Digital Life

at the

University of Otago

12 March 2018

MIKE HARTE

Director, Information Technology Servicesmike.harte@otago.ac.nz

University of Otago

• New Zealand’s oldest

university, founded in 1869

• Main campus in Dunedin,

with campuses in

Invercargill, Christchurch,

Wellington and Auckland

• 19,568 students

• 3,739 staff

Technology @ University of Otago

• CIO Magazine named us 8th biggest user of IT in NZ in

their annual survey

• Budget– OPEX $40m, CAPEX $14m

• Support over 9,600 computers owned by the university

• Support over 36,000 devices on network, including

students’ devices

About Information Technology Services

• Provide centrally managed IT services and support to the

university

• Support is provided for both staff and students as well as

visitors and many groups associated with the university

• Two data centres providing full redundancy for core

services

• 160 staff

Infrastructure & Applications

• Data Centres (servers and storage)

• University Networks (data & voice)

• IT architecture and design

• Database administration

• Software development and support

Infrastructure & Applications

Two Data Centres

1000 virtual servers housed in the data centres

Over 3 Petabytes storage available

Over 3,200,000 emails processed a day

High speed network runs from Invercargill to Auckland

ITS Datacentre 1

ITS Datacentre 1

ITS Datacentre 2

ITS Datacentre 2

Corporate Systems

• Finance• General Ledger, Cashiers, Debtors, Creditors, Purchasing, Fixed Assets,

Fees

• Human Resources• Payroll, Health & Safety, Recruitment, Onboarding, Casual staff

employment

• Timetabling

• Research• PBRF, Research Management, IP

• Blackboard

Corporate Systems

• Student Management (eVision)• Enrolment

• Fees and invoicing

• Academic records

• Exams

• Graduation

Corporate Systems

• Identity and Access Management

• University ID Card

• Cardax Door Management

• Enterprise Reporting

• Student Data Warehouse

• Alumni database

• Software Licensing database

• Call charging

• Online shop

• Web content management

Corporate Systems

• Library System

• Records and Document Management

• OUR Archive

• OUR Heritage

University Internet Usage

Total Data (TB)

Inbound 128.6 TB

Outbound 2601 TB

University Network Project

New Network by the numbers

New fibre optic cable in ground 2,100 km

New fibre in buildings 384 km

Copper cable 550 km

Wireless Access Points 3,500

New network switches 750

Access layer implementations

Iteration 06

Iteration 07

Iteration 08

Iteration 09

Iteration 10

Iteration 11

Iteration 12

Iteration 13

Iteration 14

Iteration 15

Wellington Core

Christchurch Core

Wellington Access

Invercargill Core

Christchurch Access

Invercargill Access

Customer Services

• Service Desk

• Student Support

• Desktop Support

• IT Training

• IT Procurement

• Software Licensing

ITS Service Desk

• Available to all staff and students (phone, email, walk-in

(Dunedin), web)

• Monday-Friday (8:30am to 7:00pm)

• Process for critical service issues out of hours

• Annual call numbers – approx. 45,000

ITS Service Desk

• Top call topics – usernames/passwords, Blackboard,

Syncplicity

• Manager, 3 Senior Customer Service

Representatives(CSRs) and 9 CSRs

• Axios assyst software used for call logging and

management

Student IT

• Students helping students

• Available to all students (walk-in (Dunedin), phone, email,

online)

• Monday- Friday (8:30am-9:00pm) and weekends

(10:00am-9:00pm)

• Out of hours critical service issues reporting

• Based in libraries, plus walk about.

Student IT

• Identified by “jacket”

• BYOD support

• Top topics – passwords, student desktop, connection to

University wireless network

• Manager, Support Advisor (2), Senior Student IT Advisor

(SITA, 4 part time), SITA (approx. 30 students about 12

hours a week)

Student IT

• SITAs come from all disciplines not just Computer

Science & Information Science

• Although IT knowledge is important Customer Service &

personality is more so

• A number of SITAs have gone on to work in various roles

throughout ITS

Training

ITS Training can set up class or individual training on a range of hardware and software. The training typically falls into five different categories:

• Short scheduled classroom courses

• Individual tuition

• Custom training courses for Departments

• Advanced technical training

• Training for students

Teaching & Learning Facilities

• Lecture Theatres

• Computer Resource Rooms

• eConferencing

• eLearning & eResearch

• Media Production Services

Teaching & Learning Facilities

• Lecture Theatres

– 91 lecture theatres and tutorial rooms (7,289 seats)

