at Vanderbilt with constantly increasing data center needs.

Cellular Coverage at Vanderbilt – Over the last few years and months, efforts have been made by three cellular vendors to improve coverage on campus and within various buildings. Future work is planned as well.

Over the last few years, continuing through very recent upgrades, Sprint enhanced and expanded coverage in VCH, VUH, MCN, TVC, MCE North and South Towers, among others. Enhancements to coverage at Vanderbilt Health 100 Oaks are also in the works.

In 2007 Verizon Wireless completed enhancements within VCH adding in-building coverage to ensuring phone service on all floors. Verizon continues to survey VCH to identify areas for improvement. Verizon is also coordinating the deployment of a macro cell site scheduled for installation on the rooftop of the Institute of Imaging and Science Building. Once complete, they plan to conduct a study to identify additional coverage requirements at MCN, VUH, TVC, VICC, Preston Research, MCE, and MRB IV. Their commitment is that within 2 years from completion of the macro cell site, they will provide coverage for over 90% of the areas identified provided standard installation is required. Any unusual construction requirements requiring substantial additional investment will be considered on a case-by-case basis. Verizon also conducted a site survey at Vanderbilt Health 100 Oaks, and found that coverage was acceptable. Verizon representatives stated their company is committed to make the investments need to our network to maintain our highest standards of operations.

AT&T has been working since last year with infrastructure departments at Vanderbilt, identifying coverage gaps as well as possible locations for their equipment. They’ve walked through VUMC areas and developed implementation plans to improve and expand coverage. They are about 80% of the way through their internal processes to approve these enhancements to their coverage at VUMC.

Security Presentation – End User Services and Network Security provided a security presentation for Procurement and Disbursements Services.  The goal was to raise awareness and educate users about how to stay safe on the internet by highlighting malware, phishing, and basic security for the desktop.  EUS plans to offer the presentation to other departments in the Division of Administration with expansion to other departments and divisions as requested.

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Voice Network Upgrade – The last weekend in February was marked with a major milestone and accomplishment for the Vanderbilt voice network. The hardware and software for the voice network were successfully upgraded with very minimal downtime. IP telephony services are fully available across all parts of the network; out-of-lifecycle hardware was replaced; and the software was advanced 8 versions ahead of where it had been. This accomplishment was the result of months of planning and hard work by the ITS project implementation team, with a great deal of coordination between ITS teams, Vanderbilt departments and the vendor. Vanderbilt now has the largest NEC SV8500 network in the world.

Video Vanderbilt – Video streaming services have become a key component to capturing knowledge dissemination, creative experimentation of ideas, and outreach as they occur in support of teaching, research, and patient care at Vanderbilt. New streams are captured and posted weekly in locations such as myVU, VUcast, and other online locations across Vanderbilt. February included a stream of the State of the Medical Center Address (with 565 online viewers), a Flannery O’Connor series of events, several lectures events, the Asian New Year Festival, and Lifeflight Safety Day in Smyrna to name a few.

Enhance Calling for the Office of Investments – ITS established new features on the caller’s menu for the Office of Investments enabling callers so they may type in the number of the person to whom they wish to speak or listen to the menu options. This additional feature enhances the customer experience when they need to reach our Investments staff immediately.

A Partnership in Leadership – ITS leaders have partnered with Dr. Pearl Sims, Lecturer in Education and Director of the Leadership Development Center, to enhance her course on Learning Organizations & Technology. Classes are held in the high tech conference room in ITS, which leverages technologies already in place, and includes partnership in instruction with IT directors who contribute to the instruction and projects throughout the course. It continues to be a terrific partnership enabling students to learn both in the classroom and from real experiences by using these technologies.

Google This! – ITS and Public Affairs coordinated the “Google Bus”, which made a stop at Vanderbilt last fall on its road trip across the nation. Check out the video Google placed on YouTube of the stop at Vanderbilt.

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myVU and Other Websites Receive Infrastructure Update – ITS, in concert with Public Affairs, spent numerous hours in January and February improving Sitemason performance.  The legacy architecture suffered errors often rendering the site unresponsive shortly after the bi-weekly releases of myVU to the community.  The new architecture added (2) load balancing servers, (6) Front End Virtual Machines, (6) DB Proxy services on those machines, and Network Attached Storage (NAS), with the legacy Back End Database Server remaining in place.  This new architecture has increased performance and stability during high utilization windows and increased the maximum concurrent connections approximately eight-fold.

Research Storage Titan Head Replaced – ITS implemented the new BlueArc Titan 3200 into our environment.  This replaces the Titan 1 which entered end-of-life (unsupportable) at the end of February.  The BlueArc solution is used by the research community at large including Structural Biology and ACCRE to house research data.

Vanderbilt Health One Hundred Oaks – In support of the VUMC move to the new location at One Hundred Oaks, ITS enabled telephone infrastructure and call systems for the clinics that moved in February. The Center for Women’s Health (formerly OB/GYN), the Center for Women’s Imaging, and University Pediatrics all moved on February 20 and began accepting patients on February 23. Planning and work continue for more clinic moves, which are expected in March and April. Patient Accounting and Patient Reps also moved successfully.

Exchange 2007 Deployment Proceeding – ITS conducted a disaster recovery test of the new Exchange 2007 environment.  The test was performed with as little preparation as possible to simulate “real world” scenarios.  The team kept a timeline of events to assist in lessons learned and several areas for improvement were identified.  ITS plans to perform additional tests in March and early April to fine tune processes and ensure that all system administrators are prepared.The Exchange 2007 environment became fully functional in February, with the addition of load balancing for the mail transport layer and the client access servers.  The environment currently provides production mail service to thirty individuals with growth expected to reach 100 by the end of March.  

Mailing List Service Migration – In preparation for the March 1 mailing list migration to a new list management service, and to better manage system utilization and capacity, ITS staff worked with list owners across Vanderbilt to clean up the number of lists that use this service. As a result of the cleanup efforts, a total of 619 lists were deleted, leaving a total of 2053 lists to be migrated. More than 30 VUnet Services Administrators were also trained on the new tools for list creation – with very positive feedback.

Video Streaming Request Enhancements – In order to better serve the Vanderbilt Community the ITS video streaming service implemented new and improved streaming request processes. More detailed intake forms for event capture, storage requests, and media conversion should streamline these service processes.

HR Kiosks for Job Applicants Improved – The ITS Desktop Support team developed a new method for trimming problems on kiosks for job applicants at HR Express and it also enabled the kiosks to have Internet access for the new job application system. After researching and testing several options, the ITS Desktop Support team developed a way to lock down the system and still enable Internet access. The software restarts each kiosk automatically every night then restores it to the original configuration.

Digital Signs – A Sign of the Times – With the successful implementation of green technologies like digital signs around campus, ITS coordinated participants in a Campus Technology Webinar with NEC and Samantha Brandenburg, Assistant Director of Sarratt Student Center, which highlighted the successful use of this technology at Vanderbilt. Other universities participated in the webinar to learn more and ask questions. It was very successful.

