Please direct comments to Matt Choptuik.
The Department's main general-purpose computing facility is a SUN E3000 4 processor server, equipped with 2 Gbyte RAM and about 100 Gbyte of disk storage. All Department faculty, staff and graduate students are eligible for accounts on this machine, as are undergraduate students majoring in Physics or Astronomy. The server is intended for interactive use, such as e-mail, Web browsing, and running of various software packages (Mathematica, Matlab etc.) in instructional contexts. As a result, even given the large number of users, the system is currently running quite smoothly, with relatively few complaints reported by the departmental system administrators. One key advantage of the ``single server'' approach is that software licensing fees are kept to a minimum.Although the departmental server is currently performing adequately, the machine is now almost four years old, and some sort of upgrade or replacement will be necessary in the next few years. In addition, the installation of a high-performance, network storage facility, coupled with a high-speed tape backup facility would significantly enhance the departmental computing infrastructure, and thus is viewed as a high priority. Finally, it would also be advantageous to off-load some services, such as mail relaying and DNS, to another smaller server, leaving the main machine to function solely as an applications server. Funds on the order of $125,000 would be required to carry out these plans.
The Department also maintains a 15-user-license NT server, which was funded by the Dean of Science, and hence is available to any Science student who requests an account. However, it is mainly used by first year P&A students. This system is very outdated and requires an upgrade as soon as possible (see next section on Undergraduate Facilities).
Finally, certain computer peripherals, such as color printers, scanners, CD-ROM burners, digital cameras etc., while very useful to large numbers of Department members, are typically not used frequently enough by any given group to warrant a group-dedicated purchase. The Department should maintain its policy of acquiring and managing such devices, as it has done, for example, with the departmental color printer and scanner.