Technical Support & Repair

LITS Annual Report 2003-2004

What We Do:

The Department of Technical Support and Repair (TSR) is responsible for the purchase, installation and maintenance of all College computers. Our mission is to integrate and facilitate the use of technology within the College Community. Our responsibilities are focused in researching new technologies, configuring and installing new machines, inventory tracking, reallocating equipment, repairing hardware, providing software support and technical consulting services to the members of the Mount Holyoke College Community. We maintain the help2600 maillist and phone support. We provide consulting on both the hardware and software level and in collaboration with other LITS departments develop hardware and software standardizations for the entire campus. TSR is responsible for providing, maintaining and supporting all public machines located in various buildings on campus, all “LITS” labs located in Kendade, Cleveland, Reese, Information Common, Lab B (Special Projects Lab), Library Reading Room, Skinner plus 20 residential computer labs. We coordinate with Media Services, in the purchase and installation of all mediated classroom computers. We assist the Dean of Faculty in purchasing equipment for individual departmental labs. The total amount of equipment supported on campus for the year 03-04: 1850 cpu’s; 1850 monitors and 105 printers.

TSR is responsible for all staff and faculty computer installs on campus throughout the academic year. Computers are upgraded on a 3-4 year replacement cycle. . Sue Rusiecki from TSR orchestrates our installs by compiling a list of those who are eligible for upgraded machines. This is done through a web form which is available on-line. Requests should be submitted by the end of the year in order to be considered for the next budgetary cycle. Sue works closely with those eligible on discussing their computer needs. She works with vendors to get the best possible price in purchasing all of our computers and then coordinates the scheduled the installs. We usually are looking at a figure of approximately 300-400 machines a year.

In an effort to provide equitable service across campus and to set manageable expectations, we have established computer policies on equipment allocations which can be viewed on-line.

Summer of 03
As the campus empties out to enjoy the summer months, TSR utilizes the “quite” summer days to set our installation plan in motion. While a lot of offices and folks are on vacation, summer is extremely hectic for TSR. Our major challenge is attempting to orchestrate with departments and faculty times when offices will be available to us. Our request list this year revealed 432 computer upgrades and 22 printers. A number higher than last year, as result of additional new faculty and more requests for student workstations.

The new Visilab in Kendade was ready to go on-line with 18 dell machines and LCD monitors.
By the end of August, we managed to achieve 80% of our goal – 345 computers. Of these 42 were laptops - twenty of which were purchased for Circulation for student loan use. The last 20% of our installs were those departments, which requested that we hold off on their upgrades until they were back on campus for the fall. In reality, we did complete what we needed to do within the time allotted. Great job by the team!

August was busy with preparations for the new Information Commons. Lab A was moved and became part of the Information Commons. We purchased 8 email stations to handle email and web browsing which we anticipated would alleviate usage of lab computers for these tasks. The new Commons boasted a lab area, several collaborative working areas, study tables, couches and comfortable chairs. A new Diagnostic Center was added which provided students with software support on a walk-in basis. AV and the LITS training room (formally Lib 231) were moved to occupy the old Lab A location in the Dwight corridor.

The New Information Commons is ready for September!

Fall 03
By September we filled our open position within TSR. Drew Soucy was hired as Call Support Specialist. Our helpdesk structure changed in that helpdesk support was now entirely under the wings of TSR and no longer being staffed by folks from other departments. Workflow changed so that Ivy Tillman and Drew Soucy were assigned the responsibility of phone support and tracking.

Like all other departments within LITS, September is always a rush to get new students on campus ready for the new academic year. With TSR, our main focus is to assist new students as well as returning students in connecting their computers to the network as quickly as possible. Our call center as well as the Diagnostic Center was busy resolving questions and problems regarding configuration issues, software support issues, hardware drive issues and resnet connectivity issues. Along with that, Nachi hit the campus! During the month of September our phone support soared to 1689 calls with 1095 happening during the first week! During the same time, the Diagnostic Center assisted 1288 students with their computers – again 75% happening during the first week! Hacked computers and Nachi worm were rampant. Both TSR and Networking collaborated and focused their attention to rid the campus of Nachi and a campaign for keeping computers current with security updates began. It was obvious to us that end users needed to be educated on computer security and virus protection.