Security Enhancements for Domain Name Service – ITS disabled external recursion to VU domain name servers greatly enhancing the security standing of our DNS environment.  The security standing is enhanced by preventing extraneous requests, disallowing participation in potential DNS amplification attacks, and limits the potential of cache poisoning (an exploit).

Building Control Security – ITS implemented additional firewall security in support of the Chestnut Street building control network. This tightens security access to all building controls in that segment of Vanderbilt’s extended campus in keeping with all other facilities under management.

Enhance Security Access for Plant Operations – ITS worked with Plant Operations management staff to enhance access to their secure system management consoles enabling more staff to better monitor the plant network processes and connectivity.

Firewall Bandwidth Optimization – ITS resolved a major bandwidth issue stemming from antivirus updates.  Traffic generated by clients downloading large updates greatly impacted firewall performance when ever new signature files were released.  The technical staff limited the number of connections allowed for file transfer access versus an ‘unlimited’ configuration previously allowed.  Web protocol access has also been reconfigured to monitor and limit bandwidth use.  Total bandwidth for all related traffic to roughly the speed of most home networks and large files will be limited to roughly the speed of most home DSL connections.

Construction and Expansion– Infrastructure service demands for construction, renovations, and expansions for the month of February included work for: 1817 Patterson Street Day Care, A&S Microcomputer Labs in the Centre Building, 1025 16^th Ave. South for the Engineering School, backup connectivity for offices at Loews, and the Children’s Way Garage.

Data Center Optimization – After a data center optimization assessment, ITS developed a new model for understanding cost drivers for co-located servers. This enables ITS to better manage the finite data center resources, which enables better understanding of current and future options for application hosting – primarily around the need for using more efficient virtual machines as much as possible.

Software Store Automation Save Resources – With the new implementation of Online Software Store, over half a terabyte (TB) of storage has been recouped from the shared storage area in VUspace for use elsewhere. In addition to regaining local storage, the online store also gives ITS the ability to better ensure compliance with our contracts for software distribution.

Operator Services Stats – During February 2009, Operators Services received 162,368 calls in the call center with a 99.1% answer rate. The team completed 14,691 pager modifications supporting patient care. A total of 274 conference calls were requested and processed through the call center, representing a 7.5% increase over January.

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10 G Circuit — Now 100% of Vanderbilt commercial internet and research traffic is routed on the new 10 Gigabit-per-second circuit activated Dec. 1. Limits of the circuit will be tested next. See the November posting for more information.

Promoting Science — The Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) is a program the National Science Foundation (NSF) hopes will promote scientific progress nationwide.

ITS assisted Peter Cummings, professor in the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering department, in developing the Vanderbilt components of a NSF EPSCoR grant proposal.

EPSCoR grants combine science with the expansion of computing infrastructure. Grants are weighted toward states currently receiving disproportionately small amounts of NSF funding. 

In this grant, Vanderbilt is joined in Tennessee by UT-Knoxville and Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The state of Tennessee is joined in the grant proposal by South Carolina, with Clemson and USC participating there.  Vanderbilt’s share of the proposal focuses on accelerating the upgrade of the Vanderbilt network core to 10Gbps capacity, allowing faster access to on-campus resources by off-campus partners.

Who Do That ooVoo — Campus Planning was looking for an alternative to in-person meetings because of the time, gas, and parking issues they presented. They were referred to the ITS Product Manager for Collaboration.

After a needs analysis determined they were looking for something free or very inexpensive that could accommodate up to 6 persons, ITS introduced them to ooVoo, an instant messaging client. With a webcam and microphone, it enables inexpensive computer video conferencing. The base version is free for up to 3 participants, the super version is just $10 per month (after a 30-day free trial). It allows for 6 participants, and requires only a webcam and audio/mic capabilities on each computer. 

A Campus Planning employee who is a self-described technical neophyte, is so happy with a solution he called the “wave of the future,” that he has invited 259 of his 450 contacts to begin using it.

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Sitemason Updates — ITS staff redesigned and deployed a brand new hardware architecture for the Sitemaon content management service. This new architecture has vastly improved the usability of the websites that use this technology.

100 Oaks Phones — New elevator phones were installed at One Hundred Oaks in time to meet the inspection date deadline.

LifeFlight Digits — ITS accommodated a request by LifeFlight Command Center to provide a number (2-RIDE) for their upcoming new transport service for coordinating ambulance discharge.

The number was previously “owned” by Vanderbilt Police Department but no longer used. They were more than happy to give the number to LifeFlight.

Role Away the Rolls — The “Class Rolls” system was retired.

BOINC — Vanderbilt ITS formed a team to demonstrate collective power of unused computing capabilities for research. Grid computing harnesses unused computing power on participants’ computers to further research. As part of the Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing (BOINC), the participants can contribute toward any number of research projects.

ITS continues to work with the Vanderbilt research community with the hope of finding a project that can make this service.

Peabody Secure Workstations — After consulting with the ITS security staff, Peabody College IT staff implemented a plan to improve security on more than 1000 workstations. The plan ensures local computers administrative accounts are created more securely in an organized, restrictive manner.

100 Oaks Phones — The first phase of 100 Oaks phone installation was completed. Thirteen Internet Protocol (IP) phones were installed and 12 analog lines.

Student Phones — The Student Voice Network was upgraded. CPUs were replaced, and software and firmware were upgraded. System updates encompassed 6,648 phones, including all student residence hall phones and administrative red phones.

Exchange 2007 - The Foundation is in Place! — ITS deployed the three primary Exchange 2007 roles into the production Exchange environment. The roles are the HUB Transport (transports mail to mailstores), the Client Access Server (provides client access through applications, the web, and mobile devices using activesync) and the Mailstore (stores all mailboxes). Testing to validate design features and capabilities in the production environment continues.

Mailgate Master Replacement — Vanderbilt’s production ProofPoint master mailgate was replaced. This enables ITS to leverage key features in the current software. It also reduces design complexity, allowing for additional consolidation of physical hardware into virtual platforms.

Lifecycle Management — ITS management reviewed the status of aging infrastructure with an eye toward strategically aligning activities to current economic constraints. Candidates for virtual infrastructure have already been identified to continue consolidating data center space and conserving precious resources.

Backup Service Efficiency — Backup of co-located systems via a private network was successfully tested. The tests showed a 400% performance improvement as the setup streamlined connectivity between customer data and the backup server.

Additional testing to evaluate scale and private network support will be conducted.

100 Oaks Firewall — The firewall for Vanderbilt Police Department’s 100 Oaks precinct was deployed along with network gear.

Monitoring and Assistance — An ITS staffer wrote a rule which alerts the monitoring center to excessive unsuccessful bad login attempts within a 5-minute period.

