Messaging/Collaboration Services
The Duke Experience
Michael Pickett
September 21, 2004
DukeMail (Cyrus based)







35,000 active users (20,000 staff, 5,000 faculty,
10,000 students)
~4000 simultaneous connections
700k to 1.2 million emails / day
3 tb storage (1.5 mirrored)
300K-500K / day tagged as spam
10K / day deleted as viral
IMP webmail
Lotus Notes – mostly med school
and health system



21,000 active users
3 tb (1.5 mirrored)
Email and Calendar
Many schools/have their own
email servers.




Arts and Science mixed use (CS, Sociology,
Physics, Statistics)
Engineering
Law
Medicine & Nursing (Health System Lotus
Notes )
Schools using DukeMail
exclusively



Fuqua
Nicholas School of the Environment
Divinity
Drivers for running a local email server:
control, quota/message space, security,
spam/virus checking, speed, reliability,
vanity naming, job security
From Sociology web page on
email:
“In general, most prefer to use the Sociology mail
system. It is more responsive and reliable than the
university system, supports higher quotas on
mailbox size and mail folders, and indicates a
distinctive affiliation with better choices for
userids.”
From Engineering web page:
"The MEMS file and email server (ME1) suffered a
catastrophic hardware failure on the hard drive storing
all user data. The hard drive has been replaced and data
is being restored from backup. We expect the system to be
back up by midnight tonight. Any data/email stored
after approx midnight July 20th will NOT be
recoverable since the last backup was completed
approximately 3 days ago.”
From an OIT post to the Duke
computing list:
“During yesterday's CLAC meeting when we were
discussing the problems with the imap.duke.edu
server, the following error was reported in our logs:
Sep 9 15:54:38 gallun.acpub.duke.edu ufs: [ID
879645 kern.notice] NOTICE:
/var/imap/data/vol004: unexpected free inode
1107299, run fsck(1M) -o f ”
Email Specifications

DukeMail spec group - design an enterprise
email service with sufficient features and
process to eliminate the obstacles many units
feel prevent them from being able to use an
enterprise email system. See:
www.duke.edu/~picke001/ITAC/DukeMail_v1.
01.html
Review by ITAC
 Given to tech team

Planning Group Participants










Engineering
Library
OIT Systems
OIT Security
Fuqua School of Business
Law School
Arts and Sciences
Computer Sciences
School of the Environment
Student Affairs
Requirements of the Duke
Enterprise Email System






Responsiveness
Reliability
Quotas and Capacity
Security and Privacy
Recoverability and Archiving Characteristics
Integration and interoperability with other
systems and services (e.g. portal, calendaring)
Requirements of the Duke
Enterprise Email System (cont)





Features Required for “Supported Clients”
Aliases and Addressing
Responsibility and processes for keeping the
system useful
Spam and Virus Checking
Review and Update Process
Group Email Policy





ITAC subcommittee
Policy by ITAC steering
ITAC review
Senior officers policy issued
The larger the group, the higher the authority
needed to email
Calendaring




Event
Group
Individual (e.g. student)
Resource scheduling
Event Calendaring








2002-2003 - Many different event calendars
“University” event calendar unsatisfactory and unused
No standards-based interoperable event calendars
Feedback sought on functionality needed (News, Student
Services, etc)
Interim event calendar - Lotus Domino based
2003-2004 – Much unhappiness with functionality –
enhancements requested
2004 Enhancements to “interim” completed
2004 Push to select replacement begins – WebEvent and Oracle
reviewed
Group Calendaring



“A full-featured, widely-used, standards based,
interoperable group calendar is always 18
months away”
Divergent calendaring efforts (Health System,
Admin, A&S, Engineering, Fuqua, Law)
Calendar Explorations and Specifications
Meeting
Calendar Review Process





Goal: identify interim (18 mo) solution for departments see:
www.duke.edu/~picke001/ITAC/calendar_forum_2003.html
Review team
Vendor shootout: Meeting Maker, Oracle Calendaring, Sun
Calendaring, Microsoft, Groupwise
Finalists: Meeting Maker & Oracle Calendaring
Last second issues



Meeting Maker acquires WebEvent - CEO Software
Oracle calls for input into event calendar design
Event calendar process vs group calendar process
Calendar Decision Process




Charter/ground rules
Requirements first
Final decision by VPIT/CIO
Stay with interim solution till interoperable
solution is likely
Final group/personal calendar
criteria






Ease of use
Richness in functionality
 Administrative assistants
 Staff
 Faculty
 Students
 Organizations
Technical integration/fit
Standards commitment/compliance
Cost
Stability and strategic direction of vendor
Detailed Requirements Participants (staff,
students, faculty)














Undergraduate and Graduate Students and Organizations
Duke Student Union
Office of Student Activities and Facilities
Career Center
News and Communication
Athletic office
President’s office
Human Resources
Duke Chapel
Duke Performances
Registrar’s Office
Law School
Fuqua School of Business
Medical School
Process - Focus groups







Requirements
How do you use calendars?
What are the functionalities you need?
How well does Meeting Maker/Oracle meet your needs
Unscripted looking around
Scripted tasks
Feedback
Other collaborative tools that are
used








Handhelds
Wikis
Blogs
WebForums (portal, Phpbb, Infopop, Yabb)
Workflow
IRC/chat – mostly AOL IM – some Yahoo, Jabber,
Zepher
Lists (Majordomo, Listproc, Listserv, Mailman)
Usenet (duke.computing – no posts for 2 years)