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The Business Office Library and Database (BOLD) is a collaborative project between AIT and the ITS Business Office. It allows employees and management to view vital statistics about any purchased hardware products by including basic information about purchases as well as budget descriptions and contract information. Currently, BOLD is used exclusively by the ITS Business Office and has become an important aid in ITS, specifically ASET, for managing purchasing contracts with vendors. It currently holds close to 8,000 entries. Future plans for BOLD include a new interface and a mechanism by which all paperwork associated with an order may be stored for electronic retrieval.
The CorporateTime calendaring and scheduling client was made available to the Penn State community in summer 2002. This networked calendaring system allows its users to create meetings and events, compare schedules with others via the group agenda, as well as manage the scheduling and use of high-demand resources such as conference rooms and equipment. While clients are available for UNIX, Linux, Macintosh, Solaris and Windows, users can easily access and update their calendars via the CorporateTime Web server, http://www.cal.psu.edu/ provided that they have a valid license.
Currently, 922 user licenses and 128 Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) synchronization licenses are in use, with 116 resources and 30 public groups. In addition, current versions of the software clients are available for the latest operating systems.
AIT continued to both expand and improve services for serving dynamic content via the Web. This server allows instructors to teach Active Server Pages (ASP), Java Server Pages (JSP), PHP and JDBC methods for serving dynamic content, as well as more traditional database access and manipulation. The current server uses products from Sun and IBM to interface with an IBM DB2 database. It was used for several IST classes at three Penn State locations during the year. In addition, the server supported the ITS Training instructor evaluation surveys and approximately 275 student databases were created for use with student projects.
Losing important data is catastrophic to those whose information is permanently lost. Offsite backup is the best way to avoid costly permanent loss. For several years, AIT has provided a for-fee backup service known as Tivoli Storage Manager (TSM). TSM is a central backup service, which acts as a file backup and archive server for the disk drives of any workstation or personal computer connected to the Internet. It supports twenty-five different platforms as clients and offers disaster recover and Hierarchical Storage Management (HSM). Currently, there are 40 terabytes of data in backups/archives. Of this 40, approximately 7 terabytes are PASS backups. One thousand machines back up with TSM at least once a month.
The migration of file storage (used for home directories, Penn State WebMail, the Penn State Portal, Personal Web space and other services) from the former AFS to the Distributed File System (DFS), commonly known as Penn State Access Account Storage Space (PASS) in the Penn State environment, was completed in 2002. DFS permits finer access control to images and files and enables improved collaboration between individuals and groups.
A new digital identity service, known as Friends of Penn State (FPS), has been developed by AIT to help provide a variety of University services to potential students, alumni and e-commerce customers via the Web. A joint project between several ITS organizations, the FPS account management system has been designed to enable the development of Web-based information resources to more efficiently serve individuals outside the University. FPS is also part of the University's initiative to create a long-term relationship with the many individuals who use Penn State services such as library technologies, e-stores, World Campus, the Registrar's Office, Undergraduate Admissions and more.
In the area of High Performance Computing, GEaRS continued to expand its partnerships and collaborations with faculty members, helping them take advantage of computer resources which are now primarily delivered on Intel CPU-based servers running the Linux operating system. The GEaRS group remains committeed to teach the use of application packages and libraries, and support the same in research across many academic disciplines.
Lion-XE
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/hpc/systems/lionxe/
The Lion-XE cluster, a 128 node machine, is a partnership with thirteen faculty members who represent ten academic disciplines. It began in January 2001 and is set to conclude on June 30, 2004.
Lion-XE has a high-speed low-latency interconnect on 81 of its nodes dedicated to running high performance parallel jobs. Lion-XE consists of Dell 1550 1 GHz dual processor nodes, each with 1 gigabyte of memory. Each node is one rack unit high, making the entire cluster a very compact footprint. From July 1, 2002 through June 30, 2003, LION-XE ran 227,008 jobs, with a resource utilization rate that exceeded 80% during many peak periods and delivered 1,197,890 CPU hours.
