Participants:
McCormick, Monica
Graham, Daniel
Carlson, Doug
Winters, Jonathan
Schmidt, Thomas
Graham:
What are the problems other people are seeing with research data centers?
Carlson:
Research computers take smaller footprint and get more dense, power and cooling?
Graham:
Effective use of 1u spacing and plenum space
Carlson:
Closed water system, chillers, heat exchangers.
McCormick:
Some people have data sets, that they want to share and collaborate on in a closed environment, then perhaps make some data public.
People who have data, such as video data, where they want
Winters:
EMC Isolon data storage
Schmidt:
Governing access to data. Big data. Challenge is to set something up ahead of time not knowing how big the data is going to be, not knowing whether it is going to be confidential or not.
Researchers want, web page, wiki…. Poly runs up Virtual Machines to provide all these services.
McCormick:
For content that we control, there is many organization.
Graham:
Researchers come to thema and say that they need a server. They need specific software. Importa data from somewhere, keeping data secure.
Schmidt:
Each department would have their own server, same software, each department trying to make things work that shouldn’t work.
Security of data. Different types of data.
Graham:
Always a problem forcing researchers into a particular way of doing it. Usually faculty do what they want rather than what is suggested to them.
Schmidt:
The guru of the department says one thing and central says another.
McCormick:
Gathering photographs, putting items on a map
Content management system for displaying content.
Challenging interviewing people to see what they need since everyone thinks their own use case is unique.
Graham:
Encourage researchers to keep hardware in the central Research data center. Some researchers do it on their own. Many servers in their office.
Winters:
Endpoint security needs to be addressed. Securing the servers means nothing if the hacker has owned the workstations used to access the “secure” data.
McCormick:
Does centralization of Research IT infrastructure make sense?
Carlson:
CIO Council – if there is a need for centralized service, that is enterprise level it can be discussed at the CIO Council. Let’s do it together, rather than doing it on our own.
Schmidt:
If 5 out of 7 schools want something it probably can be done.
Winters:
Offline/ secure data. Individual researchers have data on machines all over the place, creating independent secure data rooms. Many researchers have the same data from the DoE or Fed, or Hospitals, etc. What steps can be taken to implement research systems using Citrix or Remote Apps of some sort to access more secure data and allow researchers to do work from their offices or remotely.