Like the year of 2002, October of 2003 repeated its pattern of 88% of the students on-line with registered computers. By December our reports showed that 92% of residence hall computers had registered a computer.

Winter 03-04
Plans for upgrading the dorm labs in January resulted from a survey to resident hall students regarding the usage of the dorm computer labs. 80% of the students indicated that they used dorm labs on a regular basis with evening being the most popular. While the students also had computers in their own rooms, a lot enjoyed the luxury of doing quick email checks after breakfast or on their way to class. 90% of the students indicated that they appreciated the service of having a dorm computer lab and while some of them did not use it, they thought of it as a “convenience”. The only negative feedback was the desire to have more updated equipment – until then dorm labs were outfitted with rollover equipment. The survey confirmed the usage of dorm labs and our plans to update all of the computers within the dorms .

The topic of outsourcing installs had been discussed within TSR. Since the dorm lab survey confirmed the desire for their upgrade, we thought that January would be a perfect time to put together a pilot program to see how out sourcing our installs would work. Our thoughts were that if it turned out to be successful, we would consider it for installs during the summer of 04. Negotiations begun with Uplinc, one of our local vendors and details worked out. During J-Term, all resident dorm labs were upgraded (72 new dells). Installations worked well. The project eliminated TSR professional staff from the actual installs. Our desire was to alleviate TSR professional staff from the installs so that they could focus on other projects during J-term. Two students were assigned as project leaders for Uplinc and were responsible for letting Uplinc into the dorm lab areas and final tweaking of the machines after they were setup. The outsourcing project worked well.

Spring 04
As TSR and Networking relaxed, feeling confident of their abilities to control Nachi; the students returned for the Spring semester. With them, came another virus onslaught – Sasser worm - and another round of marathon virus warfare began!

Spring also is the time to plan for the upcoming installation process. The process for determining supported hardware and software on campus or as we like to refer to as “standards” is done each spring. This process is an interdepartmental project encompassing several LITs departments: CSIT (now RIS), TSR, Networking and Desktop Technologies. A lot of research and development time goes into researching new technologies, testing and integrating them into our environment. As a result of our meetings the following have been categorized as our supported software and hardware for the 04-05 year.

Supported Software for 04-05

* General Software – This class of software is used by most of the MHC community. Most Helpdesk Consultants, Student Lab Consultants, Local Experts and the staff of LITS use these products extensively. The response time for most calls can be within the same business day.

** Production Software – This class of software is used by some of the MHC community. Some Helpdesk Consultants, Student Lab Consultants, Local Experts, and the staff of LITS can support these products. Response time will be based on the availability of staff members familiar with the product.

***The campus has a site license for McAfee Antivirus and Virex allowing faculty, staff and students to install the software and update the dat files on all campus owned as well as personally owned computers.

For addition information on 03-04 supported Tools and Courseware, please refer to our site: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/tsr/software/index.shtml

For the 04-05 academic year, it was decided that we will use both Dell and Mainboard as vendors. Our decision to qualify as to where a Dell or Mainboard would be placed would be made on the basis of whether or not there would be a need to expand the system with specialized components. Since Dells are specific only to Dells and Mainboards are more compatible with 3rd party hardware, it was decided to use Mainboards within areas such as faculty and departmental labs where specialized hardware could easily be installed if needed.

Supported Hardware for 03-04:

Dell Desktop:
(Systems and Monitors have Black cases)
CPU/Model: Optiplex GX270, Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz
Memory: 512 MB of RAM
Video Card: 64MB NVIDIA GeForce 4MX - Digital Out Monitor: 17 inch LCD
Disk space: 40 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: Windows XP Pro
CD Drive: 48X CD-Recordable/CD-Rewritable/DVD Player Combo
Ethernet adapter: Intel Gigabit 10/100/1000
Audio: Sound Blaster Compatible
Additional: USB2 Ports

Mainboard Desktop:
(Systems and Monitors have Black cases)
CPU/Model: Pentium 4, 2.8 GHz
Memory: 512 MB of RAM
Video: 128MB 8X AsusV9520 Magic GeForce FX 5200, VGA/TV Out
Monitor: 17 inch LCD
Disk space: 40 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: Windows XP Pro
CD Drive: 52X CD-Recordable/CD-Rewritable/DVD Player Combo
Ethernet adapter: 3Com 10/100/1000
Audio: Creative Labs Sound Blaster Live
Additional: USB2 Ports, Firewire Port