Lion-XL
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/hpc/systems/lionxl/
Beginning in fall 2002, the GEaRS group deployed its most powerful cluster to date. Lion-XL, a 1.3 teraflop machine, consists of a total of 176 Dell PowerEdge 2650 servers, each configured with dual Intel processors, 4 gigabytes of memory and a 36 gigabyte Ultra3 15K rpm SCSI drive. The first subset of Lion-XL, 128 dual 2.4 Ghz CPU nodes, are connected with Quadrics QsNet Elan3 high performance network. All of the 176 nodes are connected with Fast Ethernet. During the period September 1, 2002 through June 30, 2003, Lion-XL ran 59,934 jobs and delivered 1,461,445 CPU hours, with a resource utilization rate of nearly 90%. Lion-XL has recently ranked seventy-third on the Top 500 Supercomputers list. It is the most efficient and highest rated machine in its class on the list.
For a listing of Lion-XL Partners, please visit the Lion-XL PC Cluster page.
Grid Computing
http://ligo.aset.psu.edu/
Computational grids are persistent environments that are expected to enable software applications to integrate instruments, displays, computational and information resources that are managed by diverse organizations in widespread locations. At Penn State, Dr. Sam Finn, director of the Center for Gravitational Wave Physics, is a lead participant in the NSF-funded Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) project. The LIGO is a facility dedicated to the detection of cosmic gravitational waves and the harnessing of these waves for scientific research. LIGO is a partner in iVDGL (International Virtual Data Grid Laboratory). The iVDGL is tasked with establishing and utilizing an international laboratory of unprecedented scale and scope, comprised of heterogeneous computing and storage resources in the U.S., Europe and ultimately other regions linked by high-speed networks, and operated as a single system for the purposes of interdisciplinary experimentation in Grid-enabled, data-intensive scientific computing.
As a part of the LIGO project, GEaRS is working with Dr. Finn on building a Tier 2 computing facility. It will have 128 dual-CPU compute nodes connected with Gigabit Ethernet and 35 terabytes of storage.
Bioinformatics
Bioinformatics involves the research, development or application of computational tools and approaches for expanding the use of biological, medical, behavioral or health data. These approaches help organize and extract important information from this huge wealth of new data and make it accessible and understandable to people in the medical and biological fields. GEaRS is working with the Huck Institute for Life Sciences, as well as faculty members in many academic departments, to provide several bioinformatics-focused services including Compgen, a bioinformatics portal, and BioWeb, a bioinformatics server. GEaRS staff have worked closely with Drs. Blair Hedges, Anton Nekrutenko, Arthur Lesk, Ross Hardison and Webb Miller.
Lab-on-Wheels
The Lab-on-Wheels, a new GEaRS initiative, provides a mobile teaching facility capable of being deployed quickly and easily, and virtually anywhere so that the typical restrictions of site and time found in scheduling a fixed computer lab are removed. This permits the GEaRS group to present seminars or teach a hands-on workshops wherever the instruction is desired and most easily accessible to a larger group. In order to launch this initiative, GEaRS acquired nine Dell Inspiron 8200 laptops, each with a 1.8 Ghz Pentium 4 processor, 1 gigabyte of RAM, and a 60 gigabyte drive. All laptops run both Windows and Linux operating systems, in order to accommodate a wide range of software packages. The Lab-on-Wheels facility was designed to partner with the Seminars-on-Demand initiative.
Seminars-on-Demand
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/education/
Seminars-on-Demand is a new GEaRS initiative designed to provide high performance computing- and visualization-related education to the University community. The goal is simple: to deliver seminars that are tailored to precisely fit researchers' needs and are taught at a time and place to suit their convenience. These seminars are taught using GEaRS' portable Lab-on-Wheels facility.
Major Partnerships
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/hpc/partners/
Materials Day
The GEaRS group, as a partner of the Materials Simulation Center (MSC), participated in this year's Materials Day held on April 15, from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. in Alumni Hall of the HUB-Robeson Center. This event was designed for students, faculty and industry to learn about ongoing materials research and capabilities at Penn State. Penn State's materials community ranks among the top five in the country in terms of overall expenditures by a university - surpassing $70 million annually in materials-related research. More than 200 faculty from four colleges and fifteen academic departments are engaged in materials research at Penn State. The GEaRS group utilized its Lab-on-Wheels and the portable stereo display at this event, partnering with MSC to demonstrate the visualization capabilities available at GEaRS facilities.
