The University of Pennsylvania's Online Computing Magazine
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September 1992 - Volume 9:1 [Printout | Contents | Search ]
Dr. Michael W. Kearney The latest addition to Information Systems and Computing, the University Data Center, UDC for short, began its official existence on July 1, 1992. It is composed primarily of staff and facilities transferred to the ISC from the David Rittenhouse Computing Facility, School of Arts and Sciences. The UDC's director, Roy Marshall, reports to Vice Provost Peter Patton.
Mission and servicesThe UDC's mission is a straightforward one: to support customers' research, education, and administrative goals by providing professional computer systems integration and management services at whatever level is appropriate.The UDC can and does provide services tailored to meet a broad range of customer requirements. It manages and operates anything from individual system components to complete computing facilities. At one end of the service spectrum, the UDC operates the University's administrative mainframe processor and disk hardware under a facilities management agreement. University Management Information Services (UMIS) is responsible for the re-maining parts of the system. At the other end lies the UDC's full service academic computing facility for research and education. Here, the UDC itself is responsible for hardware, operations, communications, systems, languages and applications, consulting, and customer training. The UDC provides services to both the University Library and the School of Arts and Sciences (SAS) which lie somewhere between these two extremes. It manages the hardware, operations, and systems for the Library's online catalog, circulation, mainframe database services, and library management applications. It provides similar services for SAS's current PROFS electronic mail system, and will perform similar duties when SAS's new workstation-based mail system becomes operational later this year. Three of the four systems described above--UMIS, the Library, and UDC academic services--actually run on a single IBM mainframe processor, an IBM ES/9121-480. It is partitioned into three distinct pieces, each of which can, for the most part, be thought of as if it were running on a separate, dedicated processor. Each partition runs its own operating system (two MVS, one VM/CMS), and is managed and administered according to the requirements of its owners, with the UDC staff coordinating, as necessary. Other partitions can be added as the need arises.
Systems that workUnder various names, the UDC has been a computing service organization since its inception as a particle physics research facility in 1968. The nature of these services and their means of delivery have changed over the years, reflecting corresponding changes in technology and customer requirements. The trend toward distributed systems based on ever more powerful microprocessors continues. In its new role as a University-wide resource, the UDC is currently planning to implement services for distributed systems to make them easier to maintain, easier to manage, and most importantly, more effective tools for those who rely on them for research, education, and administration. The UDC has decades of staff experience and a long-standing tradition of managing "systems that work"--systems ranging from personal computers to supercomputers. It intends to uphold that tradition while meeting the computing challenges of the future.
DR. MICHAEL W. KEARNEY is Associate Director for Academic Services, University Data Center.
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