After one such episode, the staffer contacted the user, who had been having problems with the affected application but was not sure why. The staffer was able to pinpoint the problem to an expired service account tied to the application. After learning this, the user is requesting that the account be re-enabled.

The staffer did an excellent job pinpointing the problem and the rule will help alert ITS to similar problems in the future.

Operator Services Stats—During January 2009, Operators Services received 161,587 calls in the call center with a 98.9% answer rate. The team completed 14,261 pager modifications supporting patient care. A total of 255 conference calls were requested and processed through the call center, representing an 18% increase over December.

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Business Continuity — ITS established an off-site web presence which provides a third level of assurance of a continued Vanderbilt web presence during a catastrophic failure or disaster. Even if both on-campus web servers fail, the offsite server ensures a continued Vanderbilt web presence and will provide an additional communications mechanism in future.

A Vision for the Future — The first draft of the “Identity Vision for Vanderbilt University” was crafted by a collaboration among representatives of MIS, ITS, Informatics, and the office of the Chief Information Security Officer. This vision has been in development for three years and along with a roadmap for implementation, it also defines future identity projects for Vanderbilt.

Bandwidth Increase — Internet 1 bandwidth was increased from 622 Mbps to 1 Gbps, a better than 50% increase. This increase was completed in conjunction with the “Blazing Research” 10 Gbps bandwidth increase for Internet2 reported in last month’s report.

Enhanced 911 — A 911 failover process has been implemented for the Vanderbilt Police Department (VPD). If the VPD phone switch is disabled in any way, the ITS Network Operation Center automatically redirects calls to another number within the Vanderbilt phone system. This greatly adds to the integrity of Vanderbilt’s emergency communications.

Process Improvement — ITS developed “Rich Web Monitoring” using Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007 to monitor web access and Activesync for Exchange email. With this system synthetic transactions to appropriate servers ensure the environment is working. These transactions log directly into a mailbox, simulating actual usage. This is an improvement over earlier monitoring methods.

Live Flash — ITS Streaming Media Services has added Live Flash, providing the capability to stream live video to a cross-platform application (Flash). This augments the existing Windows Media and Real capabilities.

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Streaming Media Demands Increase — Streaming Media Services recorded a three-day Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP) short course held at Vanderbilt December 16-18. The course was titled Introduction to Nuclear Chemistry and Fuel Cycle Separations. Four other events were streamed in the typically light month of December as well as the day long Turkey Toss!

Software Store Enhancements — Following the ITS Software Store’s December 1 rollout of its online storefront, the previous software image library on VUspace was discontinued.

The new online storefront enables Vanderbilt community members, including departments, to purchase and download software. Using the storefront instead of processing orders manually saves the equivalent of 495 employee days per year. Online ordering instead of processing 1180 forms saves an estimated 10 pounds of paper each month. 

New Light Imaging — ITS planned and coordinated moving the New Light Imaging.com domain to Vanderbilt. New Light imaging is a joint venture with VUMC. Vanderbilt hosts and owns the domain name and all records associated with it. This was a complex initiative requiring coordination between many ITS staffers to ensure mail receipt and delivery, VUnetID feeds, Proofpoint tables, and domain name ownership.

Going Virtual? — ITS set up two virtual machines so the Library can evaluate virtual technologies. The Library currently co-locates 20 servers in the ITS Data Center. If the Library migrates some of those servers to virtual machines (where several “virtual” servers can exist on one physical machine), the consolidation would save space and energy costs.

Dyer Observatory — The Dyer Observatory’s phone system limited them to a few voice mailboxes with little storage and few options. They wanted to expand it and add directions, staff directory, and information on upcoming events.After an ITS review determined the current system could not meet their needs, ITS staff set up two caller’s menus, two transfer boxes, 5 information boxes, and 5 personal mailboxes for their staff. To ensure proper handoff of calls, AT&T was contacted and call forwarding was set up on two lines.

Now Dyer retains their 322-DYER lead number and has a new caller’s menu that enables callers to be transferred to the University or VUMC switchboard, receive directions, information on upcoming events, hours of operation, rental information, information on scheduled field trips, and a staff directory. They can also leave messages requesting more information.

VPD Headphones — The Vanderbilt Police Department sent a note thanking ITS for two headphones given to the VPD Communications Unit. They were surplus headphones from the ITS Operator Services group. They wrote “our department appreciates you giving us more resources that will ultimately provide better customer service to our community.”

Cooper Collaborates — Representative Jim Cooper from the State of TN participated via video conference in the Southern California Innovation Project (SCIP) at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law. Representative Cooper has been a guest lecturer in the Vanderbilt Law School. ITS facilitated his participation in this conference by offering it’s video conferencing equipment and assistance to Representative Cooper to make his portion of the conference successful.

Vanderbilt Health 100 Oaks — ITS responded to a need from the Vanderbilt Medical Center to provide smaller 6-button Internet Protocol (IP) D-term phones for certain areas at 100 Oaks. The phones are a cost-effective alternative to running additional cables to departments in areas with minimal cabling was installed. The phones have the functionality of 32-button D-term phones except for multiple line capacity and speed dial. With a lower price point than a typical D-term phone, these units offer operational cost savings to those departments.

Reclaiming Resources — The voice mail reclamation project has concluded after reclaiming 453 voicemail boxes no longer in use. This enables ITS to continue meeting the voice mail needs of the community on a service that is nearing capacity.

New SLAs — ITS completed and posted Service Level Agreements for the Domain Name Service (DNS) and for the VUmailguard email security product.Service Level Agreements help bridge the gap between perceptions of expected service and actual service and delivery. Developing these expectations enable ITS to align its services with the demands of the vast and varied Vanderbilt community.

Virtual Environment  — ITS upgraded the virtual environment production servers (ESX hosts) to the latest software version. This enables us to leverage Storage VMotion to consolidate storage and provides additional insights into ESX server health – all to better support shared infrastructure services and those for departments who use this service.Additional large ESX hosts were also deployed to enable consolidation and lifecycle activities in the virtual environment. Plans call for consolidation of the current 16 production ESX hosts to 12 by mid-summer, 2009.

Modem Decrease — With demand for the dial-in modem pool decreasing, ITS removed an unnecessary T1 line, better managing capacity for a service that is less needed.

Antivirus Upgrade — VirusScan v. 8.7, the latest version from McAfee, is posted on the ITS website for download by the Vanderbilt community. This Vanderbilt site license is an important foundation for securing information at Vanderbilt.

Poison Control Goes Digital — ITS converted the Poison Control Center from an analog call recording device to a digital device. The installation date was coordinated so the equipment vendor was onsite during the cutover.The new equipment increases reporting capabilities. The Director of the Poison Control Center expressed great pleasure that reports can be created from multiple locations, including his desk. Previously, reports could only be generated from the server. Having this up-to-date information available when he needs it empowers better business decisions and operations management.

Operator Services Stats—During December, Operators Services received 180,127 calls in the call center with a 99% answer rate. The team completed 17,377 pager modifications supporting patient care. A total of 217 conference calls were requested and processed through the call center.

