ITS Highlights

Updated Vanderbilt Web Environment – ITS successfully completed a project to upgrade 9 enterprise web servers to the latest software. The project upgraded the web servers from PHP4 and MySQL4 to PHP5 and MySQL5. The upgrade touched 1015 web directories owned by groups throughout the Vanderbilt Community and now provides web site owners increased web tools and functionality. 

Streaming Services enables Diabetes Research and Education – ITS Streaming Media Services recently completed a summer long series of lecture captures for the Diabetes Center; eighteen sessions in total for rising second-year medical students participating in the Summer Research Training Program.  The Center needed a way to share the lectures given to twenty-seven students working with diabetes researchers at Vanderbilt with nearly two dozen sites across the country.  ITS captured and converted the lectures to Flash video then posted them to the SRTP website for sharing with the other institutions and review by the local audience.  The service was so well-received that we’ve been asked to also capture the program’s capstone lectures being held at Vanderbilt August 5^th & 6^th. 

Streaming Services for Nursing School Pinning Ceremony – The School of Nursing’s annual pinning ceremony moved back to Langford Auditorium for the first time since the facility re-opened earlier this year after two years of extensive renovations.  The volume of family, friends & supporters of this year’s graduates overwhelmed the seating capacity of the auditorium, so ITS was contacted to provide “closed circuit” streaming as in put to the projector in the overflow room in Light Hall, which also turned out to be filled to capacity – our streaming was the only view of the event  for several hundred people.  The test session for this event was so well received that we were also asked to capture the live feed for streaming as a Flash archive. 

Enabled Smooth Transition for Newly Acquired Cardiac Clinic – ITS facilitated the creation of mailboxes and Domain Name Services changes for Cardiac Clinic at Murfreesboro.  Vanderbilt acquired this clinic and thirty plus staff needed VUnetID’s, emailboxes, and changes made to Vanderbilt mail gates to allow the routing of their old domain email addresses.   The mail started routing through Vanderbilt on July 31, 2009. 

LIfeflight Backup and Support – ITS staff facilitated the engineering and quotes for a disaster recovery site for Vanderbilt Lifeflight at One Hundred Oaks.  Preliminary cabling and equipment purchases are in process.  ITS will install the telephones once completed.  This site will give LifeFlight a flight control center should their space at VUMC become unavailable. 

Imaging Sciences Enhanced through new DNS routing – ITS staff worked with Vanderbilt University Institute of Imaging Sciences to allow email routing through special internal networks.  The new DNS service ITS deployed made this long-requested service a possibility. 

Dermatology at One Hundred Oaks a Success – ITS facilitated the installation and moves of over 130 telephones for the Dermatology clinic at One Hundred Oaks.  The One Hundred Oaks location includes the convergence of several separate Dermatology clinics through-out Vanderbilt.  The clinic opened for business at One Hundred Oaks on August 3. 

Dreamspark Services for Students – Dreamspark is a program offered by Microsoft where students may download Microsoft development software tools at no charge. These tools are very expensive to the general public and include software from OS programming to game development. Offering them as a free service to students offers new ways for students to write and develop software programs that enhance their education and research opportunities. The ITS federated identity management service (Shibboleth / InCommon) enables Vanderbilt students access with their VUnetID. 

Enhance Phone Service for VCH – ITS implemented a new phone application for Children’s Hospital Primary Care Clinic during July. This gives the department new statistics on the number of calls they Triage for patients. ITS also programmed a caller’s menu in both English and Spanish that transfers callers to an Interpreter service and back to Vanderbilt  to assist parents in making appointments for a sick child. Previously, this was not possible and was quite challenging to manage during peak times.  

New ePassword infrastructure D/R Testing and go-live – Disaster Recovery testing was carried out on the new e*password infrastructure prior to the cut over on August 2nd, 2009. A full disaster recovery test was performed to simulate the loss of the Hill Data Center and was found to be both successful and a learning experience for all of those involved. The new E*password LDAP service went into production which offers a stable LDAP service on a new geographically-diverse RedHat Linux systems which are load balanced by F5 LTM’s. The new LDAP service is now resilient in the event of a server or site outage.  

