Labs & Computing Facilities

The School of Computer Science runs its own computer network and set of servers. Computer Science majors, researchers, faculty and staff use this network as the basis for their programming. Specialized research computers are connected to this network, and the School's network is connected to the Internet and high-performance research networks.

Computer Science Systems

A collection of high-end servers forms the basis of our computing facilty.

Three fully-loaded SunFire servers running Ubuntu 11.04 drive hundreds of desktops in the School. These computers are accessible by LTSP-based thin client workstations to distribute user logins and applications according to load-balancing rules.  Each of the three computers (named alpha, bravo and charlie) has an identical configuration and similar software installations. (Installed Fall 2009, upgraded to Ubuntu Summer 2011)

A cluster of two Sun V800 servers provides SPARC-based programming tools. The servers are named sol and luna, and have identical configurations. (Installed Fall 2004)

File storage is centralized on a Sun Storage 7410 cluster.  This specialized cluster is fully redundant and data is mirrored within the disk arrays and between the cluster nodes. The 7410 provides data services through a variety of network interfaces including NFS, CIFS, SFTP and WebDAV. (Installed Winter 2010)

The Oracle database system is provided by a three-node cluster of SunFire servers along with two Oracle Application Servers on separate SunFire machines.  The Oracle cluster is based on RAC and data is mirrored between two separate disk arrays. (Installed Fall 2007). Oracle Apex is installed on separate and dedicated application servers.

In addition the School maintains specialized servers to handle: MySQL database servers, data backup servers, media servers, PC support servers and special Web servers. Most servers are currently running the Solaris 10 operating system, with a transition in place to Ubuntu.

Thin Clients

Most users connect to the  servers through over one hundred thin client devices located throughout the School. These Ubuntu-based devices provide a high-resolution window system (GNOME) to users over LTSP. A full suite of applications are installed on the servers for use, with some applications seamlessly running local to the machine for increased network performance. Available applications include: Eclipse, LibreOffice, Matlab, Maple, Programming Languages (LISP, Prolog, Haskell, C++, Java, Miranda).

Special-Purpose Virtual Servers

A wide array of special-purpose servers is available to host various development environments as needed.  These servers are virtualized using Proxmox.

Microsoft Windows

A large Windows-based server runs the major Microsoft services, including: SharePoint, IIS, Apache and PHP, Microsoft SQL and Team Foundation Server.  Active Directory services are also employed and there is a one-to-one mapping between Windows domain accounts and UWinID's.

Computing Labs

The School operates four general purpose labs for undergraduate students. Each lab is open different hours throughout the year, and each lab accommodates between 25 and 30 users. The PC lab only has 14 installed workstations, with room for more.

Graduate students and researchers are spread out through the third floor of Erie Hall with special computer and work labs.

• Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning and Bio-informatics Lab (3152 Erie Hall)
• Parallel and Meta Computing Systems Software Lab (3151 Erie Hall)
• Optical Communications Lab (3144 Erie Hall)
• High Performance and Grid Computing Lab (3144 Erie Hall)
• Warehousing, Object-Oriented and Databases Lab (3142 Erie Hall)
• Computational and Grid Computing Lab (3140 Erie Hall)
• Software Engineering Lab (3139 Erie Hall)
• Vision Group (3130 Erie Hall)
• AI Research Group (3133 Erie Hall)
• Algorithms, Speech Processing and Advanced Research Techniques Lab (268 Dillion Hall)
• AI Research Lab (3124 Erie Hall)