Periodic update (2024 December)
News and other updates for end 2024. The notes here update those from mid 2024.
The Network Programme – Kelvin updates in 21st century §
The Network Programme is still asserted to be roughly on schedule....
...but it's not clear when it'll get to the Kelvin Building.
IT Services are still aware we are in need of significant network upgrades, including Eduroam, but are non-committal about how or when they'll be provided.
Managed laptops – Jamf/‘MyMac’ §
All Apple devices bought by the University are now 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.
Also – importantly – there is a plan to retrospectively enrol newer macOS devices, when a machine's OS is upgraded. This roll-out has been paused for COSE users, but the effect of that depends on a census to establish which machines are associated with COSE and non-COSE users. This data-gathering is currently ongoing.
...and Windows ‘MyDevice’ §
The same sort of regime will eventually arrive for Windows devices, and the only thing delaying this is technical (un)readiness.
College IT §
The ‘transformation’ to a College IT service is now in large part complete. There are some continuing wrinkles and rearrangements, but the major changes are done.
To reiterate: as of now, IT support is a college function, as
opposed to being school-specific. 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.
All that said, Research Group IT roles will be unaffected, and at least to begin with, IT personnel will remain in their current physical offices.
Other §
-
Campus IT Security continue to be very vigilant, and to lack anything which could be mistaken for a sense of humour.
-
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’). Requests will generally still be routed to people physically in the Kelvin Building, but the indirection helps keep track of requests, and gathers statistics which are used to inform future allocation of resources. phas-it@glas
-
JupyterLab: This service is still broadly planned to migrate to being a college service at some point, but it will remain a P&A service at least for the remainder of this session.
Links §
Norman