IT at D-PHYS - Tutorial

Transcription

1 IT at D-PHYS A tutorial Christian Herzog Head of IT, D-PHYS herzog@phys.ethz.ch

2 Objective This tutorial is meant for new D-PHYS employees (mainly academic) who join the department and will use its IT for some years. It should give you an overwiew of the IT services available at D-PHYS some tips and hints regarding their usage an idea about where to look for information and whom to ask for help The PDF of this tutorial and all URLs can be found at

3 IT service providers IT Services Group (ISG) on the department level Informatikdienste (ID) for the whole ETH ID: (relevant for you) Basic network (wired and wifi) ( ) IDES (central software repo) VPN ISG: Everything else (we'll get to that)

4 Accounts Both ID and ISG issue an account. The ID account usually will be your first, so we try to use the same login (passwords can be different of course). ID: Postal address ( Service desk ( , ISG: Again: everything else

5 ISG Services: Managed Workstations We provide managed workstations for all major operating systems: Linux Windows Mac you will not have to take care of system administration and software installation yourself makes them a good choice for many office computers (lab not so much) self-managed computers are always possible, but our support is somewhat reduced

6 ISG Services: Storage + Backup We run an enterprise-grade SAN (currently 450 TB + backup) for data storage. Use cases: personal home directory (default: 1 GB, accessible from all OS) group shares for collaboration (NFS, SMB) All research data should go on a group share, not in your home! 30+ day backup for both additional backup solution for lab PCs and laptops: BackupPC

7 ISG Services: , Groupware We run a mail server with full spam and virus filtering and all relevant protocols and a powerful webmail interface (Roundcube). In addition, we have a groupware solution for collaboration that synchronizes with most calendars and mobile can be used independently or be redirected in either does NOT expire when you leave ETH,

8 ISG Services: Network To ensure a stable and secure network environment at D-PHYS, all computers connecting to the wired network have to be initially registered with their MAC address. Just call or drop us an . Required information: MAC address (obviously...) two D-PHYS accounts that serve as primary contact persons type of machine (desktop, laptop, oscilloscope...) operating system (Linux, Windows, Mac OS...) ownership (ETH/private) ETH wifi is managed by ID and requires an n.ethz login.

9 ISG Services: Helpdesk and support We operate a helpdesk that rotates within ISG on a weekly basis. You can reach us by phone: isg@phys.ethz.ch physical presence: HPT H 6-9 IRC: irc://irc.ethz.ch/#isgphys Business hours: usually 08:00-17:00, often even before and after. A powerful ticket system allows us to dispatch incoming requests and keep track of follow-ups. Tons of documentation and many tutorials can be found in our wiki. Website:

10 ISG Services: Printing We operate a central print server that supports most of the printers and all major OS (Linux, Windows, Mac, Mobile). The website lists all printers and shows the status and print volume of each printer. Our wiki tells you how to connect to the print server. We support mobile printing via or web upload.

11 ISG Services: Web services We host/program/maintain a wide variety of web services for the department, e.g. D-PHYS shop: Vademecum: Lecture experiments: Personal website for all users: Personal wiki: Upload service: CMS like typo3, drupal Database hosting

12 ISG Services: Computing resources We operate two public computer rooms (HPV F 7.1 and HIT F 21) for interactive use and a powerful Linux server for number crunching: plumpy.ethz.ch All idle Linux workstations also form a Condor cluster that can be used for computation. Further HPC resources are available in individual institutes/groups. ETH's big Brutus cluster is operated by Informatikdienste, you'll need your n.ethz.ch account for that. For Linux/Mac users who intermittently need to use common Windows software, there's a Windows terminal server (ramora.ethz.ch) that can be accessed from Linux and Mac.

13 ISG Services: Special projects In general, we try to find a solution for every IT problem thrown at us. Some examples of past projects: monitoring of environmental data in optics lab a CUDA machine for GPGPU calculations elog, an electronic lab book remote management for D-PHYS' liquid helium system Event displays all over the campus We are available for all sorts of IT consulting, please don't hesitate to ask.

14 Break This is the end of the ISG Services session. Please subscribe to our newsletter to stay in touch: Any questions?

15 Best practices Password strength: it is a very good idea to choose a strong password. We regularly have to deal with broken accounts. Hint: longer is better than complicated. You might have just started your work, but please think about cleaning up your data before you leave. Pretty please with sugar on top. /home vs. group share vs. /scratch vs. Dropbox: all research data should go on a group share (your supervisor will need access after you have left). /scratch should be used for temporary data that needs fast access (no backup). Dropbox in principle violates ETH's BOT, so it shouldn't be used at all (we're working on a local cloud storage solution though) arxiv:

16 Some hints for power users Linux/Mac: ssh for remote login, keys obviate passwords, -X for X forwarding screen for persistent jobs scp and rsync to copy files, there's also winscp renice for low-priority jobs, htop to show system stats condor and torque as queuing systems Programming paradigms: OO, MVC, agile, DRY, test-driven, extreme programming, RERO, TMTOWTDI... Version control systems: GIT, SVN, Mercurial...

17 Questions and discussion Thanks for coming!