Many ASET staff members dedicated their time for and participation in this event, which was held on October 16, 2002 in Alumni Hall at the HUB-Robeson Center. Many ASET services were showcased, including the Penn State Portal, Penn State WebMail, File Backup (TSM), Emerging Technologies, the VPN service, high performance computing services and visualization services.
In July 2002, the Network Time Protocol (NTP) server was updated from clock.cac.psu.edu to clock.aset.psu.edu. As a result, clock.cac.psu.edu was fully decommissioned.
In May 2003, the Penn State Access Account Signature Stations were upgraded to better serve the Penn State community. Faculty, staff and students new to the Penn State community now have the opportunity to activate their Penn State Access Accounts via the University's new and improved Access Account signature stations. The signature stations (which new Access Account holders must visit in order to activate their respective Access Accounts) have been upgraded and redesigned by AIT and the ITS Accounts Services Office to increase the performance, reliability and security of the former PC-based signature stations. The new signature stations and their software were upgraded to Apple eMacs, which run the 10.2 operating system and use Java 1.4.1. The new software takes advantage of the Macintosh's higher graphics resolution capability. The signature stations also provide existing Access Account users with a means by which they can obtain their original password should they forget their current password or need to reset their password. The new signature stations are available at University Park and at other Penn State locations.
ASET continues to migrate the University-wide online directory from the older Ph/Qi system to several Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) servers. The LDAP server provides a much more robust programming interface, which allows programmers from University units (e.g. ITS, Office of Human Resources, World Campus and the Office of the Physical Plant) to design online applications that are more tailored to individuals or groups. Programmers in AIT replicated and enhanced the Web interfaces into the directory server using these programming interfaces. The LDAP protocol allows University data stewards to better control the release of directory information online. Citing privacy concerns, ITS, in cooperation with the Undergraduate Student Government (USG), designed a way for students to protect their local address and/or local phone number from being accessed via the online directory.
In addition, a searchable departmental directory component was added as well as options for users to choose abbreviated or full directory listings.
During the spring 2003 semester, ASET renamed several Penn State newsgroups from psu.cac to psu.its. In addition, the news group psu.otc was removed and replaced by psu.its.outages.
In an effort to continue password protection and security for Penn State Access Account users, ASET upgraded the Netnews news server, news.psu.edu to a secure server. This upgrade enables users to read and post news from a non-Penn State machine. Those who wish to post messages must authenticate via an SSL-enabled Web browser.
The Penn State Portal continued as a major University initiative, gaining momentum and popularity. Usage numbers steadily rose throughout the year among the student population. In addition, several new channels and new features were added and/or enhanced, such as the Portal's built-in file transfer tool, the PASS Explorer, an expanded personal calendaring channel and a dynamic job search channel.
Penn State Portal users to have the opportunity to perform searches for internal job postings at all Penn State locations via the Portal's new Job Search channel. The channel, which was developed in collaboration with staff in the Office of Human Resources (OHR), allows users to search and save specific search criteria, including Penn State job locations and grade levels. The Job Search channel is seamlessly integrated with the current OHR bidding system and produces search results that range between one grade lower and two grades higher than the grade level searched upon. Future additions to this channel include access to the external job listings so that students and part-time staff may view University employment opportunities. In addition to the new job search features, the Portal's PASS Explorer now enables all Portal users to quickly and efficiently transfer multiple files to their Penn State Access Account Storage Space (PASS), Personal Web space, Departmental Web space and other PASS-based space.
In addition to new features, the Penn State Portal's new look and feel will be launched at the start of the fall 2003 semester.
The Penn State Portal provides its users with a personal "one stop shopping" view of University and Internet resources. Portal users can chose the information that is most important and most interesting to them by adding and removing built-in content "containers" called channels. Content such as news, career planning and services, weather, Web cameras, student services, the PASS Explorer file transfer tool, The Daily Collegian, event calendars, and much more, allow users to build their very own, self-service Web environment. Subject-specific content can be contained and organized in one, convenient location via the Portal's Tab feature, and users may choose to change the Portal's default color scheme and welcome message, and change the Portal's refresh rate, to determine how frequently updates are made to his/her Portal.