Improve the Business

Blazing Research — Vanderbilt began routing Internet2 and Internet 1 traffic onto a new 10 Gbps circuit. This new circuit increases available research bandwidth by 15 times the previous capacity! Vanderbilt's new 10 Gbps circuit to Atlanta, activated Dec. 1, increases Internet2 research bandwidth from 622 megabits per second to 9 gigabits per second. The other 10 percent (1 gigabit per second) is allocated to Vanderbilt's primary commodity-based Internet connection.

The research bandwidth is available to anyone communicating with an institution via research networks such as Internet2 and the National LambdaRail (NLR), and it enables such scientific research as that being done by the Vanderbilt Department of Physics & Astronomy. Nuclear physicist Dr. Charles Maguire recently secured Vanderbilt's role as the U.S. data repository and principal data analysis site (Tier 2) for the Compact Muon Solenoid-Heavy Ion (CMS-H1) experiments conducted on the large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN near Geneva, Switzerland. When experimentation there is ongoing for 4-6 weeks each Fall, Vanderbilt will receive near real-time flows of data from the collider experiments.

International Collaboration — Due in large part to ITS technical staff, a hugely successful global multimedia videoconference was held on November 5 to discuss global health issues and collaboration between Vanderbilt University and the University of Melbourne, with additional participation by an expert located in Cambodia. The conference, serving as a pilot for future international collaborations, had three goals:

1. To showcase the most promising medical collaborations between the two institutions in the areas of colorectal cancer, neuroscience, and global health.
2. To explore using new technology for the development and growth of a variety of international collaborations.
3. To demonstrate VU leadership's support for these projects specifically and the core partnership in general.

Vanderbilt entered into an institutional "core partnership" with the University of Melbourne (MU) in Fall, 2006. Since then, more than 20 research, teaching, and student opportunities have developed out of the partnership.

Chancellor Zeppos and several chancellors and faculty members from both institutions attended.

Software Store Enhancements — The ITS Software Store will roll out enhancements to its online system for purchasing software Dec. 1. The enhancements allow Vanderbilt departments to buy and download software for use on Vanderbilt computers without using the 1180 form.

Employees and students have used this storefront for several years to purchase software for personal use by credit card.

ITS configured the new storefront with its top selling products. Discounts are also available for many other titles.

During 2008, some 59,428 software licenses were purchased prior to this enhanced functionality. Each license required 4 minutes to process by ITS staff. The time savings gained from no longer processing each license equates to 3962 hours per year.

SSN Security — ITS and MIS met regarding the Housing Office initiative to replace Social Security numbers (SSN) as unique identifiers for students. This cross-department effort will enable a more secure method for processing student information without exposing their SSNs unnecessarily.

Run the Business

VPD Firewall Enhancements — The Vanderbilt Police Department (VPD) Precinct firewall enhancement project is complete. Equipment was architected so that, with necessary cabling, any precinct can be used as a disaster recovery location.

Residential Living Firewalls — Lifecycle replacement of Residential Living firewalls was successfully completed enabling the secure transmission of student and residential living information.

Division of Administration (DoA) Desktop Support Team and A&S Collaboration — ITS and A&S technology leaders invested a half-day session to processes and technologies used by the DoA support team that might be of use to the A&S Microcomputer lab staff. 

The session was very productive.  A&S is keenly interested in obtaining an Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) system for support calls and PC remote control tools used by DoA support. This was an extremely productive collaboration between ITS and A&S.

Sprint Coverage — Sprint continues expanding in-building cellular coverage to accommodate increased use of their phones. Sprint is also establishing coverage in areas not included in the original Sprint build-out. 

In November, Sprint completed coverage for Children's Hospital, South Parking Garage, Vanderbilt University Hospital (VUH), and 3401 West End Avenue.  At VUH, they were able to complete an IDEN build-out that will allow the critical care crash team to use Nextel devices vs. radios.

Saving the Day and Money too — The Mid-Range Windows division of VUMC Informatics had a vendor with an application that monitors IV machines dispensing medications. This system has enable cost efficiencies in that department and needed to work smoothly; however, there were errors in back-end system processing with system authentication and communication. Once ITS became involved a better solution was created and the system then worked as expected. ITS also provided feedback and strategies to VUMC Informatics to avoid similar problems in the future.

DNS/DHCP Wins — ITS continues to migrate IP Management to the Diamond IP environment.  Management of MIS subnets has been turned over to power users in MIS to manage both DNS and IP addresses.

Service to ITS AppHosting and MIS staff has improved because there is no delay between service request and delivery. These groups manage their own space, and have immediate resources (IP addresses) available. This has also reduced processing time for ITS ND&E staff by about an hour each week.

Poison Center Enhanced — Vanderbilt LifeFlight had a conference call with the Vanderbilt-based Tennessee Poison Center (TPC). During the conference the Poison Center tried but was unable to add another party. An ITS network technician later determined that if the Poison Center also had a conferencing bridge on their phone, as did LifeFlight, additional persons could have been added on the Poison Center end.

As a result, an 8-party conference bridge has been added to the 5 Poison Center phones. The bridge also enables them to archive conversations.

Meharry Alliance — ITS moved 11 Meharry Alliance group phones to a new off-campus location and upgraded them to Internet Protocol Telephony.

Cutting Edge Nursing — The ITS Service Delivery and Project Management (SDPM) group took a "field trip" to the Vanderbilt School of Nursing to learn about their use of technology tools in and out of the classroom.

The Nursing School uses Captiva, Centra, Blackboard, Mediasite, Voice over Power Point and other applications to further learning.  Collectively they enable remote learning and blended learning.

The SDPM team also learned about the school's future expansion plans. The trip will be beneficial in applying Nursing's solutions elsewhere on campus.

VUmailguard SLA — ITS needed a clear, concise and measurable description of the VUmailguard service offered to customers. A Service Level Agreement (SLA) was developed to meet that need.

The SLA enables ITS to match perceptions of expected service offerings with actual service support and delivery. It enables Service Delivery Managers to know what the product comprises and what type of experience the customer can expect. Additionally, Service Delivery will be able to address missed deliverables and work with Application Hosting to improve process and customer service.

Construction Update — ITS provided information and pricing for 26 blue light phones for the Children's Way garage project. ITS will also provide elevator phones.

Phase 2 of the Dudley Stadium revitalization project has begun. ITS is being consulted to locate existing conduit and to determine future needs for the stadium.

Hill Center Blues — Plans are being formalized that would create a Vanderbilt Police Department alternate dispatch location for disaster recovery in the Hill Center. Two locations in the center are under consideration. A decision will be made in December.

Operator Services Stats — During November the Operators Services call center received 158,129 calls, with a 99.3% answer rate. The team completed 13,788 pager modifications supporting patient care and processed 188 conference calls.

