[956] in I/T Delivery
Windows 2000 Domains & Servers: November 2002 Delivery Report
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kerem B Limon)
Fri Dec 6 16:29:53 2002
Message-Id: <5.1.1.6.2.20021206152023.06c3a048@po11.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 06 Dec 2002 16:28:44 -0500
To: Delivery Process <delivery@mit.edu>
From: Kerem B Limon <kerem.limon@MIT.EDU>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Project Name: Windows 2000 Domains & Servers Delivery Project
Project Leader: Kerem B. Limon
Report Date: December 6, 2002 (for November 2002)
Project Web site URL: http://web.mit.edu/windows-delivery/
Accomplishments in November:
- Held initial team kick-off meeting and officially commenced project on
Nov 04, 2002. Of note, this meeting focused on:
o an overview of the project goals and focus
o introductions between participants and sponsors
o establishment of ground rules and operating procedures
o establishment of a working schedule and regular meeting times
- Held three (3) subsequent team meetings on a weekly basis, focusing on
various goals identified in the October 2002 Delivery Report for this work.
- Generated draft DART process designs, escalation needs, areas of
responsibility. Identified critical dependencies within and outside of DART.
- Generated drafts of the survey to be conducted as part of our outreach
effort, to identify the prevalence, use and implementation of Windows
around the Institute by academic, administrative departments and research
labs & centers, and to further identify their needs, wants, expectations.
- Obtained and re-compiled an extensive list of Windows NT and 2000 domains
in use across MITnet. Refined this list and cross-checked it with Moira
records to obtain most recent contact information for each, to be used as
part of our outreach efforts.
- Obtained a list of SLAs from DITR and cross-checked these with the
information gathered above.
- (Project Leader) continued to respond personally to various community
inquiries following announcements.
- Implemented the various Athena mailing lists, AFS groups, Athena locker
and Discuss archives obtained for team purposes as indicated in the October
2002 Delivery Report for this work.
- Welcomed John Welch, a new IS employee committed full-time to this
project. Began engaging John, along with others making significant
commitments to this team, in the critical core tasks, such as DART design
and survey/outreach efforts.
- (Project Leader & WinAthena liaison) continued participating in WinAthena
Team meetings (as schedule allowed) and WinAthena Container Administrators
meetings regularly.
- Made arrangements with the WinAthena Team to accommodate the (planned)
absence of Wael Hishmeh during the last 6 weeks of December. WinAthena Team
Leader Tom Thornton continued to attend the weekly meetings on Wael's
behalf. Wael also checked in and continues to monitor the team
communications remotely.
- Worked closely with the parallel Windows efforts, including the following:
- Coordinated a joint visit and showing of the Building 37 Windows Athena
Cluster with the WinPartners Team to both WinPartners members and members
of this team, helped urge participants to provide feedback to the Windows
Athena Cluster team prior to their public opening.
- Met with the Treasurer's Office IT group and charted next steps in their
WinAthena pilot efforts. (Note that this is not an official pilot).
- (Project Leader along with WinAthena and Office Computing
representatives) attended meetings with visitors from the Microsoft
Sustained Engineering Team as well as a teleconference with the MSI product
group. Observed various discussions about the availability of MSI products
critical to WinAthena work and commented on various software
update/security needs to Microsoft.
- Continued to keep key project team members tuned into the ongoing
Microsoft Premier Support Services (PSS) loop.
- Finished the second and semi-official draft of the Documentation Map and
Training Strategy.
- (Project Leader) continued to meet with the Software Release Team (SWRT)
and Support HQ representatives in an ongoing effort to enhance the
arrangement of and the tools available to the various *partners
(ITPartners, MacPartners, WinPartners) groups. Our focus here is
specifically to contribute to the design and development of these resources
early on such that some of them can become part of our support (and perhaps
training) strategy later on in our project to avoid duplication of effort
and save IS resources.