Penn State's Web-based e-mail client, which is similar to Yahoo! Mail, provides users with anytime, anywhere secure access to your Penn State e-mail via a Web browser. The easy-to-use interface lets users create and organize mailboxes, access directory services, create and add personalized signatures and change settings. Ideal for faculty members on sabbaticals, students who study abroad and staff members who frequently travel, WebMail helps our users stay up-to-date while away from Penn State.
During the spring 2003 semester, WebMail underwent major software and hardware upgrades to increase performance and handle the increased load of this very popular service.
A Search Engine Evaluation Team, comprised of staff members from ITS, University Libraries and the Office of University Relations, was formed early in 2003. The team was charged with evaluating the replacement of Penn State's current search engine, the Ultraseek search engine. The intention was to identify how search capabilities could be improved for users both internal and external to the University. The team narrowed down several choices to three, then created an online survey by which University community members were able to share their input. Based on survey feedback, the Google Search Appliance was chosen as the replacement for the current search engine. The new search engine was implemented in August, 2003. For more information, please visit the Search Engine Documentation Web site.
Return to projects/initiaitves listing
In fall 2002, ASET migrated all Sun machines in its core infrastructure to the Solaris 8 operating system. This allows for economies of scale in the management and maintenance of Sun servers.
In spring 2003, ASET partnered with the Division of Student Affairs to begin the migration of the Student Activities (a.k.a the Clubs server) Web server to a server in the Computer Building. The migration of individual Web directories will allow for improved methods for managing the space. The Activity Server Web interface, developed by programmers in AIT, gives Student Affairs staff the ability to create space for properly registered student groups, alter access controls to Web space and update the individuals who are allowed to use an organization's Web space based on records maintained by Student Affairs. An agreement between ITS and Penn State Student Affairs offices at all locations allows their employees to manage this space. Agreements are currently in place with several Penn State locations and several more are in the works.
Migration of organizations from the former server to the new server is targeted for completion by the beginning of the fall 2003 semester.
Visualization Group of GEaRS investigates emerging visual computing technologies and implements several leading-edge solutions in a cost-efficient manner to help faculty better integrate such tools in instructional and research programs at Penn State. The group provides facilities and consulting expertise in the areas of scientific and artistic visualization, digital animation, as well as digital media and hardcopy output.
Immersive Environments Lab (IEL)
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/viz/facilities/iel/
The ITS/SALA Immersive Environments Lab (IEL) is a joint project between ITS and the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (SALA). The motivation for the lab has been to bring affordable, robust, easy-to-use, surround-screen, projection-based virtual reality (VR) techniques into the mainstream for teaching and research in the design arts and other disciplines. During the 2002-2003 academic year, the IEL has been upgraded from a two-screen Windows-only facility to a more immersive and flexible three-screen, multi-OS display environment. Over 200 students have used the IEL since its introduction as a single-screen facility in October of 2001.
As a result of the partnership with SALA, the leading use of the IEL has been in undergraduate architecture design studio education; however, the IEL is available for scheduled use by any Penn State faculty interested in exploring the benefits of immersive multimedia or VR spaces in teaching and research. Use to date has included special seminars or presentations in architectural engineering, molecular biology, engineering mechanics, nuclear engineering, communications and instructional media systems. In addition, lessons learned from the IEL are contributing to the design of related facilities in other areas of research and teaching, most notably in the Lasch Sports Medicine VR Lab, which was brought online during the spring 2003 semester, and a new stereo-enabled technology classroom, which has been scheduled for completion by fall 2003.
ACCESS Grid Node
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/viz/facilities/gridnode/
The GEaRS group completed the construction the ACCESS Grid Node in Room 140 Computer Building. The ACCESS Grid (AG) node supports large-scale distributed meetings, collaborative work sessions, seminars, lectures, tutorials, etc. The AG node enables group-to-group communications using multicast Internet-working, voice and video teleconferencing and desktop applications sharing among multiple remotely-located participants. It enables rich multimedia exchanges between participants and is supported by a large number of organizations in academia and industry. The ACCESS Grid uses a suite of hardware, software and audiovisual tools to facilitate collaborative group experiences via the Internet.
