IT Shared Services: June - July 2021 Update
As we quickly approach the beginning of the new academic year, I am pleased to share the latest update on IT Shared Services. First, I want to acknowledge the contributions of the UVM IT Staff and our collaboration with our various campus partners who are providing input to advance the work our IT Shared Services. Most of our recent progress has focused on operational details in three distinct areas as described below.
1. Update on IT Service Hubs
We are in the final stages of recruiting two IT team supervisors and five IT client support professionals to help accelerate our transition to the hybrid service hubs currently under design. In the meantime, we will continue to work with the academic units to finalize their individual transition plans into the IT services hubs throughout the fall semester. To minimize any potential disruptions to IT services in the academic units, we will maintain the existing technology request workflow unchanged throughout most of fall semester. In essence, the IT staff currently assigned to a particular unit will remain their main point of contact, and will escalate IT issues to others within ETS as necessary. We will also work with the dean's office to make sure these IT staff members have adequate physical working space throughout the campus.
2. Technology Support and Transition to the in-person Operations
This is a reminder that as we prepare for the resumption of on-campus operations on August 2nd, we anticipate many end-user computing devices which will need to be reconfigured or updated in order to regain full access to our technology systems and services. To that end, we strongly encourage all UVM staff who have been teleworking since March 2020 to have their computing devices checked prior to August 2nd, if at all possible.
Beginning July 15th, members of the IT staff will be available to support this particular aspect of the resumption of on-campus operations. Members of the UVM community should contact the technology professional currently assigned to their office to schedule a technology support session.
Additional technology resources related to the resumption of on-campus operations can be found at: go.uvm.edu/welcome-back-tech
3. Update from Research Computing Support Working Group
Group Members: Julia Russell, Douglas Dickey, Ian Davis, William Garrett, Chris Danforth, Jeff Marshall Mike Austin, Sam Hooker, Andrea Elledge; Darcy Pientka, David Towle-Hilt
The research computing support working group has intensified the evaluation of a framework to deliver college or departmental research computing support in an IT Shared Services environment. A small group of UVM researchers were invited to compare the performance of individual stand-alone computing clusters against the campus-wide virtual machine environment. The researchers considered factors such as speed and memory across the two distinct environments during their evaluation. The researchers concluded that the campus-wide virtual machine performed as well as any given stand-alone cluster. The researchers also compared the convenience of access to their individual clusters against the shared environment. They concluded that remote access to a shared campus-wide virtual machine environment was as good as accessing a stand-alone cluster, which often require unique individualized maintenance for the most part. The outcome of this important evaluation paves the way for a paradigm shift from stand-alone computing clusters to a shared virtual machine environment that exists as a common good to serve the needs of all researchers.
Going forward, UVM's research computing support framework will consist of:
- The VACC will be considered as the default research computing environment
- The use of UVM's Virtual Server Environment (VMWare) will be considered in those cases where the VACC does not meet the unique needs of a particular researcher.
- In circumstances where both the VACC and the VMWare environment are not able to meet the computational needs of a particular researcher, consideration will be given to the implementation of stand-alone research computing hardware as an exception.
We invite you to visit the IT Shared Services page at www.uvm.edu/it/sharedservices for more information about the overall progress of our journey.
T. Simeon Ananou, D.Ed.
Chief Information Officer
The University of Vermont
85 South Prospect Street
Waterman Building Room 345
Burlington, VT 05405
Office: 802.656.5598
www.uvm.edu/president/chief-information-officer