Streaming Media — ITS Streaming Media Services streamed 11 events during November. However, one of those events was the day and one-half Stroke Symposium, which produced 24 streaming files for 12 separate sessions, with each file averaging nearly an hour.

The groundwork is being laid for an update to v. 5.0 of Mediasite. This will likely occur during the end-of-year break to accommodate Medical School Media Center recording needs.

Load Balancing — ITS Unix/Linux Administrators deployed the F5 Local Traffic Manager (LTM) Load Balancer infrastructure. This infrastructure is critical to the designs of numerous projects and broadens the capabilities of load balancing services ITS can offer to core services. The Sun Identity Management and Microsoft Exchange 2007 projects will immediately benefit from this infrastructure.

Virtual Environment Upgrade — ITS Virtual Administrators upgraded the VMware ESX host operating system to version 3.5 on most virtual servers. The upgrade was a prerequisite for several activities that will improve the environment. Administrators can now re-claim precious resources (SAN consolidation) and offer a supported virtual environment for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 servers.

SharePoint Enhancements — ITS Windows Administrators made several adjustments to enhance performance and support of the SharePoint environment. The most significant was enabling Kerberos authentication. This change improved the load times on all SharePoint sites, and shortened warm up script times from one-to-two hours to approximately two minutes.

Red Hat Upgrade — ITS Unix/Linux Administrators upgraded the Red Hat Network (RHN) service and re-registered 97 ITS clients. The RHN Satellite service offers activation keys for Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL), allows easier/quicker patching of RHEL servers, and indicates the health of RHEL environments. This service is available to the Vanderbilt community.

Problem Pinpointed — The Key Management Service (KMS) provides client licensing for "volume licensed" versions of Microsoft Vista and Windows Server 2008. VUMC clients not joined to the Vanderbilt Domain were not registering with KMS due to a missing configuration in the VUMC Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP) Service. While the impact of this issue was not severe and a work-around was well documented, technical staff spent many hours over several months troubleshooting. Configuration requirements are being communicated to VUMC technical partners for resolution.

App Hosting Stats — During November, Application Hosting processed 134 Magic tickets and performed 47 VUmail to VUexchange mailbox migrations. A staff member was cross-trained as an additional mail admin to maintain/monitor the ProofPoint environment.

Improve the Business

EPIC Improvement for Operators — EPIC, VUMC’s physician and registration system, has been installed on Operator Services workstations.  It give operators access to specific patient appointment information, including clinic, location, doctor’s name, and date and time.  Previously, Operators Services received many appointment-related calls during non-clinic hours and would transfer calls to answering systems on a “best guess” basis or ask callers to call clinics during regular business hours. As operators become more fully trained on all aspects of EPIC, they’re assisting patients with appointment information 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

Online Software Distribution — As part of continuous process improvement efforts, ITS recently rolled out a pilot process and new technology to streamline the software procurement process. The Division of Administration, the Law School, and the Owen Graduate School of Management have successfully participated in the new online software purchasing and download process over the last month. Previously departments had to fill out an 1180 and pick up the media in person from ITS offices at the Hill Center. Now, all services are online and additional departments will come online soon as we move from pilot testing to full production.

DNS/DHCP – Diamond IP Milestone — ITS Unix/Linux admins reached a major milestone in the DNS/DHCP Enhancement project by importing NetID data into the Production Diamond IP environment. This marks the beginning of self-serve IP Address Management (IPAM)/DNS provisioning. It also allows the team to focus on oncoming DHCP migrations. The new system will replace the end-of-life NetID.Ten ITS and 6 MIS staffers received onsite training on IPAM/DNS provisioning.

Load Balancer Enhancements — Testing and implementation of configurations on the Content Switching Mode (CSM) Network Load Balancer allow servers behind the CSM to connect o other load balanced services. This will be applied to all CSM services to ensure full connectivity without local host file entries.This functionality was developed in-house and was not previously available to services using the CSM Load Balancer.

Modem Use Decreasing — Vanderbilt will soon drop another T1 modem line, saving money without impacting users. In coordination with academic computing areas, ITS reduced twelve T1 modem lines to 6, then 3. Two will remain after the most reduction due to the fact that modem use has steadily declined with the pervasive availability of broadband Internet Service Providers (ISPs).

ITS Open House During DigitalVU — ITS is partnered with Public Affairs and the Center for Teaching during October for DigitalVU, a month of workshops, lectures, and demonstration designed to take the mystery out of some of these IT tools and offer ideas about how to make them work in the classroom and beyond. Read more about it in myVU.ITS hosted an Open House three consecutive Fridays, featuring training and info-sessions. Topics included podcasting, video and web conferencing, classroom technologies, Camtasia, PowerPoint, Smartboards, and YouTube, Vanderbilt, and ITunesU.More than 100 Vanderbilt staff and faculty from both the university and the medical center took part in these events, and feedback has been very positive. Approximately 35 people attended the ITS open houses, the last of which incorporated the monthly Vanderbilt Web Spiders meeting. 

VandyLAN — The Vanderbilt Computer Society (VandyCS) student organization recently held it's biannual Fall 2008 VandyLAN tournament and event with more than 314 registered attendees. ITS remains the flagship sponsor for the event in support of the VandyCS organization and continued efforts to boost its appeal among students.

Run the Business

Operator Services Award— Operator Services Call Center was recognized with the Excellent Service Award from the Medicine Patient Care Center Service Team. This award, given to Vanderbilt departments, recognizes outstanding service, performance, and support in enabling others to perform their duties and meet the goals of excellence.

ESPN Gameday Phones & Data — ITS coordinated with AT&T to provide phone and data connectivity for ESPN’s College Gameday broadcast from The Commons Oct. 4. Quick response to the request with little notification yielded a wildly successful Gameday event on the Vanderbilt campus.

Dudley Wireless Increased — ITS installed an additional wireless access point (AP) in the Dudley Stadium press box in anticipation of ESPN College Game Day on Oct. 4 game against Auburn, which Vanderbilt won. Peak usage wireless usage in the press box reached 69 users during the game.

Third Party Candidates Streamed — ITS Streaming Media recorded and made available the third party presidential debate held October 6 in the Stevenson Center.The recordings are available at:  
http://media-srv1.its.vanderbilt.edu/asxgen/public_affairs/third_party_0
81006.wmv (Windows media)
http://media-srv1.its.vanderbilt.edu/ramgen/public_affairs/third_party_0
81006.rm (Real Media)
and will be posted soon on the VUcast page at http://www.vanderbilt.edu/news.

ITxpo — An ITS Director attended the Gartner ITxpo Symposium in Orlando and blogged about what she learned there. Read it at http://blogs.vanderbilt.edu/gartnertrends/.

Verizon Stats — Verizon now has 9004 Vanderbilt subscribers, an increase of 82 over the previous month. Due to a master agreement between Vanderbilt and Verizon as negotiated by ITS and Procurement staff, there was over $7,800 in cost avoidance last month alone for Vanderbilt departments and individual account holders.

