Well it turns out that we were missing some parts for the new switches that were slated to be put in this week. With that and the nice little waterfall that occurred in ITC we were set back a few days and only finished Roberts, Reid and Cheever labs switch upgrades. Those rooms are now all full 1000mb and in the next week or so when we get the rest of the parts we will upgrade Leon Johnson, Wilson, Linfield and the SUB.

The new computers are also suppose to arrive next week sometime starting Tuesday. We will begin the reallocation process in Roberts 109 and 110 Tuesday and Wednesday which includes putting a blank Windows XP image on all the computers and performing a few other things to the hardware to get them ready for their new homes around campus in other departments. Starting after the class finishes on Wednesday in Roberts 111 we will start putting in the new computers(if they actually have come).

Also, we will be expanding our public access to an area in Sports PE with two computers. I’m not exactly sure where they are going yet, but will post about them when we get them in place.

We have selected 2 computers in Reid 306 to be our Windows Vista test computers. They have about 80% of the apps that we normally provide on them and are setup similar to how all the other Windows XP computers are. We have noticed a few issues with them and will work to get all the kinks ironed out over the next few weeks.

With Vista being out for over a year now and Leopard being out for some time it seems that some of the initial problems we had with them have been fixed. We are now in the process of finishing up images for both and will hopefully get some test computers up and running with them in Reid 306 this week or early next week.

Mac OS X Leopard will be our new OS for the macs for sure as all of the issues were addressed that we had initially. It seems fairly stable at the moment and we will get it on 2 macs and put them in 306 soon.

Windows Vista still has a few application incompatibilities as well as some general scripting problems that we are trying to figure out. We are planning on just getting it out there on 2 computers just to see how it works though.

Currently we have some really nice 10/100 Cisco switches that run all the labs infrastructure. Every lab we have runs through our own subnet and switch network back to the MSU core. There are only a few labs that run over VLAN which include the SUB, Linfield 232 and Wilson Hall.

We have recently purchased newer 10/100/1000 Cisco 2960’s that will replace our existing infrastructure as well as replace the VLAN’s that are in place creating a faster better network for the labs. This will also allow us to Ghost the labs to maintain a cleaner looking appearance on each of the computers as well as keep them updated.

I saw the FedEx guy just unload about 10-12 Cisco boxes and I’m thinking they may be our new switches which makes me excited.

It is a goal of ours over the next few semesters to really implement a better way to help users in the labs. We are starting now, obviously to get more online oriented with this blog as well as our homepage that utilizes wordpress to keep content more up to date. We are also trying to get a good F.A.Q going for the labs and all the services that we offer. The U.S.A’s are in Reid and Roberts, but we manage quite a few auxiliary labs and it would be nice to provide instant support for users using those labs. Thus we have implemented an online chat solution to help in these areas.

http://greywulff.msu.montana.edu/chat