brian@ms.uky.edu (Brian Sturgill) (08/06/87)
I am trying to gather information to allow us to project/acquire
funding for our facility. As we do a large number of things "first" on this
campus, I am in need of role models. This is an enhanced repost of a message
I posted Sunday. Please excuse the haste of my reposting this, I am desperate
for the information.
We are this state's "research university", this facility provides computation
for research by faculty and graduate students in the departments of
Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science. (about 150-200 users, half
of which are active in any real sense, 50 (and growing rapidly) of which
are very active)
Our current situation (I am speaking only of our research machines
I don't take care of the instructional lab)
Main machines:
1 Sequent Balance 21000 (26 processor multiprocessor, 4.2type os)
4 MicroVax II's setup with 3rd party stuff to act like 11/780's
running 4.3BSD+NFS
1 11/750 4.3BSD+NFS
Work Stations:
4 Sun 3's and a server.
3 VaxStation II's 4.3+NFS
10 Vax 2000's due in 2 months, do not have removable media. (Can't
let life get boring...) Will probably run 4.3+NFS, and me
[into the ground].
There are approximately 6 gigs of disk space, and various small odd machines
(IBM PC's, LMI Lisp Machine, 2 IBM RT's, 16 AT&T 7300's, etc)
We are connected to the main campus via ether-net|over U-B broadband, which
gets us to arpa-net. We have a bit-net connection, and uucp from
to/from various places.
We currently have the following in terms of staff.
(Please excuse the odd job titles we aren't very formal here,
and the job function move around a lot.... except I am unable to
sucker any of the existing staff into trading jobs with me (sigh).)
All except as noted are 20(haha)/hour week student help.
1 System Manager (Me -- technically a 20hr/wk student worker)
1 Communications Manager
1 Hardware Fixer/Builder/Beater (Full Time)
1 Package Putter-Upper/Assistant Sys. Manager
1 Person for Special Projects, also manages 10 ATT 7300's.
1 User Consultant (10 hrs/wk)
1 Person for backups (sigh, we might lose this one if (when) funds are cut)
I have (after 10 years) just received by undergraduate degree and in order
to help hide the transcript from said degree, am going to go to graduate
school here. As I wish not to repeat the comedic performance of my
undergraduate decade, I am having serious doubts as to my abilities to
continue making this place function and do a good job in GS.
At the moment all systems are centrally maintained, with file systems
and configurations, etc looking as much alike as possible...
Individual faculty have the right to maintain their own machine, with
various restrictions to keep them from interfering with the rest of
the network (no one is doing that at this moment).
WHAT I NEED TO KNOW:
In particular from other universities with facilities this size
or larger:
What is the size of your facility?
What is the size of your staff?
What is the size of your user community?
What portion of staff is students to full-time to crazy-people-like-me?
How do you organize/control your staff?
How much faculty and non-staff-student support do you get/expect?
We have an internal debate here as to what our roll should be:
One side is that we basically need to get hardware there, the
faculty and non-staff-students would get applications there
on their own. The other side is that unless time getting applications
there is spent, then hardware will go unused.
(Hopefully you can't tell which side I take... I want this
to be unbiased) Applications being discussed here are things like
X, gremlin, pic, tex, basically any large software package that
does neat things, and that is cheap.
Do you have any general hints, suggestions, prayers to favorite gods,
etc about how to run an installation of this size?
How do you handle such users as techinical typists and departmental
secretaries?
What is the relationship of your facilities to a central computing
center? How much support do you get from them?
How much of your equipment is under service contract?
What kind of salary range for your various staff?
Two years ago we had an 11/750 with 1.5gigs and uucp/usenet, 2 staff?
One year ago we added bitnet and 4 micro-vaxes, local ether,
moved up to 3 gigs, had 4 staff.
Now we have added a sequent, 17 work stations, arpa-net, and are up
to 6 gigs, have 7 staff.
Can you give me a similar description of your growth rate?
Do you want my job?
I wish to thank:
Andrew Mack -- Melborne Univ.
Brian Glendenning -- radio.toronto.edu
John Luiten -- arizona.edu
for responding to the earlier query.
Thanks,
Brian Sturgill System Manager
University of Kentucky Departments of Mathematical Sciences
brian@ms.uky.edu brian@ms.uky.csnet
{uunet,cbosgd}!ukma!brian brian@UKMA.BITNET