Computing Facilities

Computing facilities are provided by both the department and the university computing center, known as Information Technology at Purdue (ITaP). ITaP is diverse, with many divisions such as Telecommunications, Research Computing Services, and Instructional Computing Services. The department works closely with ITaP and together they provide a robust computing environment that facilitates research and instruction. To learn more about the services that ITaP provides please visit their site at: http://www.itap.purdue.edu/

Departmental Computing Under Windows

Doug Crabill and My Truong The department maintains a Windows Active Directory domain. It includes several domain controllers, a print server, a home directory fileserver with a 128GB SCSI RAID 1+0 array, an administrative fileserver with a 320GB RAID 5 array, SMS and SQL servers, and a Windows Update server for the automatic deployment of Microsoft patches. All servers have gigabit network connections and are rack-mounted in a departmental machine room.

The Windows 2000 desktop computers that are members of our Windows domain are distributed among faculty, staff, and student offices, and in graduate student computer labs. There are three graduate student computer labs with computer speeds ranging from 2.4 Ghz to 3.0 Ghz.

My Truong Each desktop PC is configured per the National Security Agency's Windows 2000 Security Recommendation Guides, which restrict the ability of users to modify most files and registry settings on the local computer. This greatly enhances security and significantly reduces the chance that a lab user could modify, corrupt, or destroy the OS or application software on a lab computer. When a user logs into one of our PCs they access the files in their home directory from a central fileserver, meaning the desktop files, configuration settings, etc. will be identical regardless of which PC they use.


The Computer Systems Administrator builds baseline departmental Windows 2000 images which are then replicated to any new computer using Symmantec's Ghost hard drive replication software. The baseline software image includes Microsoft Office Professional (plus Publisher and Frontpage), MathType, SAS, SPSS, R, Matlab, Maple, WinBugs, Exceed (X-Window server), SSH, Acrobat, Emacs, Ghostscript, Quicktime, and Realplayer. Lab computers also have S-Plus and SAS Enterprise Miner, as do faculty PCs when requested. Some staff PCs will also have additional software like Adobe Pagemaker, Dreamweaver, etc.

Every departmental PC automatically maps the user's UNIX home directory as a network drive, allowing them to store both their UNIX and Windows files in the same shared area if they choose.

Joe McNamee working for the department Our Windows 2000/2003 servers are backed up nightly over the network using Amanda to a centrally maintained DLT drive array operated by ITaP Operations staff. Individual desktop computers are not backed up at all -- there is nothing user specific to back up. Any desktop could fail at any time and the end user wouldn't loose any files since they are all stored on central fileservers. Failed desktops will have their hard drives replaced with fresh copies of the departmental Windows 2000 image via Ghost.

The department has configured and distributed laptops to faculty, staff, and graduate students as appropriate for teaching. A baseline Windows XP laptop image has been created in the same way the desktop image was created. The Windows XP laptops have all the software available on our Lab computers, plus MikTeX and Cygwin to make them more functional for those authoring LaTeX documents while traveling. The department has two portable computer projectors for use when presenting in a room not already equipped with a computer projector.

Any faculty member purchasing a desktop PC for home use can request a copy of the departmental Windows XP software image to be installed on their desktop so they can use almost the same software set at home as is available on campus.

Departmental Computing Under UNIX

Machine Room on the Ground Floor of the Math Building The department maintains several UNIX servers, including an IBM RS/6000 F50 with four CPUs running AIX, a Dual Athlon 2600+ running FreeBSD, and a Dual Athlon 3000+ running Debian Linux to act as a Web server. Primary network services supplied include SSH, FTP, Web server, IMAP, POP3, SMTP, NFS, DHCP, printing, MySQL, and SPAM filtering. Major application software available includes S-Plus, R, SAS, Matlab, Maple, Mathematica, and LaTeX. There are a host of freeware compilers and utilities available as well.

UNIX servers are housed in the temperature controlled ITaP machine room in the ground floor of the Math building. Each server is connected to the console server, which provides remote low-level access to the servers in single user mode or even at the BIOS level. The console server displays the aggregate console output of every machine connected to it and is monitored 24/7 for abnormalities. The Computer Systems Administrator will be called in the event of any unusual output on the console.

Backups happen nightly for all UNIX servers. Backups are transmitted over the network to a centrally located DLT array operated by ITaP Operations staff. The Amanda program controls the backup schedule.

Graduate student offices not equipped with PCs running Windows 2000 have X-Terminals that boot from and connect to our UNIX servers.

Files stored on our UNIX servers can be visible as shared network drives from both our departmental Windows 2000 desktops and the ITaP desktops.

Printing

The department maintains black and white laser printers and one color laser printer. The printers can be found in computer labs, staff offices, and in the offices of faculty members who have purchased them with startup funds or through grants.

WWW and Databases

Administrative databases pertaining to personnel, textbooks, course scheduling, graduate student applications, faculty applications, alumni, etc. are maintained using Microsoft Access on our Windows 2000 desktop PCs. Some portion of this data is automatically exported every night to our MySQL database running on our UNIX WWW server. The flow of sensitive information between our Access databases and our MySQL server is one-way only. Public information is transparently made available on various web pages by querying the MySQL database. Some non-public information is made available to our faculty, staff, and students via password protected WWW interface pages. Part of the data in our MySQL database comes from the nightly dumps of our Access databases. The rest is created and manipulated via password protected WWW forms.

Computer Support Staff

The department employs a full-time Computer Systems Administrator, a full-time Computer Systems Specialist, a half-time Webmaster, and two student assistants.



Doug Crabill Doug Crabill, the Computer Systems Administrator, maintains UNIX related hardware and software, manages the Computer Systems Specialist, and student employees, maintains a computer budget, acts as a liaison to ITaP, assists with research, provides secondary support for the Microsoft Windows domain, and trains and supports the faculty, staff, and students on all aspects of computing within the department.



My Truong My Truong, the Computer Systems Specialist, designs and maintains the Microsoft Windows domain in the department, provides computing support for the Statistical Consulting group and the rest of the department, and provides secondary support for the UNIX servers.





Cheryl Crabill Cheryl Crabill, the Webmaster, maintains the various web pages that represent our department (under the direction of the Head), writes and maintains PHP, Perl, and HTML to generate and interface with web-based forms that in turn interact with our MySQL database, and assists the faculty, staff, and students with the configuration and manipulation of their course, research, and individual web pages.