Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
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The Student Oracle DBA group consists of 16 microservers (based on Sun Blade 100
workstations) for Oracle DBA training (located at ATS and accessed remotely)
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The Student Unix Administration group consists of four microservers (based on one
Sun Ultra5, one Sun Ultra10, and two Sun Blade 100); there is a plan to expand this group
to 14 microservers
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A faculty Administration group will be added over a period of time to support faculty
involved in Unix/Oracle distance-learning curriculum development; here, each partici-
pating faculty member will use an individual remotely accessed microserver
Distributed architecture of DAUL and RAUL with separate environments for Unix
Admin and Oracle DBA supported by different groups and microservers is needed to de-
couple Unix and Oracle administrative users who do development having full control of
microservers. Both servers store the default installation images for DAUL and RAUL
microservers and use the Sun's JumpStart utility as a convenient way to rapidly rebuild these
images on damaged machines.
CHALLENGES
Critical issues involved in server-focused courses are related to granting students
powerful administrative privileges to work on Sun-based servers as Oracle DBAs or Solaris
(Sun Unix-like operating system) Administrators:
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Oracle DBA (and Solaris Admin) privileges allow full administration of Oracle (and
Solaris) installation, including operations on Oracle structures (databases, data
dictionaries) and on files controlled by Solaris. Lack of this knowledge or improper use
of it may result in system (server) crashes, shutdowns, data destruction, etc. Thus,
mixing Oracle DBA training of one student with Unix Admin training of another student
using the same microserver must be avoided.
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RAUL is setup as a training platform to provide technology necessary for building DBA
and system administration skills, and at the same time, as a secure environment that
limits the impact of personal errors on a microserver to only one or two students
assigned to that machine, so other students can continue their work unaffected.
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Training in DBA (and system administration) functions on servers requires a much
higher level of support, and entails a much greater risk of maintenance repairs for the
support personnel than it is on a client side (in client-server architecture). Therefore,
it is critical to have maintenance procedures and students' guides developed, tested,
and implemented, for proper and uninterrupted operations with remote servers without
sacrificing the quality of self-paced practice for students.
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With security, students are assigned different levels of access security to Sun servers
and to Oracle as they gain expertise and progress through the courses. Thus,
maintenance of students' access security is a time-consuming responsibility of ATS
and the instructor.
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Predictably, limits of network access capacity for off-campus RAUL users became the
most complex issue: distance learning shifts networks loads from in-campus to off-
campus users. Information Resource Management's plan to expand network infra-
structure at CSLA addresses this issue.
