Sustainable Computing

In order to sustain a reasonable computing facility in the Department of Statistics it is necessary to have a continuous upgrade cycle for all computing hardware. This includes but is not limited to:

Unix Servers
Unix Workstations
Personal Computers
Laptop Computers
Network Printers
Personal Printers (well, you could abandon them in favor of networked printers)
Networking Gear
Dial-In/Dial-Out Gear

All computing resources must be upgraded in a defined cycle to avoid the calamitous situation the department saw a mere four years after moving into Griffin-Floyd Hall with all new computers. Money for complete upgrades is too rare to even hope for, so a steady cycle of new machine purchases with trickle-down of middle-aged machines is the best rational policy.

Currently, the department is able to get annual funding for faculty machines and occasionally for staff machines from the CLAS Dean's office. The Dean's office will also fund occasional special projects like upgrades of the building wiring. The department should plan to set aside some general account money for other computer needs including repairs.

During fiscal 2000-2001 the plan includes requests for the following from the Dean's office:

Five (5) Sun Ultra-5 faculty workstations at approximately $1,300.00 each
Two (2) Dell Optiplex staff workstations at approximately $1,300.00 each
Two (2) Sun Netra t1 web servers at approximately $5,700.00 each

We have reasonable expectiation that the faculty workstations will be provided, and the PC's may be as well. We are asking for the Netra servers so that we will be eligible and high in the queue for any special-project and/or end-of-year moneis which become available. We do not expect regular server funding from the Dean's office at this time.

During fiscal 2000-2001 we are also requesting that the Dean's office re-wire the office jacks in Griffin Floyd from a mixture of Cat-3 blocks and Cat-4 wire to certified Cat-5 wiring block and jacks so that we can use the 100Mbps capabilites of many of our machines' networking cards. Currently only the closet of 234A has Cat-5 wiring, which was pulled by Allan West and Jim Atria. This should be a one-time request, with no further network upgrades needed until fiber to the desktop or post Gigabit wiring standards become more prevalent and cost-effective. There was a campus standard for Cat-5 at the time of the Griffin-Floyd remodeling, but it was not followed.

The history of The Plan dates back to 1997 when Mike Conlon and Ron Randles arranged for some of the leftover building funds to be used for three years of computer purchases to forklift upgrade the Statistics computing system into the late 1990's. The years after the move into Griffin Floyd had seen a once leading-edge system fall into disrepair as the single server suffered hardware failures and the workstations were dated by upgrades in software which had not been matched by hardware upgrades.

The three year plan included 20 Ultra-1 workstations, two E-450 servers and an E-150 server which was scrapped early due to hardware and software failures. The three annual upgrade plans are the first three Budget entries:

1997 -- by Derrius Marlin & Mike Conlon
1998 -- by Allan West & Derrius Marlin
1999 -- by Allan West & Brett Presnell

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Last modified: Mon Nov 20 10:24:22 EST 2000