Rochester Institute of Technology
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
Department of Information Technology
Course Syllabus
VKSF-423
System Administration III
Spring 20033
REMINDER: The information presented in this syllabus is subject to expansion, change, or modification during the quarter! Information on student responsibilities in the networking and systems administration lab as well as links to other course information can be found at www.it.rit.edu/~netsyslb .
It is your responsibility to check this web site at least once per week for pertinent course information.
Instructor:
Prof. Charles Border
Office: 70-2269
Office Hours: Posted on my web site
Phone: (585) 475-7946
Email: cborder@it.rit.edu
Web Site: www.it.rit.edu/~cbb
Section: 01 MW 10 – 11:20 13-1350
Course Objectives
General
This course is a follow on of VKSF-422 System Administration II. As organizations grow and merge their information infrastructures expand and demand both larger scale solutions to some of those problems as well as different approaches to various processes.
This course will examine the issues surrounding several of these areas in lecture and representative solutions in lab. The topics will include selections from: storage, authentication, enterprise administration, clustering & load balancing, thin client support, fault tolerant/high availability services and policies and procedures.
A laboratory co-requisite is required.
Prerequisite: VKSF-422
Required Texts
No required texts.
Recommended Texts
Harvel et al, Unix and Windows 2000 Handbook , Prentice Hall
Tittel, et al, A Guide to Microsoft Exchange Server 5.5
, Course Technology
Hughes and Thomas, Novell’s Guide to NetWare 5 Networks , IDG
Sterling, Beowulf Cluster Computing with Linux , MIT Press
Sterling, Beowulf Cluster Computing with Windows , MIT Press
David Doering and Ted Simpson, Guide to Novell 5.0/5.1: Network Administration ,
Course Technology
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Rochester Institute of Technology
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
Department of Information Technology
Course Requirements
Your grade in the course will be based on 3 to 4 labs, a lab practical, class presentation, a report on the presentation, and a final exam. The components are weighted as follows:
Component Weight
Labs 25%
Due date
All sign offs and submission by the end of 10 th week
Practical
Group
Presentation
25%
10%
Group Report 10%
Demonstrated before exam week begins
In class approximately 20 minutes
Report, slides and questions must be submitted to
Firstclass one week after presented or by the end of the end of the day two days before the review class
Submissions to FirstClass before exam week begins Homework 10%
Final Exam 20%
Labs. The labs periods are scheduled in the System Administration Lab in Building 70
Room 2330. Attendance in lab sessions is required and will be factored in to student’s final grade.
You must enroll in a lab section with a lab instructor. If you have not enrolled in lab section, immediately go the Department of Information Technology Student Service
Office in Building 70 and enroll in one of the sections .
The following list of lab titles is preliminary and subject to change. It is provided here to give you a preview of the directions that we intend to follow:
I.
Lab - Authentication
II.
Lab - Windows terminal server/Citrix/Thin clients
III.
Lab - Disaster recovery
IV.
Lab - SAN/NAS/DAS
V.
Lab – Clustering/Load balancing
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Rochester Institute of Technology
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
Department of Information Technology
20033 VKSF 423 Course Outline o Examination of enterprise and large information infrastructure issues o Review of current literature relating to enterprise administration o Authentication/Authorization o Storage

Storage Area Networks
 Network Attached Storage

Storage Virtualization

Enterprise Backup and Restoration Issues o Enterprise Service Deployment

Clustering and fault tolerance

Virtualization of services

Grids/OnDemand/N1 o Enterprise Applications

Enterprise Resource Planning

Customer Relationship Management

Office Automation o Thin client support

LTSP

Citrix

Windows Terminal services

Sun Ray Services o Enterprise Security

Disaster Recovery and Planning

Policies and Procedures o Issues relating to proposal construction and endorsement.

New project development issues

RFC construction

RFP Process
 Budgeting

Budgeting for new projects o Desktop Deployment and Management, Alternative Desktops
 SUS

RIS

Sun Java Desktop

Xandros

Lindows
Course web site: http://www.it.rit.edu/~netsyslb/vksf423/ will be used along with some
FirstClass conferences to facilitate communication and assignment collection. Notices of immediate importance will be posted to either the course web page or to FirstClass so you should visit them regularly.
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Rochester Institute of Technology
Golisano College of Computing and Information Sciences
Department of Information Technology
Office Hours: Please check posting outside of instructor’s office and on their web page for up to date schedules of office hours and contact information.
Cheating Policy : Please review the departmental policy on cheating as described at http://www.it.rit.edu/policies/dishonesty.html
Student Responsibilities: Please review the general student responsibilities as outlined at http://www.it.rit.edu/~netsyslab/Responsibilities.htm
. Additionally your remaining registered in this course constitutes your acceptance of the following rules and conditions. Should you find any of them unacceptable you should withdraw prior to the end of the drop/add period to avoid penalty. As a student in this course:

I understand that because of the nature of this course most of the assignments for this course run the full term and therefore I will not get quantitative feedback on my progress before the withdrawal date.

I understand that the best method of communication with my professor is face-toface and that I see the professor twice weekly in lecture and therefore have ample opportunity to communicate with him/her during the quarter and will depend this method in preference to e-mail or any other means.

Sign-offs for the lab assignments will NOT be granted after the end of the 10 th week and the FirstClass conferences will be closed to submissions at that time as well.

Attendance will be taken during lab sessions. I understand that it is my responsibility to remember and locate the attendance sheet to sign in each week and that if I forget and ask to sign in for a missed week I will loose the attendance for an additional week.

I understand that some of the labs and/or assignments may have intentional errors, vague instructions or omissions in them and that they are there to improve, enhance and expand the understanding and problem solving experience of the lab.
Finally...
This is a brand new course being offered for the only the second time this quarter.
As such the content and structure are likely to be very dynamic and untested. If you are not comfortable with this type of environment it is recommended that you withdraw and enroll in a future offering of this course.
Any or all of the previous information is subject to change or modification during the quarter.
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