VICC —During a recent technical issue, ITS worked with technical staff in the Vanderbilt Ingram Cancer Center to resolve the problem and maintain communication throughout the process. Once resolved, the web coordinator for vicc.org was kind enough to write:“I really appreciate the very fast response to my urgent requests and the follow-up, explaining what caused the problem. These things happen, and what matters most after an urgent issue such as this one is fixed are the lessons learned. Clearly you all are doing that part too, and it gives me confidence as one of ITS’s partners.”

VUMC Co-Lo — ITS and NCS finalized the process for establishing network connections for VUMC co-located equipment that will be on VUMC network. The equipment is located in the ITS Data Center. Going forward, NCS staff, who have been added to the data center access list, will make the connections. NCS has agreed to use the ITS labeling standard. This should prevent network connectivity delays, and remove ITS from the middle of the process.

Emergency Fix — Network Services assisted in troubleshooting an existing overhead paging system in the Adult Emergency Department that was thought by VUMC to be unusable. Through testing, Network Services isolated the problem and the system was successfully connected to the PBX switch. This kept VUMC from having to replace the system.

Disaster Drill Success — The Vanderbilt Decon disaster drill was successful. ITS set up phones in the Theatre Room at Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital and rearranged phones in the Learning Center for the drill.

LifeFlight — A new RT circuit for radio communication between the LifeFlight dispatch center and the Clarksville base is installed and operating.

Walking Talking Nurses — The Cancer Center in the Vanderbilt Clinic has purchased 35 walkie-talkie type phones from Sprint. Nurses will use the phones as they move around the clinic.

Cancer Center Relocated — The Ingram Cancer Clinic was successfully relocated from the second floor of the Vanderbilt Clinic into its newly renovated space on the first floor with ITS assistance with voice service transitions.

Software Savings — In an effort to make the best deal possible, ITS assisted Vanderbilt’s Campus Planning and Construction in obtaining the much needed Autodesk Design Institute software. The ITS Software Store coordinated with the Civil Engineering department to allow additional licenses for Campus Planning staff. This innovative solution saved Vanderbilt more than $11,000.

Critical Patch — ITS Windows administrators installed the Microsoft out-of-band critical patch to all Windows servers within 18 hours of release.  The patch prevents worm-type infection to Windows servers. The team tested critical applications within tight timelines following the release. Patches were applied overnight, limiting impact to the Vanderbilt community.

Backup Services Upgraded — ITS Storage Administration upgraded Networker, the backup software. This improved performance and resolved several bugs. There is a significant increase in log detail for administrators.The team also created a software repository for client software. This allows administrators to maintain client versions from the servers (after clients upgrade to a certain version).

Applications Hosting Stats — During October 118 Magic tickets were processed and 47 VUmail to VUexchange mailbox migrations were performed.

Emergency Phone Demo — GAI-Tronics was on campus to demonstrate new speakers that may be installed on the Emergency Phone stanchions.  VPD, Plant Operations, Graybar and ITS staff took part in this demo conducted in the Commons Center lawn. Adding speakers to emergency phones offers several increased security features, including the ability to broadcast message to the speakers, however it does increase the cost for each emergency phone installation.

Louise Yates — Louise Yates, a lovely person who touched many with her ready smile and helpful attitude, passed away September 24 at the age of 83. Louise worked in telecommunications at Vanderbilt an astounding 45 years, right up to several days before she died.

During her career she had daily contact with generations of doctors and case managers at VUMC. As testament to her impact here, Vanderbilt LifeFlight did a flyover at her memorial service in tribute to her. An article about her passing appeared in MyVU . She will be greatly missed.

Change the Business

Special Messaging — Voice Services received a request from Vanderbilt Eye Institute (VEI) to implement customized announcements for on-hold callers. Two Automatic Call Distribution (ACD) groups consisting of 250 phones were moved into a special group so their Messaging on Hold could provide customized music and messaging.

An outside vendor sends the customized content via modem to source equipment tied to the Vanderbilt PBX switch. This required coordination with the ITS switch room and an outside vendor. The chance provides customers with updated information about VEI's services, thereby increasing their patient flow.

Increase of Exchange User Mailbox Quotas to 1GB – Exchange User Mailbox Quotas have been increased to at least 1GB.  Those users whose mailbox was already above 1GB were left at their current quota.

Unified Collaboration Design validated by Microsoft – The ITS Email Administration team worked with Microsoft Engineers and Voice partners this month in order to validate the initial design during an Architectural Design Session.  They also met with the Unified Communications representative from Microsoft to apply for the Lighthouse program and reviewed the current infrastructure and identified that Vanderbilt is on track.

Run the Business

Checking Off the Lists — Approximately 650 unused email lists were deleted during an effort to clean up Vanderbilt list servers.

Going for the Gold — On August 27, ITS received a request to change the caller's menu on the 322-GOLD athletics phone line before the Labor Day weekend Aug. 20-Sept.1. An ITS representative met with the ticket manager Friday afternoon and trained him to make the changes himself. The ITS rep called the number from home on Labor Day and found the menu had been successfully changed.

DOA Support Web Server now Virtualized! – ITS Virtualization and DOA support staff worked together this month to perform a “Physical-to-Virtual” migration of the DOA Support Web server.  This places the server in a Highly Available and climate controlled environment using VMWare-HA and the ITS ESX cluster that operates inside the Hill data center.Virtual Tape Library Evaluation – ITS Storage Administration has been evaluating numerous B2D “backup-to-disk” technologies for the past year.   September was spent evaluating a virtual tape library from EMC called an Enterprise Disk Library (EDL.)  The purpose of this evaluation is to mitigate numerous problems in a de-centralized enterprise sized backup environment by the induction of a speedy disk layer. This particular evaluation is going pleasingly well. ITS storage administration is measuring very good performance (700 Mega Bytes / second) through the EDL.  This solution runs an active/active configuration and one engine will take over the other engine’s work load in the event that one goes offline. 

VMWare ESX Stabilization – In August, ITS Virtualization Staff dealt with a fairly significant Virtual Environment outage that occurred during a power maintenance event in the Data Center.  While searching for a root cause, the staff uncovered several mis-configurations in the environment.  There was a concerted effort to fix these which has now been completed.  This included an audit of the ESX power/network connections to verify redundant network switches were being used in ether-channel trunks, as well as verifying that all appropriate VLAN’s  were mapped to each ESX server.  In addition, some enhancements were made such as distributing public keys to each ESX host and validation of the NTP configurations.

Google Bus at The Commons — When the Google Apps for Education bus came to campus September 18, Google staffers had a minor problem with wireless access due to their computer configuration. ITS staffers quickly responded, solving the problem. The bus tour and events were a success.