• eLearning / eResearch

– Blackboard, podcasts, wikis, blogs etc

• Technical Services

– Support 1,600 computers from Dunedin to Auckland

– 18 computer resource rooms, many open 24 hours

Teaching & Learning Facilities

• Media Production

– Filming ‘interlinking’, studio productions, educational material,

special events (IPLs, conferences etc), publication material

• eConferencing

– Providing conferencing services to the university, including

Otago Connect

Big Numbers, Small World

• Our Learning Management system (Blackboard)

receives

– 382,000 hits from 56 different countries per month

Big Numbers, Small World

• Over 2 million academic journals are downloaded by

students a year (which is over 100 per student)

• Over 5 million sheets of paper printed by students a year

(which would cover Otago if spread out)

Big Numbers, Small World

• Students generate 50 terabytes of internet traffic per

month

– 62,826,823,322,900 letters of text

– 3,744,916 music downloads

– 14,979 episodes of Coronation Street

Audio Visual

• 91 Lecture Theatres & Tutorial Rooms

• All rooms have automated control systems

• All rooms have presentation facilities

• Equipment includes:

• Data Projectors (up to 3 in a

theatre)

• LCD Screens

• Document Cameras

• Lecture Recording

• Video Conferencing

• DVD/Blu-Ray

• PC Computer

• User Laptop integration

• Clickers

Design

• All Audio Visual system design done in-house

• Most new room automation programming done in-house

• Use both external integrators and internal Property

Services team for installations

• Mainly Crestron Control System but some AMX

• Equipment refresh 3 to 6 years depending on venue

iPad Class Sets

When a big theatre isn’t big enough

• Problem:

– 1,800 students in 1 paper, 3 lectures per week

– Largest theatre 550 (high demand)

• Solution:

– Lecturer presents the same lecture 4 times a day 3 times a

week; or

– Create a ‘virtual’ lecture theatre made up of multiple lecture

theatres

• Options:

– Buy proprietary ‘Black Box’ solution ($290,000+)

– Use off the shelf hardware and “community” software to

create our own system (less than $45,000)

Locations

St David 550 550 seats

Castle 1 324 seats

Castle 2 416 seats

Quad 2 218 seats

Quad 4 137 seats

Archway 1 185 seats

Archway 2 123 seats

Archway 3 123 seats

Archway 4 268 seats

Total 2,334 seats

550

218 &,

or, 137

416 &,

or, 324

490

Map provided by: Dr Phil Bishop (Zoology)

Dunedin Interlinking

St David 550

Castle 1

Castle 2

Quad 2

Quad 4

Audio

Video

Interlinking & Web Streaming

• Over 40 hours of interlinking between theatres a week for

many classes

• Most Interlinked Lectures also live streamed over the

Internet

• Live Web Stream about 50 hours of content a week.

• Largest web audience was over 5,000.

Interlinking between

campusesChristchurch

Wellington

So what do the students say?

Quotes Supplied by: Dr Phil Bishop (Zoology)

“I thought that you

would be bigger in

real-life”

“I prefer the videoed

stream as I can see the

lecturer more clearly and

It is less threatening”

New Zealand Tertiary IT Innovation Award

Podcasts

• Recordings of lectures

• Can listen/watch on laptops/tablets whenever a student

chooses

• Students use them mostly for revision

• Millions of freely available podcasts available on Apple

iTunes U

0

500000

1000000

1500000

2000000

2500000

3000000

2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016

Lecture Recording Views & Downloads

0

50000

100000

150000

200000

250000

Jan Feb Mar Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec

Echo360 Usage

2014 2015 2016 2017

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

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80%

90%

100%19

99

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

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20

10

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11

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Student Laptop Ownership

eGaming

• Problem

– eGaming competition in 3 weeks

– Allow practice in computer rooms, multiple weekends

of finals

– 12 participants + commentators

– Commentators both in NZ & overseas

– No money

• Solution

– Use mobile broadcast system with 15 inputs, live

editing, including video conferencing

– Create separate virtual network for event & practices

New Student Desktop

• Previous system:

– Windows Xp / Novell

– Provide student access to 1,600 computers on campus

• New Student Computing Platform

– Student can use university owned computer or own

laptops/mobile devices

– Access to 75+ application anywhere, anytime, on any device

Where We Were

• Provide computer resources to student via computer

rooms

• Approximately 1,600 computers mostly in Dunedin -also -

Invercargill, Christchurch, Wellington and Auckland

• Aproximately 760,000 logins a year

• Student experienced 3 to 5 minute logins

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%19

99

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

2007

2008

2009

20

10

20

11

2012

2013

2014

2015

2016

2017

Student Laptop Ownership

The Student ‘Desktop’

University Owned Student Desktop, 1,600,

5%

Student Owned Laptops,

19,600, 56%

Student Mobile Devices, 13,600,

39%

Vision

The Desktop should be available

“Anytime, Anywhere on

Any Device”