Display Wall
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/viz/facilities/displaywall
The Display Wall uses scalable real-time rendering techniques on a cluster of twelve computers to display high-resolution images with nearly ten million pixels on a 6’X 11’ large-format screen. The twelve-tile display enables viewing of significant localized details within complex visualization problems while simultaneously displaying the larger context within which such phenomena occur. The facility seeks to enable researchers in many disciplines to gain better intuitive insights into the represented data.
Sports Medical Research
http://gears.aset.psu.edu/viz/facilities/sportsmed/
The GEaRS group has participated in establishing a sports medicine VR lab in the Lasch Football Building. This endeavor is a partnership between GEaRS and faculty from the Department of Kinesiology, of the College of Health and Human Development, and the Department of Psychology, of the College of Liberal Arts, and the Hershey Medical Center. The lab is being used for the development of diagnostic tools and research procedures for the assessment of mild brain injury in athletes. The new lab builds upon pilot research conducted using GEaRS' Immersadesk VR facility and employs a VR display design that was developed for the ITS/SALA Immersive Environments Lab. The research combines VR display techniques with motion analysis and brain imaging to better understand how kinesthetic responses to perceived motion and underlying neurophysical mechanisms are affected by mild traumatic brain injury. The project has been funded by a Hershey Medical Center Dean's Feasibility Grant with additional funding, equipment and in-kind support from GEaRS and the departments of Kinesiology and Psychology.
Arts and Architecture Alumni Weekend
On March 28 and 29, 2003 the new three-screen upgrade to the IEL was unveiled during an Arts and Architecture Alumni Weekend. Various student works in VR and mulitmedia were highlighted during the day. In addition, a VR preview was shown of the soon-to-be-built School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture building, for which groundbreaking ceremonies were held during the same weekend.
Visualization and Virtual Reality Open House
The GEaRS group held a Visualization and Virtual Reality Open House on Tuesday, April 22, 2003 to unveil three large-format projection-based facilities for use by faculty members in the sciences, engineering and the design arts. The two-part Open House featured the Immersive Environments Lab, located in Engineering Unit C, in the morning, and the ACCESS Grid Node and the Display Wall, located in the Computer Building, in the afternoon. The Open House attracted nearly 100 attendees.
Staff members from ITS units formed a committee to examine how to safely deploy wireless access at Penn State. The committee consisted of representatives from ASET, Telecommunications and Networking Services (TNS), Security Operations and Services (SOS) and Consulting and Support Services (CSS). Several scenarios were examined and the current solution is found via the ITS Wireless SecureNet Web page.
During 2002-2003, Dr. Stanley Aungst, assistant professor of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) and department head of Penn State Mont Alto's IST program, continued his partnership with ASET. Stan, who has worked with Advanced Information Technologies (AIT) for several years, continues to work with this group on projects related to DB2E, wireless computing, cryptography and hand-held wireless devices. One of his main projects, called Virtual Coconuts, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and a supply chain management system, has been developed to give customers the status of their product in the supply chain via a handheld device such as a Palm Pilot, personal PC or WAP-enabled phone. Virtual Coconuts is a collaborative project between Stan, his students in IST, IBM and AIT staff. Other projects in which Stan is involved include a secure, Mobile Health Informatics database, a possible NSF-funded study of moving state agencies to the e-business world, and a beta test site for Authenicam with Iridian Software, which uses iris scanning technology for authentication. During 2002, Stan submitted a joint paper with Dr. David T. Wilson and Professor Emeritus Alvin H. Clemens, both of the Smeal College of Business, which proposes the eleven issues of wireless technology implementation in a business organization. Stan also is working with AIT and IBM on a paper on pervasive computing for an IEEE journal article. Finally, Stan and Russell Barton, associate dean of research in the Smeal College of Business, and AIT have teamed together to secure NSF funding for homeland security computing.
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Last revised: Thursday, August 12, 2004.