Information Technology Services

Upcoming Campus Transition from the Novell Environment to Active Directory in the New General Computing Network

Information Technology Services (ITS) has begun a project to change campus computing. This has involved and will involve enormous amounts of time for ITS staff, and it will involve considerable inconvenience for the campus, so we want to address the question of why this is worth the trouble.

To the extent of our financial and staff resources, ITS seeks to advance three overarching goals:

• service (to students, faculty, and staff)
• sustainability (financial, technological)
• security (including legal compliance)
  

In 2006-07, as part of the UNC System's PACE efficiency/effectiveness process, ITS identified a number of actions to advance these goals. Among them was the replacement of the Novell system (originally installed at UNCG in 1985), to reduce the number of operating systems UNCG has to pay for and support. Also, over the past three years, UNCG and other campuses have seen an increase in compromises of individual workstations that threaten the data assets of the University and individuals, disrupt academic and business activities, and undermine the core technology services relied on by faculty, staff, and students. ITS seeks to address these and other challenges in a single, complex project called Active Directory/General Computing Network (AD/GCN).

SERVICE
Once AD/GCN is implemented, faculty and staff will have

• a campus computing environment that is easier to navigate and use, and more stable
• improved mobility, including the ability to move computers with wired connections from one location to another across the campus without technical staff intervention, and seamless connectivity and functionality between the wired and wireless networks
• reduced personal responsibility for ensuring that computers are in compliance with University computing and data security standards
• less time loss due to technology failures in campus offices, labs, and classrooms

Departmental technical staff will have

• the ability to fully administer departmental environments that are integrated with and able to leverage enterprise ITS services and infrastructure
• availability of new tools that provide essential functionality with a minimal footprint that can be customized by departmental technical staff to meet department-specific needs
• increased availability of ITS resources for on-demand support for departmental applications
  
  

SUSTAINABILITY
Consolidation of services offered today in the Novell and Windows enterprise server environments onto a single enterprise server platform (Windows) will enable ITS to offer better services and support at a reduced cost.

Eliminating the Novell enterprise platform will reduce hardware and software costs, and annual institutional maintenance payments. ITS staff who currently support Novell will be available to address campus needs as part of the Windows team. The AD/GCN project will permit elimination of almost all Novell costs, and we anticipate the complete elimination of Novell at the end of another project (Identity Management).

Other UNC System schools facing the same challenges have migrated or will migrate from dual enterprise platforms to Windows-based Microsoft Active Directory service delivery:

• UNC-CH - Central IT migration project from Novell to Active Directory started in 2009.
  
• NCSU - Developing Novell to Active Directory migration strategies to be completed by Spring 2010. IT labs will be migrated to Active Directory in Fall 2009.
  
• UNCC - Paid external vendor to complete campus Novell to Active Directory migration in 2009.
  
• ECU & UNCW - Consolidated into single, campus-wide Active Directory domain in the late 1990's.
  
  

SECURITY
Implementation of AD/GCN will provide faculty and staff with improved security protection, while remaining open and flexible enough to retain functionality that faculty and staff need to do their jobs effectively. (Additional security for some workstation users will come from a follow-on project called the Enhanced Security Network.)

Faculty and staff with workstations in the AD/GCN environment will have private network addresses that make them less vulnerable to attack from other computers on the Internet. They also will have automated desktop management for workstation system administration tasks such as patching, antivirus, and firewall management. These will reduce productivity loss due to downtime resulting from computer compromise or corruption.

SUMMARY
The AD/GCN project will have major benefits. We recognize that the campus will see considerable change in technology this year, including the transition to Voice-over-Internet-Protocol (VoIP) for voice services, and a possible transition to outsourced faculty/staff email. These kinds of projects are the kinds President Bowles and the PACE process charged campuses to undertake several years ago. They will permit UNCG to continue providing improved technology services, while containing costs.

We ask for your understanding and patience as we implement AD/GCN. Before we go to the campus as a whole, we have three "early adopter" phases designed to identify special challenges we'll encounter, and we fully expect to modify the AD/GCN design as we analyze the results of the "early adopter" phases between now and mid-October. Although ITS has had to reduce the size of our staff due to State budget cuts, we are committing temporary resources to the AD/GCN project to help to make this inconvenient period last no longer than necessary.

We appreciate your support for this critical initiative and patience during the migration process. If you have questions in advance of ITS staff meeting with your department, please contact 6-TECH or read the Active Directory Project Overview for more technical information.

If you have questions at any point, please contact:

Associate Vice Chancellor Gloria Thornton
Associate Vice Chancellor Donna Heath

If you have questions or need more information, please contact 6-TECH at (336) 256-TECH (8324) or 6tech@uncg.edu.