Dudley Phones — On August 26, Athletics submitted a requisition to AT&T requesting that 19 phones lines be installed in Dudley Stadium before the first home football game September 4. Despite the last minute request, ITS Voice Services called AT&T to expedite the order and it was completed on the day of the game. Typical orders take two weeks to complete.

More Dudley Phones — Yet another Dudley Stadium rush order was received the day before Vanderbilt's nationally-televised home opener. This was for five phone lines for Dudley point-of-sale concessions. The last-minute order should have gone through AT&T but instead was placed with ITS. Staffers responded by installing the phones within 5 hours with some last-minute cabling by another vendor required.

Paving the Way — Due to on-boarding issues with PAVE students, duplicate accounts were created for 38 of these students. Through collaboration and corrective action, ITS satisfactorily resolved the problem for each of these students.

Software Store Enhanced — ITS completed the integration development needed to support ITS Software Store authentication and a new version of their software platform. A new, improved, and more full service online software store will roll out in October.

Phone in a Hurry — An urgent request was received Friday afternoon to install a phone in a phoneless Sarratt conference room for a very important 8 a.m. conference call the following Monday. A group of ITS staffers immediately attended to the emergency and installed the requested phone.

Ricoh Problems — A problem caused the SSDP setting on Ricoh devices such as printers to become enabled, flooding the Vanderbilt network with broadcast SSDP packets and thereby degrading network performance. ITS staffers identified the suspect devices on the Vanderbilt network and worked with departments and vendors to correct the problem. Additional work is underway with Procurement on preventing this issue in future.

Operator Services Stats—During September, Operators Services received 170,155 calls in the call center with a 99.1% answer rate. The team completed 13,890 pager modifications supporting patient care. A total of 231 conference calls were processed.

Operator Services Podcast— A new podcast about ITS Operator Services and Contact Center is posted on YouTube and linked to from the About ITS page.

VUMC Servers In ITS Data Center — VUMC will co-locate some servers and blade storage in the ITS Data Center. A mid-range UNIX server was successfully co-located and the VUMC network was extended to access it.

Double Identities — ITS worked with the Registrar's Office to fix several student VUnetID accounts which had a duplicate entry from Human Resources. This occurred in some cases when students gave an incorrect Social Security number to Admissions and the correct one to Human Resources.

As a result, two email accounts and in some cases two VUnetIDs were created for affected students. ITS contacted students and asked which account they preferred to keep and then removed the other. ITS will work with the Registrar's Office to develop a more proactive solution.

New McAfee — A new version of McAfee VirusScan v. 8.5 was released which includes Patch Level 6.

General Library Wireless — Twenty-one new wireless access points (APs) were installed in the General Library Building. The devices were installed on floors 4 through 8, including the Divinity Library.

VPD WebCAD — Desktop Support helped VPD get their WebCAD server on the Vanderbilt network. Some issues were identified which the WebCAD vendor has been asked to correct to maintain the highest standard of information security.

Cancer Center Moves — ITS moved 120 phones for the Cancer Center's new location in The Vanderbilt Clinic.

Hello Good Night — ITS set up Internet Protocol (IP) phones for the Vanderbilt Sleep Disorders Center at the Hyatt in Cool Springs.

St. Augustine's — ITS staffers set up 10 phones, 24 data ports and two wireless APs for new construction at St. Augustine's Chapel.

VPD Phone — Eighteen phones in six buildings on campus were relocated for Vanderbilt Police Department.

Run the Business

Back to School — Back to school activities went extremely well this year, including the historic move-in of the Class of 2012 into The Commons.

More than 5000 additional network connections were activated with minimal issues and up to 2,810 dorm users connected wirelessly.

Helping Helpers — ITS assisted HR-Nurse Recruitment by relocating systems while their offices in the Village at Vanderbilt are remodeled.

Recycling Equipment — Several CRT displays, 31 out-of-lifecycle computer systems, and associated equipment and parts were sent to the Vanderbilt warehouse for recycling.

NES Electrical Renovation throughout Campus—The NES 69 KV project that replaced the main electrical feed to campus and replaced old wooden electric poles with new metal poles is now complete. This project required ITS to move wired infrastructure to the new poles as well. ITS involvement included changes to more than 20,000 pairs of copper cables and more than 1700 fiber-optic strands.

Human Resources — ITS assisted with life-cycle computer replacement for Human Resources and helped contain some malware discovered on HR computers.

Construction Update— ITS assisted with IT infrastructure as well as voice and data port migrations/additions for the following areas:

• Four apartments at the Village at Vanderbilt have been equipped with Vanderbilt University voice, data, TeleVU, and wireless coverage.
• ITS prepared an estimate for voice and data services for a new day care facility at 1817 Patterson Street. Move-in at the site, previously owned by Baptist Hospital, is planned for the 1^st quarter of 2009.
• The Owen Graduate School of Management is completing a renovation in the Old Mechanical Building. In addition to providing wireless coverage, data ports were added for AV equipment and computers.
• The School of Engineering purchased the building at 1025 16^th Ave., South. ITS prepared voice and data services estimates for both leased fiber and Vanderbilt-owned fiber. Deploying Vanderbilt-owned fiber would require approval and rental of 25 poles between the building and the closest place Vanderbilt currently has fiber. The staff move-in target date is March 2009.
• The Center for Teaching renovation and move from Calhoun Hall to the 3^rd floor of 1114 19^th Ave. is complete.
• Calhoun Hall and Benson Hall/Old Central have nearly completed their summer renovation. Infrastructure for future wireless coverage was built in.
• The General Counsel expansion is complete. They expanded into the former location of the Chancellor's Search Committee Office.
• The Army and Navy ROTC expansion on the 1^st floor of 1114 19^th Ave is complete.

QUIT Time —Ahead of the Sept. 1 ban on smoking on the VUMC campus, a regular requisition came in to voice services for a quit smoking hotline. It required lots of extra attention by ITS staff, including providing a special phone number (936-QUIT), extra programming to accommodate submenus, meeting with a VUMC member to explain how to record voice mail, typing up instructions on forwarding calls, and, at the last minute the afternoon before it went live, programming another phone at Health Plus.

This is an example of ITS scrambling to meet custom requirements for what, on its face, was a routine requisition.

Identity Management —ITS presented an identity management overview and strategy session to the Finance and Controllers group. The Associate Vice Chancellor for Finance and Controller, was very appreciative, calling the presentation "timely and relevant to my folks."

Getting the Word Out —An ITS staffer spoke with Resident Assistants (RAs) ahead of move-in weekend. He familiarized them with ITS help available during move-in and throughout the year. He also referred them to the ITS Security team's Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Regulatory Report, cautioned about the Recording Industry Association of America's monitoring of illegal downloads at Vanderbilt, and about the legal alternatives Vanderbilt provides.

United Way Ready — The 2008 United Way campaign infrastructure was implemented approximately one month in advance of the September 26 kickoff. Vanderbilt community members will be able to log in using their VUnetID and e-password to access the United Way campaign tools. The completion was well in advance of Development and Alumni Relation's needs.

