Opportunities and Challenges for a WorldClass Research University · Opportunities and Challenges for a WorldClass Research University Steven Kellogg ... Product Planner Development

Whither Infrastructure: Opportunities and Challenges for a World­Class Research 

University

Steven KelloggMarch 2009

Agenda

From Whence I come Whither Enterprise Information Technology

Challenges Infrastructure Security

Discussions

Whence

'79 – 81: Baback and Wilcox, NPGD Analytical Engineer

'82 – '94: IBM Analytical Engineer Product Planner Development Manager Systems Engineer Marketing rep 

Whence(cont'd)

'94 – present: Penn State Manager, Research Programmer Director

Phase 1 of my 30 Years

MVS VM VMS CDC 7600

http://photo.com

phase 2

SunOS Apollo/HP AIX 1,2,3,4 Digital Unix OS/2 VM/MVS/VMS

CourtesyAirshow Aviation Photo Callery by Henk Tito::

Phase 3 AIX

Solaris

Linux

Windows

Mac OS X

HP­UX

IRIX

Z/OS (MVS)

Penn State

24 Campuses 85,600 (90,609 w/ World Campus) students 35,000 full and part time employees 13 Colleges 9 ”special mission” units

med school, law school, World Campus, ...

Applied Information TechologiesAIT

A unit of Information Technology Services 25+ FTEs 

Responsible for development and maintenance of: Identity and Access Management Authentication

K5, CoSign, Shibboleth LDAP  Windows AD Domain Services

AIT

Responsibilities (cont'd) Web Hosting Services Enterprise Filesystem Enterprise Storage Backup Services Application development, maintenance and service Calendar services Collaborative tools

Projects and Services

Kerberos 5

Shibboleth

Cosign LDAP

WindowsActive Directory

Email Webmail

Oracle Calendar

File ServiceDFS;GPFS

WebServices

TSM

WorkflowBlogging

Identity Management

Database

Networking

AIX

Linux

Solaris

Challenges

Competition for the best faculty Competition for the best students Competition for the best employees Retention of the best Cost containment; IT is necessary but expensive Integrated Infrastructure Security

Challenges

RIAA/MPAA war Data Centers Collaborative computing environments Constituency satisfaction 

Infrastructure

Box Mentality

Storage Area Network(better but ...)

Holistic 

1. Of or relating to holism

2.a)Emphasizing the importance of the whole and the 

interdependence of its parts.

b) Concerned with wholes rather than analysis or separation into parts

Holistic Computing

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holistic

Holistic Computing

Holism The theory that the parts of any whole cannot exist and 

cannot be understood except in their relation to the whole; ”holism holds that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts”

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/holism

Holistic Computing

The approach to enterprise computing that emphasizes a single over­arching infrastructure made up of as few elements as possible and all of the elements taken together provide for a single integrated computing environment; eg. One authentication method, one directory, and common storage.

CPU

Research Computing

Memory

Bandwidth

Enterprise Infrastructure

Should be constructed with as few pieces as possible eg. OS's, platforms, protocols, databases Each piece is scaled to service the whole enterprise

Standards based Don't duplicate functions or data Evolutionary changes; not revolutionary if possible security, security, security

Infrastructure

Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) Reuse Evolutionary changes to support the business needs Should not be turned over to IT, but should be a 

partnership between the business and IT.  Need buy­in all around, but definitely from the top

Infrastructure

 Buy v. Build You gotta ask yourself:

Do we have time to build it? Do we really have the skills available? Can we really do a better job? Can we afford to not buy it? Can we afford to buy it?

Buy 

Pros quicker time to service someone to call lower total cost (maybe) expect the vendor that provide best practice

buy

Cons Vendor lock­in Does the solution fit within your architecture

Avoid the box mentality  Business rules, processes

vendor responsiveness feature enhancements problem resolution

doesn't develop staff skills time to resolution? 

Security

Security Network Security Endpoint Security Data security Compliance User behavior

 Security

Regulatory issues FERPA HIPAA CALEA eDiscovery HEA Copyright Infringement

Security

1984

Regulatory sarbanes­oxley Homeland security??

Middleware

Protocols Secure Transport Data types Authentication Authorization

Identity and Access Management

People and Relationships Creation and Management of Identities Access to Data and Applications

IDM

PSU circa 1992 k4 principle for all DCE (150,000) now: k5, LDAP, Cosign, Shibboleth

Why IAM is Important

Four goals Increase collaboration and innovation Improve customer service Increase efficiency Improve security of digital assets and mitigation of risk

IAM committee 8 Strategic Recommendations http://its.psu.edu/IAM

Penn State Access Storage Space

150,000 Personal folders Home Directory www  www_protected Blogs

2,000 Shared Spaces courses, departments, clubs

Core Elements 

Holistic v. BoxPros

Holistic Single identity Unified authorization 

strategies Overall scalability Overall efficiencies  Lower support costs Lower administration 

costs

Box Turnkey solutions Availability of skills 

Holistic v. BoxCons

Outage of one element can take out many/all services

Higher level of skills required

Vendor lock­in Multiple digital 

identities Duplicated data

Data sync issues

Questions?Comments?