Periodic update (2024 June)
News and other updates for mid 2024. The note here has a significant overlap with the early 2024 summary.
The Network Programme – Kelvin updates in late 2024 (still) §
The Network Programme is still asserted to be roughly on schedule....
...ie, no change from the last report.
We still believe we're near the top of the list for major networking work, and we still haven't been told that explicitly.
Managed laptops – Jamf/‘MyMac’ §
All Apple devices bought by the University are now appearing automatically enrolled in the ‘MyMac’ programme.
In most cases we are seeing little significant disruption caused by this, apart from a few wrinkles at first use (the new setup doesn't seem to get on well with macOS Migration Assistant). If you have specific technical problems with the new configuration, talk to local IT.
College IT §
[This is a mild adjustment from the previous notes, but is probably the final iteration of the plans.]
The ‘transformation’ to a College IT service is due to be live on 1
July 2024. From then, IT support will become a college function, as
opposed to being school-specific. This process includes thoughts
about ‘research computing’ and ‘edtech’. Support will primarily be
via Ivanti, rather than the phas-it
address.
- Service Delivery (ie, ‘it's broken’; this will include AV in spaces other than centrally-managed LTs).
- Service Operations (ie, infrastructure, research computing, and software).
- Service Resilience (DevOps, governance, resilience).
- Service Improvement: ‘principal engineers’ x 2.
The new structure includes all of the people currently in school IT roles across the college, and creates some new vacancies.
The transition to the new structures will not be a Big Bang transition, but will have the effect of the current IT staff acquiring and shedding responsibilities as they migrate into the new structure, over the next few weeks (months?, years?, ...?).
Specifically Research Group IT roles will be unaffected, and at least to begin with, IT personnel will remain in their current physical offices.
Other §
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Campus IT Security continue to be very vigilant, and to lack anything which could be mistaken for a sense of humour.
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Ivanti (ie, the Helpdesk system) is the preferred route for requests (go to the campus helpdesk at https://www.gla.ac.uk/helpdesk and search for ‘COSE’). The phas-it@glasgow.ac.uk currently remains a licit route for conversations which are vague or require discussion, but this may become more actively dispreferred as support moves more towards a College service..
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JupyterLab: We anticipate doing some substantial configuration changes over the summer, which should address the reliability problems we encountered last session. Though it might migrate to being a college service at some point, this will remain a P&A service at least for next session.
Links §
Any questions, phas-it@glasgow.ac.uk
is hanging on the telephone,
awaiting your call.
Norman