Oregon State University

College of Engineering IT Facilities

Update: February 17, 2014

contact: Todd Shechter, IT Director, College of Engineering: shechter-at-engr-dot-orst-dot-edu

The PI has a PC and a Laptop that are suited for language and software development and for producing presentations and publications. The other existing facilities at Oregon State University and the College of Engineering are detailed below.

A. Networks

• Wireless (802.11n dual-band) network: Extends throughout the College, as well as to many public areas on campus open (free) to all OSU students, faculty, staff, and visitors.

• All buildings are connected by 10G fiber links, network service to the desktop is a minimum of 1G.

• A VPN service allowed secure remote access to all University and College networks.

B. Servers

• Most disk (home directory) servers are EMC VNX and Dell Compellent based, feature RAID-5 for reliability on all disk servers where data is kept.

• College maintains a student/development web server separate from the production web server used for publicly accessible college websites.

• Single-point authentication for logins on all platforms.

• College maintains comprehensive file backup system with a total capacity of over 1PB. All disk, web, application, and email servers are backed up daily. Archives are kept online for 4 months of immediate data retrieval.

C. Research cluster

• College maintains a high-performance computing cluster: Currently 204 nodes, 1,554 cores, 1918GB of memory. Currently 15.9 Terraflops.

• Cluster uses the Univa software package for scheduling jobs and maintaining various queues of processors.

• Funded and used by multiple departments and research groups throughout the College and University.

D. Software

• All software for college computers is maintained through a central repository. Software is available to faculty, staff, graduates, and undergraduates. Software may also be installed on personally owned computers (depending on individual licensing agreements).

• College maintains and supports software for: Linux (Redhat Enterprise and Cent OS 6), Windows (7 and 8), Mac OS X, Android, and iOS.

E. Student computing labs

• College maintains 1-2 labs in every major COE building used by undergrads. Some are open on a 24x7 basis. Labs feature a mix of Windows 7, Linux, and Mac OS X.

• Distributed environment means student sees same desktop wherever he/she logs in.

• Labs are on a 3 year refresh basis (so all computers are less than 3 years old).

• Labs are staffed by knowledgeable and trained student consultants.

• Students and Faculty have access to a Virtual Lab interface; creating an environment where applications can be accessed remotely from any computer inside or outside of the University.

F. IT Staff

• All IT services are supported by a team of IT professionals who service the entire College, includes 11 full time employees assisted by approximately 55 students.

• Each person has a focus area but is also cross-trained to support other personnel.

G. Additional (departmental) resources

• Most departments in the college have their own IT resources too. Specifics can be provided by the IT staff in each department. E.g., the School of EECS has its own file and email server infrastructure, totaling 460T of disk space and 23 CPU servers all with Intel processors.

• Departments also maintain specialized department-only labs for research-specific or course-specific uses.