Goals for December:
- Finalize the draft of the project plan and work breakdown structure.
- Finalize an extensive list of academic & administrative departments and
research labs & centers to cross check with the list of Windows NT/2000
domains discovered across campus to ensure a thorough coverage of our
audience within the survey/outreach effort.
- Implement this information in a secure, internal team database.
- Commence the in-person/on-the-phone interview phase of the community
outreach, to analyze the DLCs' use of Windows and their wants/needs.
- (Project Leader) Begin meeting with various IS team leaders and sponsors
to discuss, draft, and secure negotiated agreements and arrangements
critical to the work and success of the DART process.
- Continue development of Design Assistance & Review Team processes,
documentation, and supporting resources.
- Check in with the Network Security Team and ITLT to discuss
lately increasing security concerns around non-IS Windows domain
controllers (DCs) becoming targets for various types of attacks and single
points-of-failure.
- Drill down into details of the Documentation Map and Training Strategy,
in particular, begin producing documentation on initial components.
- Continue the redesign of the web site and associated team databases securely.
- Continue closer communication with ongoing pilot Windows efforts as well
as DLCs that have already moved/are interested in/constrained to urgently
moving to Windows 2000 Domain & Server platforms.
Next Community Milestone:
- Redesigned and finalized web site and project team notebook to match the
launch of our outreach effort (targeted for mid-December).
- Completed in-person survey of DLCs and analysis of their Windows platform
use from server and client perspectives, key applications & services, needs
vs. wants. (targeted for January, delivery time extended due to the
significant number of groups to contact)
- Announcement of the finalized (initial) Design Assistance & Review Team
(DART). (targeted for mid-January)
Issues:
- The Network Security Team has observed an increase in exploits centering
around Windows servers and servers that are domain controllers (DCs). We
will continue to work with the Network Security Team to discuss the issue
and directions to take & policies to develop around similar potential
threats in the future to avoid single points-of-failure as much as possible
for implementers of Windows solutions at MIT.
- While we have draft processes in place to deal (differently, by design)
with academic and administrative requests for DLC containers within the
WinAthena win.mit.edu domain environment, we need to move ahead in
formalizing these better or establishing stricter response criteria and
times. This process needs further (and immediate) development, as some
customers have begun to express disappointment stemming from disconnects.
The team will continue to work with WinAthena and the sponsors to deal with
this issue.
Key Learnings:
- As indicated in the October 2002 Delivery Report for this work, community
interest remains high. Various DLC representatives continue to ask specific
and general questions about the work and Windows strategies in general.
Specifically, the joing WinPartners/Windows Delivery visit to the Windows
Athena Cluster in Building 37 was very well attended and was a success.
- Also following up on the learnings from the October 2002 Delivery Report,
we need to maintain a close watch on available resources, particularly in
light of declining budget figures, that will be allocated to pilot
projects. We will need to be careful not to overextend ourselves or spread
this team too thin over too many ongoing implementations while trying to
complete a process design, the core focus of this team.
- This team will need to discuss and secure significant
commitments/negotiated agreements from other groups within IS *before* a
DART process implementation can begin. Sufficient resources and/or
processes for responding to necessary components of implementing Windows
domains at MIT, such as subdomains for independent Windows 2000 Domains
(per the Discovery phase recommendations) need to be in place before DART
can be expected to operate. This, then, becomes an important priority in
the next several weeks.
- The need to know our customer base and audience is ever more pronounced
in light of this development. In negotiating with other teams and asking
for additional resources or processes, it will be essential to have an
accurate representation of our customers' needs and current standing. This
information will be useful in not only convincing others of real needs that
need to be met, but in also identifying lagging and "sagging" areas where
best to concentrate our work and resources.
Team Dynamics:
- Excellent. Good rapport across various participants and interest
continues, checked only by occasional (and expected) outside commitments
some DLC participants need to attend to.
Additional Comments:
- None at this time.
