Open Up! Year 2002 in Review

The Open Up! column has been in existence for just over one year. We have used this forum to keep you up-to-date on product and service enhancements to the NERSP computer complex. This month, the Open Up! column takes a look backward to review some of these projects.

The Open Systems Group (OSG) began the new year by implementing two new technologies to enhance existing services. First, the OSG installed and implemented virus scanning on all GatorLink e-mail presented to the smtp.ufl.edu mail server. It was a surprise to find that about 25% of this mail contained a virus. The new scanning service worked by wrapping affected messages in a container message that included a warning to the intended recipient.

The second major enhancement was in establishing the Network Dispatcher component of IBM's Websphere Edge Server. The distributed nature of this system allows a group of servers to work in concert to support a single-user application. It also allows problem diagnosis to occur without interruption to the service.

Also early in 2002, the UF Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) server was upgraded to OpenLDAP 2.0.x, providing an open-standards-based implementation of the LDAP V3 protocol. This multi-threaded version of LDAP enabled more search requests to be handled at a time and processed each search request faster than before.

In March, the UFL NDS tree was upgraded to the newest version of Novell Directory Services (NDS), now called eDirectory. It included XML features, live continuous backup capability, persistent searches, and dynamic group functionality. It also enabled UFL NDS tree members to use some newer Novell products that will not operate with older version of NDS.

During the summer, the Network Storage and Archive Management (NSAM) service was upgraded to a new and faster node on the NERSP complex. In addition, enhanced disk adapters and new Fibre Channel replaced older SCSI tape connections.

And, as noted in the November issue of Open Up!, we had the opportunity to put our capacity-on-demand solution to a successful test this fall when the newly installed NERSP virus-scanning service developed a bottleneck that resulted in a backlog of messages to be sent via the smtp.ufl.edu (outgoing mail) server. The OSG staff was able to correct this problem immediately.

In addition to these highlighted service enhancements, the OSG staff continued the slow, but important, work of upgrading the operating system of each NERSP node, and the ongoing administration of this complicated system.

We look forward to keeping you current on future NERSP system developments in the coming year.

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