Hill Data Center Reconfiguration: The Network Operations Center has been engaged in the shifting of cabinets within the administrative area to adhere to industry accepted best practices for the past nine months. This re-alignment has allowed the data center to more efficiently utilize the cooling systems available and to house up to 47 computing racks versus the previous configuration maximum of 42. In addition to re-alignment of the racks, an effort was undertaken to seal all air leaks in the entire data center and the implement blanking panels to reduce mixing between hot and cold aisles. Positive results have already been seen in the data center through the reduction of temperature alarms, even during preventative maintenance.  

Email Service for New Acquisitions - Email routing and mailboxes have been established for two newly acquired businesses; The CardiacCenter of Murfreesboro, and Franklin Bone and Joint. Each with its own uniqueness’s and built to delivered the requested functionality of these two new entities by the ITS Electronic Messaging team.  

Google Search Appliance – In a joint venture with Public Affairs, ITS Application Hosting has deployed a new Google Search Appliance to replace the old Ultraseek service. The new appliances allows for new levels of search scalability, with customizations through various API’s, which will enrich the search quality throughout the Vanderbilt environment.  

OSIS Upgrade Completed – ITS Application Hosting assisted AMCOM in the upgrade of OSIS from version 4.0.63 to 4.5. The upgrade to the new version of the software allowed for the lifecycle replacement of old equipment and the upgrade of the operating system. For the operators, this upgrade brought enhanced call handling features, improvements in the console, and an improved Smart Web application that provided more flixibility.  

Exchange Consolidation Project – Exchange 2007 met the milestone of over 2000 mailboxes in July. The achievement was mostly possible by partnering with the Law School staff to move all of their available mailboxes from legacy systems to the new platform. The team also began mass migration from VUexchange2003 and is on track to complete migrations from VUexchange2003 in mid-August. 

Enhance Desktop Support – Desktop Support has devised a way to automate Office 2007 installs for its users where they click a link and the install takes place without any prompts.  The install is much faster than before and can be done without oversight of desktop support analysts. Then enables the desktop support team more time to respond to other customer requests. 

Network Equipment Lifecycle – In an effort to maintain availability and serviceability of our network gear, ITS Network Services has begun another year of lifecycling network equipment.  This year consists mostly of residential dorms, but has some academic areas too.  As of July 30th, we completed 191 out of a total of 332 pieces of network gear, or 30 buildings.  This effort began on June 25^th and is targeted to be completed on November 23^rd. 

Update to Student Voice Network – This will allow for more effective utilization of the voice network hardware and provide more efficient call routing. We applied a software patch to the Student Voice Network that will resolve issues with blocking outbound caller ID and ACD auto answer functionality.  This patch was applied to the Student Voice Network in advance of installation in the Admin Voice Network. 

Operator Services Stats—During July 2009, Operator Services received 151,092 calls in the call center with a 98.3% answer rate. The team completed 15,818 pager modifications supporting patient care. A total of 339 conference calls were requested and processed through the call center. 

Construction Update for July 2009

1. We assisted in the phone moves and data activations for the residence of Kirkland Hall.  Move will be completed after the renovation of 2 suites.
2. Work is underway to add signage to the Hill Center Lobby. Signage and seating is planned for this area.
3. Work continues on the Hill Data Center Planning and Design.  Construction is expected to start in September. Hardaway Construction has been hired as the General Contractor. Smith, Seckman, and Reid is working on the mechanical design.
4. Planning is getting underway to renovate the Old Gym.  This renovation will create a training and presentation area.
5. Work on the Freshman Advisor’s Offices in the Commons Center has been in progress.  Their move-in is planned for August 17^th.
6. Cohen Memorial Hall is almost finished.  Data activations, the elevator phone, building control monitoring, and security cameras have been activated for inspections and further work in preparation for move-in. A new Blue Light phone is being added to the southeast corner  of the property around Cohen Hall.
7. One Hundred Oaks has been outfitted with new Sprint cellular equipment to receive the best in cellular coverage.  University building coverage improvements are in the planning stage.
8. Library Archive Annex being called 21 North is operational with IP telephony and data in full operation.