Dell Laptop:
(System have silver cases)
CPU/Model: Latitude D800, 1.4 GHz, Pentium M
Memory: 512 MB of RAM
Video: 32MB NVIDIA GeForce4 4200 4X
Monitor: 15.4 inch built-in LCD
Modem: Built-in 56Kbps
Disk space: 20 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: Windows XP Pro
CD Drive: 24X CD-Recordable/CD-Rewritable/DVD Player Combo
Ethernet adapter: Integrated Gigabit 10/100/1000 Wireless Ethernet: Dell TrueMobile 802.11 Compatible 54Mbps
Audio: Sound Blaster Compatible
Additional: USB2 Ports, Dell TrueMobile 300 Bluetooth, Port Replicator

Macintosh Desktop (iMac):
CPU: G4, 1.25 GHz
Memory: 512 MB RAM Video: 64MB NVIDIA GF FX 5200 Monitor: 17 inch LCD (attached)
Disk space: 80 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: OSX 10.3
CD Drive: "Superdrive" CD-Recordable, CD Rewritable, DVD(+) Recordable & DVD Rewritable
Ethernet adapters: Built-in Ethernet
Wireless Ethernet: Airport Extreme (802.11 Compatible)

Macintosh Desktop:
CPU: PowerMAC / G4 1.0 GHz
Memory: 512 MB RAM Video: 64MB NVIDIA GF4 MX 5200 DDR
Monitor: Apple Studio 17 inch flat panel
Disk space: 80 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: OSX 10.3
CD Drive: "Combo Drive" CD-Recordable/CD-Rewritable/DVD Player
Ethernet adapters: Built-in Ethernet

Macintosh Laptop:
CPU: PowerBOOK / G4 1.5 GHz
Memory: 512 MB RAM Video: 64MB NVIDIA GF4 MX 5200 DDR
Monitor: 15 or 17 inch LCD (Built-in)
Disk space: 80 GB Hard Drive
Operating System: OSX 10.3 CD Drive: "Combo Drive" CD-Recordable/CD-Rewritable/DVD Player
Ethernet adapters: Built-in Ethernet
Wireless Ethernet: Airport Extreme (802.11 Compatible) Modem: Built-in 56Kbps

Printers:
Printer Laser: HP LaserJet 4100TN (consider DTN)
Printer Non-Laser: HP Inkjet printers


http://www.mtholyoke.edu/lits/tsr/standards/hardware.shtml for additional information on supported hardware

Spring of 04 also added another staffing change to TSR. Micah Desjardins left for Arizona and we gained Peter Natalie on our team. Peter’s hire was replacing Micah’s position as a Technical Support Specialist.

Our Labs:

During the fall 2003 and spring 2004 semesters, 22,375 students made use of the Information Commons. Our attendance usage for the Reference Reading Room computers totaled 15,180 for the same period.

During the summer of 2003, we continued to support a number of conferences on campus including Summer Math for Students (SMS), Summer Math for Teachers (SMT), P.L.A.Y., Musicorda, Gordon Research, Center for Talented Youth (CTY), and American Mathematical Society (AMS). The Gordon Research and AMS were heavy SPL Lab users often needing help connecting to computers at their home institution and translating files from varying formats. CTY used Skinner 318 almost exclusively. Both SMS and SMT used both Reese and SPL and special software was installed in Reese for them. A four-computer Mac lab was setup in Torrey for SMT and a five-computer pc area was set up especially for CTY officials.

Hiring and Training:
During the year of 03-04, we employed 40 + students to support the labs. 19 of the 40 + were new consultants that were hired and trained during the fall 03 semester.

Our Support Stats:

Top Three Support Issues from Phone Support: Virus/Security, Hardware, Software

The numbers above exclude the influx of students during the first two weeks of school

Top Three Support Categories: Virus, Hacked Computers, Security Updates

Summation:
All and all the year was a very busy one and we accomplished a lot of our goals and objectives. One thing remains outstanding however, that the work was accomplished through the collaboration, teamwork and motivation of a dedicated staff pulling together to make things happen.