What Computer Resources Are Available In SEAS?

Each user is provided with e-mail, a web site with CGI capability, printing, and shell access to several Unix systems. There is no fixed limit on the amount of email that can be saved, but if more than 250 MB of messages are saved for more than one month, the oldest messages will be moved to a separate mail folder on the file server. Our mail server continues to accept mail messages when the mailbox is over 250 MB. SEAS faculty, staff, and students are given 1.5 GB on our Network Appliance file servers, with redundant disk, daily backups, and snapshots every eight hours.

There are six labs which provide workstations primarily for academic use. SUSE 10.2 Linux workstations are available in Moore 100A (23 stations) and 207 Moore (40 stations). Windows XP Pro is available in 100B Moore (29 stations), 100C Moore (22 stations), M62 Towne (35 stations) and M70 Towne (30 stations).

Eniac is a collection of Unix systems intended primarily for undergraduate academic use. Eniac consists of two Dell PowerEdge 1650 servers (Eniac-L) and 29 workstations running SUSE 9.2 Linux, and two Sun Blade 1000s running Solaris 8 (Eniac-S).

Additional facilities, such as Oracle and MySQL servers, specially configured computers, etc, are provided when needed by specific courses.

The Liniac group manages Linux based high performance computing clusters for various Penn research groups.

Most classrooms in the Engineering School buildings have projectors, laptop jacks and installed computers, which are set up exactly like the student computer labs running Windows. For details on classroom features, see http://www.isc-cts.upenn.edu/finder/.

Additional Resources available in the CIS Service Center

The Computer Service Center provides a standard set of addition resources to those who pay an annual fee. The CIS Service Center includes CIS and GRASP graduate students, Faculty, Research Associates, Post Doctoral Fellows, and Visiting Researchers. Researchers in the CIS Service Center receive an additional 1 GB of space on the SEAS file server.

Each Service Center researcher's desk has a computer, typically a Dell PC running SUSE 9.2 Linux. These computers are refreshed on a 3-year replacement cycle. The Service Center also supports security and systems administration for standard equipment purchased by the University and outside sponsored grants.

Standard equipment in FY 2006 consists of Dells running SUSE 9.2 Linux. Limited support (such as backups, firewalls and patch management) is provided for Dells running Windows 2000 or XP Pro, IBM laptops and Macintoshes running OS X. We also maintain a number of Solaris 8 machines for legacy applications.

Halfdome is a collection of computers available only to faculty and graduate students in CIS and CIT, intended for academic and research computing. Halfdome consists of three Dell PowerEdge 1650 servers running SUSE 9.2 Linux.

Condor allows compute jobs to use available cycles on the Halfdome and Moore 207 machines.