[1099] in winnt
End-of-April Community Update - Windows 2000 Domains,
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Kerem B Limon)
Fri May 9 12:46:54 2003
Message-Id: <5.2.0.9.2.20030509123618.055ccec8@po11.mit.edu>
Date: Fri, 09 May 2003 12:45:56 -0400
To: ITPartners at MIT <itpartners@mit.edu>,
Information Systems <infosys@mit.edu>,
WinPartners at MIT <winpartners@mit.edu>
From: Kerem B Limon <kerem.limon@MIT.EDU>
Cc: Information Technology Leadership Team <itlt@mit.edu>,
Windows Delivery Effort <windows-delivery@mit.edu>
Mime-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed
Date: Friday, May 9, 2003
From: Kerem B. Limon
To: ITPartners at MIT, WinPartners at MIT, Information Systems
Cc: Information Technology Leadership Team, Windows Delivery Effort
Subject: End-of-April Community Update - Windows 2000 Domains, Workgroups
and Servers Delivery Project
Windows 2000 Domains, Workgroups, and Servers @ MIT Delivery Project
End-of-April 2003 Community Update
Good morning,
This is the latest update on the status and progress of the Windows 2000
Domains, Workgroups, and Servers Delivery Project, which is intended to
help Departments, Labs and Centers (DLCs) migrate to Windows 2000 domains,
workgroups, and servers at MIT. This second monthly community update from
the Delivery Team continues to focus on how this support is being phased in
over the next few months.
Design Assistance & Review Team (DART) Update
The Design Assistance & Review Team (DART) was officially announced April
9th, and has begun its pilot phase. DART is a volunteer committee comprised
of colleagues in DLCs and Information Systems (IS), and it is chartered to
assist DLCs in designing and planning the migration to Windows 2000
environments. During this pilot phase, DART is focusing on developing a
series of standardized templates (of varying size and complexity) across
DLCs with a variety of Windows environments. DART will then use these
templates to develop case studies and planning guides. Along with DART,
these will assist DLCs in making informed decisions about their
implementation choices when DART is fully operational in June 2003.
Currently, DART is working with the DLCs that are closely affiliated with
the Delivery effort-CAO, Facilities, NRL, PLC, and OSP-to develop these
baseline templates. Additionally, DART is collaborating with industry
partners Dell & Microsoft's consulting services, drawing from their design
expertise to both help enhance the design assistance & review process and
help qualify them as potential implementers for DLCs seeking outside
assistance for their migrations.
Starting next week, please refer to http://web.mit.edu/dart/ for up-to-date
information on DART as we continue to pilot and roll-out this resource.
Dell/Microsoft Collaboration in Design Template Development and Early
Implementations
The Windows 2000 Domains, Workgroups, and Servers Delivery Team has been
working with Dell & Microsoft since January 2003, planning an exploratory
design effort. The purposes are both to draw input from their design
consulting expertise in Active Directory domains to help supplant DART's
process and expertise, and to test, familiarize, and qualify their
resources as potential implementers of Windows 2000 environments at MIT.
Having worked out the administrative details, this exploratory effort has
commenced this past week, with Active Directory domain designs for the
Professional Learning Center's (PLC) classroom environment and the
Department of Facilities. Headed by Dell Professional Services (DPS), this
effort also includes the implementation of the PLC classroom environment as
well, and potentially another DLC.
Status Update on win.mit.edu Pilots
OSP and PLC's administrative users, focus of two pilots mentioned in our
previous community update, have practically completed the migration of
their users and machines into the win.mit.edu domain which is centrally
managed by IS. PLC has a small number of off-site users who are being set
up at the moment with access to PLC servers from across campus. The
Building 37 Windows cluster, also mentioned in that update, continues to be
a heavily utilized resource for ongoing academic work on- and off-schedule.
You might find some statistics about the win.mit.edu environment useful, at
http://web.mit.edu/winathena-stat/. (Please note the current month's
statistics are not considered complete until the end of the monthly polling
period.)
Infrastructure Updates Supporting Active Directory Domains at MIT
Windows 2000 relies exclusively on DNS (Domain Name System) for critical
functionality, such as locating domain controllers, contrary to Windows NT
4.0. At the same time, misconfiguring a Windows 2000 domain controller may
cause interoperability issues and disruption of MITnet services. In order
to address this concern and in close collaboration with the Delivery Team,
Network Operations/IS has made a number of additions to DNS services to
accommodate DLCs whose design requirements dictate a need to implement and
migrate to independent Windows 2000 Active Directory domains at MIT. This
is the first of a number of recommendations and/or requirements that are
being finalized for operating independent Windows 2000 domains on MITnet in
a manner that does not adversely affect operations or performance for all
users. We will be explaining these changes and making available the
interfaces to make use of them as DART pilots and documentation roll-out
continues.
Windows Server 2003 (formerly .NET Server or .NET Server 2003) Update
On April 24th, 2003, Microsoft released to retail the next iteration of its
Windows Server platform, Windows Server 2003 (formerly known as .NET Server
and .NET Server 2003). IS and the Delivery Team are aware of this release,
and at this time, we continue to monitor the developments. The Windows 2000
Domains, Workgroups, and Servers Delivery Team remains primarily focused on
delivering Windows 2000 solutions to our DLC community. We note that going
from Windows 2000 Server to Windows Server 2003 is less of a leap from than
going from Windows NT 4.0 to Windows 2000. However, in the past, it has
been general IS (and industry) policy to await the release of the first
Service Pack on Windows NT-based systems before that OS is considered
suitable for production-level use at MIT.
We thank you for your continued patience and support as we begin to
continue moving forward towards better supporting Windows domain,
workgroup, and server environments at MIT.
Sincerely,
Kerem B. Limon
Project Team Leader, Delivery Process
Windows 2000 Domains, Workgroups, and Servers @ MIT
http://web.mit.edu/windows-delivery/
Kerem B. Limon
Project Team Leader
Delivery Process, MIT Information Systems
kerem.limon@mit.edu /e-mail
+1-617-253-1150 /voice
+1-617-258-8736 /fax
