IT Meeting @ 2009-10-15 19:10:00
IT Meeting Minutes 15th October 2009
Meeting Start: 19:10
1) Welcome and Apologies
Present: Ben, Ed, Bernard, Martin, Chris, Tim, Adam, Andrew
Apologies: Matt Wilkinson, Fergus Cooper, Scott Griffiths, Rachel Crofts
2) Current Website Status
•The President asked for the current website to be updated, most done but various photos need to be uploaded. Was suggested to upload to WSC gallery and then images can be sourced from those locations.
•Warwick Student Cinema member emailed about not being able to access the website, suggestion to change her personal settings on union website and then try again in 24 hours time.
3) Mailing List
•Mailing lists were temporarily down, they have been re-invented and are back up and running.
•The President of WSC has to moderate every email before they are allowed to go through, Tim will investigate this.
4) KPMG Video
•Is up and running as it was from the first show of term
•As for other video advertisements the maximum time is 15 seconds, this does not include any sound, as they would be shown during the slideshow before the beginning of a film. If there was to be music we would need a system to fade the music playing, turn on the advertisements sound, and then fade the music back up.
5) UPS
•Not fully installed – all the servers in the rack are on the UPS, only the servers under the flooring need to be added.
•One of the connections is borrowed from other existing hardware this needs to be replaced. We already have the parts needed but we need to schedule downtime, the borrowed part has been replaced on the slave 2 till with a new one.
•The old UPS is currently packaged and ready to be collected. The IT Officer has emailed APC and they need directions, contact number and times. Original plan was for it to be picked up from Union North, however this plan has changed. It will now be picked up from the Dump, and one of the IT Team has offered their number to be contacted on the date of collection to help give directions etc.
6) Practical Session
•A practical session has been agreed on Sunday 1st November at 11am in L3. At a later date the IT officer will email an agenda for the day to outline jobs that we are planning on completing
•IT officer will also email the exec requesting lunch to be provided.
7) Purchasing New Equipment
•Slideshow computer – Query as to whether if we purchased a new slideshow computer whether it would improve the current situation. Letting us show more videos advertisements. Suggested that it wouldn’t make a great deal of difference because of the way Microsoft accelerates dual monitor graphics. A suggestion was made on duplicating the monitor image to overcome this problem however would raise issues with slideshows during the All-nighter. However there is a computer in the Exec office, which will hopefully replace the existing slideshow computer. This will be installed during the practical session.
•Platform choice for new servers caused heated discussion, need to look into the future of the society as well as the +ve’s and –ve’s of each platform. Due to reduced number of the IT team due to the Fresher’s ball, the discussion and voting was put on hold until a later date.
•Hardware – Ed had previously looked in to specs of new servers, these were discussed but not finalised due to other windows being opened for example DABs allow you to create rack mount servers that take standard size motherboards.
•Tim/Ed will look into rack mounted or free standing server specs. Hopefully narrowing down options of what we intend to purchase. These will be discussed at the next IT meeting.
•We are looking into the purchase of 2 new systems, we will then use the parts form the old servers that are in the best condition to create “new” servers for the Firewalls and Files.
Servers
FW 1 Dns, dhcp, open vpn
FW 2
New 1 Web, mail, db, backup (ext disk) – virtual servers
New 2
File Nfs, nis, samba
•Touch screen tills/overlays, was looked into a few years previously, however they were “clumsy” and easily broken. This will be looked into again to see whether prices have dropped or new improved systems have been designed that are not so fragile.
8) New Website
•Current website is using php but and the former IT team started to write the new website in python. Benefit of this is that it will discourage using any of the old coding, which is messy and hard to maintain. However most of the new members of the IT team have experience in php. IT Officer encouraged that the new members looked into python language as progress on the new website has already been made. The programming language will be discussed at the next meeting.
•We are not keeping the existing database as the current database isn’t structured.
•The IT team would like a “mock up” of the website e.g. print screen so we know how to make the website look professional and exciting.
•Was suggested that we have a meeting purely for discussions about the new website.
9) EPOS
Issues have been resolved
10) AOB
•Servers names, to be discussed at a later date.
•IT Officer to add the new members to the IT mailing list.
•Crew member status will be discussed at a later date once progress and commitment has been noted.
•IT Officer encouraging weekly meetings
•Date of the next meeting is Thursday 22nd October, 19:00 for a 19:15 start. A room will be booked at a later date and an email will be sent out with an agenda and meeting place.
Finish: 22:00