[MacTUG] Summary of mac meeting held wed. oct. 9

[Reg Leland]

hi all,
any comments, additions etc. appreciated.
next step is submission of a business plan to get things going.
thanks for your input at the meeting.
…reg

Begin forwarded message:

>  
> Summary of meeting  Wed. Oct .9 in mc2009.
> 
> The increasing use of Macs as a computer of choice  across  campus in staff and administration units has brought up the discussion of why we should formalize mac support on campus.  There are at least 6 macs in the Provost and  President's office . The Dean of Science has also ordered a number of new macs.  One problem across campus is the integrity and security of any sensitive data  that may be saved to the local hard drive. Policy 8 covers University owned laptops on campus. 
> On the Windows side of desktop support IST manages the Windows machines that are connected to Nexus. These systems get software updates and patches delivered automatically. New software can also be deployed. Windows users can also have automatic  access to various services such as mapped network drives and printing. Mac users are on their own.
> 
> The idea of having macs authenticate to Nexus was discussed .  It is doable and many faculties and departments (Env,Math, Computer Science, Arts, Architecture, Stratford Campus) are presently doing this although the methods and extent varies.
> Most Macs authenticating to Nexus are in a lab environment. For the typical staff or administration Mac user on campus the onus is on them or a computing tech support person to keep the machine up to date, map network drives, set up printers etc. In many cases the users is responsible for backing up their own local hard drive.
> 
> There was discussion on how best to have a Mac user authenticate to nexus and what does this mean.  We can have the  users "N:" drive point to their home folder.  What we want to happen is not have any sensitive data stored locally on a University owned mac. Having data stored on a network drive ensures data is not lost in case of theft or a local hard disk crash. At present a mac user has to make a conscious effort to map their network drive and save documents etc. to that location.
> 
> RECOMMENDATIONS:
> The first small  step in this exercise would be the purchase of a low end mac mini running OSx server. Perhaps this should be purchased by Martin's CSS group. We could then experiment and tweak how a machine authenticates to Nexus and what services can be provided by this authentication and binding. 
> Support for this would require less than .25 FTE/week from someone in the CSS group. 
> That time investment would in return free up support time used by Client Services staff in visiting individual MacOS machines performing  tasks that could be provided via a central source.