By the Numbers

• Original scope was to support 3,000 users– 2 x data centres

– Full fail over between data centres

– Able to support 6,000 users

• Old system login time 3 to 5 minutes– New system target ‘less than 30 seconds’, reality 10 to 15

seconds

• Delivery– XenDesktop virtual desktop

– XenApp hosted shared desktop

– App-V streaming applications

By the numbers

• 48 physical blade servers

• 4 dedicated GPU units

• EMC XtremIO solid state storage (64,000 I/Os, 5.5

GB/s serving 4,500 server & client connections)

• Originally scope was to support 3,000 users

– Advances in hardware & software means we expect to

be able to support close to 6,000

• Current system login time 3 to 10 minutes

– New system less than 20 seconds

• XenDesktop, XenApp, VMware ESX

Behind the Scenes

• Students accounts populated automatically during

enrolment process

• Student allocated certain applications by default

• Students are allocated ‘Course Specific’ software

automatically

• 75 software applications available

Storage

• Students have 2 accessible storage methods

1. On Campus high speed storage

• 500mb default but increased on requirements

2. Off campus cloud-based Microsoft ‘OneDrive’

• Automatically mapped at login

• Acts like any other drive

• Unlimited storage

Usage 1st Month

• Student logged in from 32 countries

• Never had less than 5 students logged in since

December (24/7 including Christmas & New Years)

• 73,148 Logins

• 10,987 unique users logged in

• 71,150 hours

• 53 minutes average session length

Time = Money

• Saved 50,045 hours a year that student spent waiting for

the computer to log in

• Productivity Savings

Minimum Wage ($14.25)

$653,716

Average Wage ($27.48)

$1,260,640

Daily Logins

0

500

1,000

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Number of Logons Average

CyberSecurity

• Information and Technology Security

• Virus, Spam, Intrusion Detection

• Internet Traffic Management

CyberSecurity

• Hacking– to devise or modify (a computer program), usually skilfully

– to circumvent security and break into (another's server, website, or

the like) with malicious intent

CyberSecurity

• Spam– disruptive online messages, especially commercial

messages, posted on a computer network or sent as email

– Use to initiate a ‘con’

Methods

• Exploitation – Use computer’s programs to probe for vulnerabilities and exploit them

– Often try to gain access to the computer or information on it

– Use computer as a ‘host’ for other activities

• Social engineering

– Convince you to carry out an action where you voluntarily install software

(either known or unknown)

Brief History

1960 – First reported ‘hacks’

1972 – John Draper (aka Captain Crunch) uses toy whistle to receive free toll

calls

1979 – Kevin Mitnick used ‘social engineering’ to access computer systems

1984 – First ‘computer virus’ is created by Fred Cohen

1983 - Bill Landreth becomes first person convicted of computer hacking

(accessed NASA & Dept of Defence)

1988 – Toby Morris invents the ‘Morris Worm’

1990 – Kevin Poulsen hacks a radio station phone system to ensure he is the

101st caller and win Porsche 944

1994 – Vladmire Levin hacks into Citibank and steals $10 million

1998 – Two Chinese hackers, Hao Jinglong and Hao Jingwen (twin brothers),

are sentenced to death by a court in China for breaking into a bank's computer

network and stealing 720'000 yuan ($87,000)

2004 – Term ‘spam’ was coined

2007 – Estimated cost of SPAM exceed US $100 billion

What is Spam?

• Unsolicited email

• Two purposes:

1. As a carrier to enable access to your computer

2. To gain access to other systems or money via social

engineering

• Cost to sender $0.000001, cost to receiver $0.001

http://www.canbazkids.com/wp-includes/theme-compat/mama.php

How to stay safe?

• Install a virus checker

• Do not reply to spam emails

• Do not forward hoax emails. Take a commonsense

approach when you receive strangely worded or

sensationalist emails in your inbox

• Unless the email is from a known and trusted source, do

not open attachments or click on links

• If it sounds too good to be true… It is

If you think you have been spammed

• Tell someone

• Stop all communication immediately

• Call your bank

• Arrange for computer to cleaned

• Share your experience

New Dental School

Dental IT Systems

• Patient Record System

– Paper-based to Digital records

– Available at every chairside

– Patient reminders by txt

– integrate radiographs and photographs to

the individual patient record

Dental IT Systems

• CAD/CAM

– chairside scanning, design, and electronic

transfer to milling machine which

manufactures the restoration for aesthetic

and functional dental restorations.

Dental IT Systems

• Call Centre

– 19,000 patients / 70,000 treatments

– Customer self-service kiosks

• Central Sterile Services Department

(CSSD)

– trackability of instruments and equipment

from the sterile store to the patient via the

dispensary and then through the

disinfection and sterilising process

Questions ?

Digital Life

at the

University of Otago

MIKE HARTE

Director, Information Technology Services