Rand Signs — ITS facilitated the installation of two digital signs in Rand. The screens will run Dining Services content and, after hours, serve as cable TVs. They will also be part of the overall Emergency Management Communications infrastructure, able to receive emergency messages if and when they are communicated across campus.

Firewall Planning — Procedures have been mapped out for changes to the MIS firewall and for firewall lifecycle replacements. The procedures will make changes more consistent and efficient.

A&S Deans to Exchange — ITS, along with Arts and Sciences Microcomputer Laboratories MCL), migrated an A&S Excutive Dean and Associate Dean to new Microsoft Exchange email with increased 1GB quotas.

A&S Wireless Review— ITS facilitated Arts & Sciences review of its wireless networking by providing the number and location of wireless Access Points (APs) in A&S buildings and spaces.

VPD Firewalls— The Vanderbilt Police Department Precinct Firewall project is underway. Firewalls are being deployed at all precincts and will total six.

Sprint Coverage— Following two full days of building walk-throughs, Sprint is working on a solution to improve Sprint cellular coverage in university buildings and Plant Operations utility tunnels. Assistant Vice Chancellor for Plant Operations, will receive the proposal.

Digital Signage Emergency Notification—A process is being developed to use digital signage for emergency notification. A successful test was performed with Sarratt digital signs.

LifeFlight Emergency Phone Service—Fourteen LifeFlight team members will receive Government Emergency Telephone Service (GETS) with Wireless Priority Service (WPS) capability. The service, provided by Sprint free to GETS subscribers, gives users priority calling access to a designated phone trunk during emergencies.

Improved Access—ITS is working with Vanderbilt's Real Estate and Plant Operations offices to gain access to the buildings they manage. This will allow ITS staff to quickly enter buildings for routine maintenance and/or during a voice or data outage.

Wireless Backup for VPD—ITS installed a backup data network connection to the Vanderbilt Police Department using encrypted wireless technology. It was successfully tested during the 69 KV project when the fiber to VPD had to be cut and moved.

Network Upgrades—ITS completed upgrades on network infrastructure devices to resolve software issues. More than 800 Cisco data network switches and 21 voice IPX systems were involved. A total of 74 data switches were also upgraded due to lifecycle replacement.

Adobe Flash Server Upgrade—ITS Application Hosting upgraded the Adobe Flash server to the latest revision. This expands Flash capabilities for end users.

Change Management Change—ITS migrated the Change Management Web application from a VUMC server to an ITS server. The medical center quit using the application last year and passed the code on to the university. ITS staff customized the application, adding rich features and more business-aligned data fields.

Cool Data Center—Phase I of the Data Center Realignment project was completed. The project, on which Network Operation Center (NOC) staff and Application Hosting administrators worked together, is focused on finding more efficient ways to cool the thousands of devices housed in the data center.

New Front End Mail Servers—Three VUexchange email front end servers were replaced as part of lifecycle replacement. The servers are used for web email capability, all smartphone Activesync connections, and Exchange environment email routing.

Application Hosting Stats—During August Applications Hosting processed 175 Magic tickets and migrated 46 email accounts from VUmail to VUexchange.

Napster Changes—Online music service Napster ceased its nationwide Napster on Campus program, ending its 4-year partnership with Vanderbilt. However, ITS management persuaded Napster to continue Faculty and Staff discounts for current subscribers and to offer a 33% 3-month discount on Napster-to-Go accounts for new Vanderbilt subscribers.

Operator Services Stats—During August Operators Services received 174,053 in the call center with a 98.4% answer rate. The team completed 14,198 pager modifications supporting patient care. A total of 266 conference calls were processed.

Change the Business

Unified Collaboration — ITS recently established a proof-of-concept system for forty-two staff in the organization to test Microsoft's Unified Communications technology. This proof-of-concept is an effort to understand and plan for future unified collaboration across all communications technologies including integrated access to voicemail, email, calendaring, instant messaging, and presence awareness. The project team produced a short video demonstrating the agility and spontaneity of unified collaboration. It is being shown to different groups to gauge interest. A production pilot of unified collaboration is expected in 2009.

Operator Services Facilitates Critical Lab Alerts— ITS Operator Services and Call Center have been chosen to support and facilitate escalations of the Vanderbilt Lab Alerts System for critical lab results notification. The Lab Alerts System is designed to push critical and time sensitive lab results to healthcare providers as quickly as possible. When a page from the Lab Alerts System to the responsible provider is not responded to within 10 minutes, Operator Services will be notified by e-mail and by a real-time monitor display to begin the escalation process.  Operator Services tracks down and makes contact with the provider to inform them of the lab result, or instruct them to contact the lab for additional information or instructions.  Critical minutes will be saved by using the Call Center's operators and contact database for this critical patient care activity.

High Speed Research — ITS worked with VUMC Network Computing Services (NCS) to secure funding from VUMC Office of Research (OOR) to provide gigabit network connectivity for the lab of Dr Melanie Ohi of the Center for Structural Biology.  This high-speed connectivity allows Dr. Ohi to exploit the high performance of the Blue Arc research storage system.

More Research Computing Space—ITS storage administration staff upgraded the BlueArc Network Attached Storage (NAS) appliance, adding 64 Storage Area Network (SAN) ports and 45 terabytes of storage space. The Bluearc is a storage array supporting the Vanderbilt research community.

Getting the Pics — A director in the Office of the Dean of Students asked ITS to assist with their obtaining student photos in order to create a "face book" of all current students. ITS responded quickly and enabled the speedy delivery of the photos. ITS also worked with that department enabling their Student Information System to access the same information in order to assist Resident Advisors (RAs) in identifying the students living on their floor.

"It was a rush, high priority project that needed to be addressed quickly in order to provide value to those helping students move into The Commons this weekend," Reas wrote.  "We appreciate your coming through for us!"

Streamlining Kronos — ITS streamlined the process for port and static IP requests for Kronos time clocks. The individuals responsible for doing installs have been made trusted users on our web request page, so they can choose the appropriate .10 subnet.  This streamlines the process, preventing the need for escalation or trouble tickets to the Network Design & Engineering (ND&E) group.

Billing Change — ITS will now bill monthly for virtual machines, storage, and miscellaneous other services previously billed annually. The change puts billing in synch with grant fund disbursement and improves tracking and reporting on these products and services.

Emergency Blue Light Phones—An ITS staffer improved internal processes and technology to enable an easier way to add or change information regarding Vanderbilt's Blue Light Emergency Phones. Changes can now be made much more quickly than in the past. Information displayed in the VPD dispatch area will also be more accurate.

Student Entertainment Boxes — Recognizing that incoming students often bring personal entertainment devices such as Xbox 360, Wii, and TiVo, with them, ITS developed some information about how the devices work (or don't) with the Vanderbilt wired/wireless network. The information was posted on Vanderbilt's Digital Life website and linked to from the ResNet start page.