(Message inbox:473) Received: from PACIFIC-CARRIER-ANNEX.MIT.EDU by po7.MIT.EDU (5.61/4.7) id AA07681; Fri, 24 Sep 99 17:09:07 EDT Received: from MOZART.MIT.EDU by MIT.EDU with SMTP id AA12228; Fri, 24 Sep 99 17:09:10 EDT Received: (from nschmidt@localhost) by mozart.mit.edu (8.9.3) id RAA27552; Fri, 24 Sep 1999 17:09:02 -0400 (EDT) Message-Id: <199909242109.RAA27552@mozart.mit.edu> To: cease@MIT.EDU Cc: vkumar@MIT.EDU, ganderso@MIT.EDU Subject: Notes from our 9/24/99 CEASE meeting Date: Fri, 24 Sep 1999 17:09:02 -0400 From: "Naomi B. Schmidt" Attending were Abby Fox, Naomi Schmidt, Bob Basch, Alex Prengel, Bill Cattey, and Vijay Kumar Agenda ------ - address any questions about process, charter, etc - list questions to be answered by this project - assign primary responsibility for specific questions/areas - estimate time required for each task - set future mtg time/locations - set agenda for next mtg Charter: ------- Replace "options for SGI renewal in FY2001" with "viability and timeline of Athena/SGI support, including options for FY2001 renewal." Questions to be answered: ------------------------- 1. Who uses SGI's and for what? This question will primarily concentrate on use for courses and academic work. Data will be gathered by Naomi and ACST by interviewing faculty, looking at FL logs, 4-035 reservations, DASH courseware, remote access to the ACS SGI chord machine. Additional information about student use will come from the Athena/OLC consultants and by announcing this project at the Athena Forum and giving a mailing address for comments. 2. What are financial costs to having SGI's in the Athena environment? This includes costs for machines, annual fees paid to Dorrie Hall's group, costs of 3partysw, cluster infrastructure such as special anchor pads. Naomi will collect this data 3. What is happening with SGI? What are their stratetic directions? Bill will follow up on this. We will ask SGI for either a phone conversation, a meeting, or something in writing, indicating their directions. 4. What are the plans of 3partysw vendors? Alex 5. What are our support costs? Information will come from team brainstorming and from interviews with other IS staff not on the team. They will be invited to come to a team meeting if that is appropriate: Cluster Services - Naomi will interview Brian Athena/RCC - Alex will interview Oliver Athena Server Ops - Bob will interview Jonathon TPS - Bill will interview Heather Ann SGI UNIX support - Alex will interview Dorrie We will ask them: - to compare time and efforts on SGI vs Sun for comparable issues - are there unique costs or pains to supporting SGI? - what are values that are unique to SGI? - anything more that you want to say 6. What are our time dependencies? 7. Who are the stakeholders? - how do we weigh the various stakes? - how do we engage them? - how many are there? Action Items ------------ 1. Bill will craft the questions that he wants to ask SGI re their stated strategy and its overlap and nonoverlap with our own requirements, and will circulate it to the team. 2. Alex will craft a list of questions for vendors and send them to the team. 3. Naomi will try to get a more exhaustive list of faculty and courses that require use of SGIs. Meetings and agendas -------------------- We will continue to meet on Fridays from 2:30 to 4 PM in N42-202. The tentative agenda for our next meeting is: 1. Draft questions from Alex and Bill 2. Updates on interviews with IS stakeholders 3. Naomi - report on $ costs 4. List possible scenarios Homework -------- Brainstorming on support costs, time dependencies, scenarios