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Systems & Operations

Rick MacDonald, Director

Systems and Operations provides infrastructure, services, and operational support to other CIT divisions and to the entire Cornell community.

Systems and Operations is comprised of the following areas:

Administrative Support Contact

Bobbie Kirk

Products & Services

Systems

Brian Messenger, Assistant Director
E-mail: bnm3@cornell.edu
Phone:607-255-1558
  • Includes Mainframe Systems Programming, Facilities & Laser Systems Services, Systems Administration, Systems Engineering, and Storage Services.
  • Mainframe Systems Programming provides support for the CornellC Enterprise Server (mainframe) and the systems that run on it. This includes support for the z/OS and z/VM operating systems, and for administrative systems that run on CornellC. These administrative systems provide services in the following areas:
    • Accounting and Finance
    • Admissions
    • Budget
    • Bursar
    • Campus Life
    • Financial Aid
    • Institutional Planning
    • Inventory Management
    • Purchasing
    • Registrar/Student Information (including Just The Facts, CoursEnroll, Course Add/Drop and Faculty Advisor)
    • Transportation Services.
    • Specific services supported include VM/CMS, MVS/TSO, MVS batch jobs, EZ-Print and high speed printing and File Transfer Protocol to and from z/VM and z/OS.
  • Facilities and Laser Printing Services provides logistical support for the Rhodes Hall machine room and the CCC annex, and custom programming support for the central laser printing systems.
    • Monitors for safety and security.
    • Manages CIT server farm facility.
    • Creates and maintains custom print programs, forms, fonts, logos, and graphics in support of administrative printing.
  • Systems Administration and Systems Engineering provide services in accordance with vendor recommendations, University policy, and customer/CIT best practices.
  • Campus-wide Systems Engineering services include:
    • DNS and DHCP
    • Network Registry
  • Systems Administration services include:
    • Solutions planning
    • Vendor quotes and delivery coordination
    • Installation of hardware, specified system utilities, and remote management tools.The following operating systems are currently supported:
      • SUN Solaris
      • IBM
      • Windows 2000 (no new installations)
      • Windows 2003 (standard and enterprise editions)
      • and RedHat Linux Enterprise AS 4.0
    • Server signup for the following CIT services: Server Farm, Data Network service, EZ-Backup
    • Operating system software configuration/management
    • Upgrades and maintenance patches
    • Hardware and system software troubleshooting
    • 24 x 7 operations support and system monitoring
    • Data backup configuration
    • Hardware capacity planning assistance
    • Negotiation of hardware and software service contracts and maintenance agreements
  • Storage Services include:
    • The CIT Storage Farm Service, which provides:
      • Provisioning of block-level storage to servers managed by the Systems Administration staff, in one of three storage tiers
      • Connectivity of servers to storage via Fibre-Channel Storage Area Network
      • Professional Storage Management services
    • The EZ-Backup service, a fee-based, automated, remote backup/archive/storage service that automatically backs up workstation and server files.

Systems Services

Don MacLeod, Assistant Director
E-mail: dam21@cornell.edu
Phone:607-255-8074
  • Includes Messaging Services and Client Services.
  • Messaging Services is responsible for the design, implementation, and support of services related to electronic messaging for the benefit of the Cornell community. Those services include:
    • The campus e-mail service
    • The campus e-mail list processing service
    • The campus bulk e-mail service
    • The campus electronic calendar service
    • The campus USENET News service
  • Client Services is charged with introducing, developing, and managing cost recovered services for the benefit of the Cornell community. These services presently include:

Operations

Vicky Dean, Assistant Director
E-mail: vrd4@cornell.edu
Phone:607-255-2242
  • Includes Technical Support Operations, the Network Operations Center (NOC), and Production Operations.
  • Technical Support Operations is comprised of two distinct areas -- Student Computing Operations, which runs the public computing labs on campus, and Technical Support Services, an internal group providing support exclusively to CIT staff.
    • Student Computing Operations runs five instructional labs, oversees five general labs (3 open 24x7), and maintains 30 public kiosks, which are all available for use by anyone at Cornell.
    • Technical Support Services provides desktop and networking support services to CIT staff.
  • The Network Operations Center (NOC):
    • Provides 24x7 year-round proactive and reactive monitoring and facilitation of problem resolutions for critical campus services.
    • Configures/modifies/monitors and facilitates problem resolutions for all campus network infrastructure devices.
    • Manages network moves and changes.
  • Mainframe and Client-Server Operations:
    • Monitors all batch and real-time processing as well as the status of all administrative databases.
    • Manages all high-speed file transfers and tape mounts in support of administrative systems.
    • Manages all high-speed laser printing.
    • Manages all mainframe and peripheral maintenance.
  • Production Control:
    • Creates all batch processing schedules.
    • Submits all administrative batch processing (Accounting, Admissions, Bursar, Facilities, Payroll, Registrar, Transportation, etc.).
    • Verifies successful submission and completion of all administrative jobs.
    • Completes all output distribution.

Information about CIT's services:
Computing at Cornell

Help with CIT services:
helpdesk@cornell.edu