ITS Highlights

Exchange Consolidation Project - ITS is managing a project to consolidate three email services into one at Vanderbilt. To learn more about the project, check out the podcast, the webpage (must have a VUnetID to view it), the twitter site, or the blog. 

Hill Data Center Expansion and Renovation - Work began on Phase 1 of the Hill Data Center expansion and renovation project.  This phase will consist of additional air handling, more electrical capacity, and enlarging the existing Data Center to prepare for the additional expansion phases required to meet increasing demand for data center space at Vanderbilt. 

Identity Management Improvements – Dan Nanto, Director for Infrastructure Development and Directory Services, explains plans for improvements to the identity management infrastructure at Vanderbilt in his new podcast. He presented this information to several departments across campus and academic IT directors in an effort to describe upcoming improvements and seek feedback. It has been very well received. 

Improved Sprint Coverage – Sprint Cellular Phone coverage in 100 Oaks will be completely operational by 7-3-09.  This is the 1^st phase of the Sprint Cellular University Building Coverage Project. 

Private IP Addressing – Private IP addressing (RFC 1918) capabilities have been deployed in the Vanderbilt campus infrastructure.  This allows for non-routable IP addresses to be used internally to Vanderbilt, with no visibility on the Internet.  It also helps alleviate the shortage of publicly registered IP addresses.  

Network Equipment Lifecycle – In an effort to maintain availability and serviceability of our network gear, ITS Network Services initiated another year of life-cycling network equipment.  This year consists mostly of residential dorms, but has some academic areas too.  As of June 29^th, 25 out of a total of 332 pieces of network gear have been replaced in 7 buildings.  The effort began June 25^th and is targeted for completion by November 23^rd. 

New Engineering Building – Provided voice and data connectivity to a new building location for Engineering (ISIS) locate at 1025 16th Ave.  This consisted of a new fiber optic cable connection to the main campus that will carry data and IPT traffic.  A backup connection using wireless technology is currently being installed as well. 

Data Center Hosting and Storage for Emergency Medicine – The department of Emergency Medicine needed additional online storage for software and systems supporting their department. ITS provided 3 units of precious rack space in the Hill Data Center for their raid-array providing professional conditioning and power. The only other option was unconditioned space at Oxford House. 

Leadership IT Service Coordination – Changes in top leadership at VUMC precipitated a series of IT service migrations that had to be executed perfectly. These high profile relocations for  Dr. Balser, Dr. Jacobson, Dr. Stead, Vanderbilt Center for Better Health, and the Curb Center were all completed with no issues. 

Updated Web Environment and Website Migrations:  Vanderbilt’s migration to the new PHP5/MySQL5 Shared Web environment was completed in June.  The project consisted of building, testing and migrating several hundred websites that support departments across campus. Several departments needed this new environment in order to support their web programming needs. The updated environment gives the web community access to newer versions of PHP and MySQL and brings a more robust and secure rule set.   

Web Search Engine Replacement:  New Google search appliances were deployed in June as a replacement to the UltraSeek search engine that is out of contract in July.  The new Google appliances enable Public Affairs the ability to ensure appropriate “spider” settings and allow customization of the user interface.  Testing is scheduled to complete in early July allowing for production availability in mid-July.  

Conference Calls Reach Far and Wide – Operator Services coordinated a total of 456 conference calls in June, which is a new all time high. Audio conference calls are available for 4 to 16 participants from anywhere in the world. Recent calls included participants from Mozambique. 

Operator Services Stats—During June 2009, Operator Services received 187,599 calls in the call center with a 98.7% answer rate. The team completed 18,836 pager modifications supporting patient care.