Normally, one does not advertise the drawbacks or undesirable aspects of a product/company/service, but since the primary objective of the CIS server project is to provide good e-mail/web service to clubs and organizations, I thought it would be in the best interests of the clubs to publish both the good and the bad about this free service. This way, groups can make their own decisions as to whether or not CIS accounts would be a good match with their needs and resources.
WHY GET A CIS ACCOUNT?+ CONTINUITY ~ same e-mail/web addresses year after year
+ ACCESSIBILITY ~ 24-hour access from on- or off-campus
+ FULL CONTROL ~ no approval processes (subject to federal, state, local, University, and UCI Computer Use policy and guidelines)
+ NO ADS ~ no ads/commericals; no selling/re-use of your information
+ UCI DOMAIN ~ websites searchable through UCI home page and Google;
clubname@uci.edu e-mail alias upon approval by UCI Postmaster
+ NO ADDITIONAL COSTS ~ any club/organization registered with the Office of the Dean of Students is eligible for a CIS account
+ ADVANCED WEB SERVICES ~ php, MySQL, perl, .htaccess
+ NO BANDWIDTH CEILING ~ bandwidth is not actively monitored so you do not have to worry about getting cut off mid-month (NOTE: abuse will not be tolerated, however)
+ GENEROUS SPACE ~ 1 GB web space, 500 MB e-mail space
+ MAILMAN MAIL LISTS ~ e-mail subscription services to make announcements to club members or having large group discussions
+ DIRECT SERVER ACCESS ~ volunteer developers can have direct access to the server for testing/developing new services; custom server configurations/installations possible
+ FAST PIPE ~ server will always have a fast connection speed to the internet
WHAT ARE SOME ISSUES/PROBLEMS WITH CIS ACCOUNTS?- COMMUNITY/VOLUNTEER DEPENDENT ~ Dean of Students provides limited funding and support and tries to keep services operating at a premium level, but the CIS server is largely volunteer dependent so support can be spotty, e.g. if there is a problem while the Sysop is on vacation, the server may not be worked on until he returns unless there are volunteers available
- POOR / INCOMPLETE / OLD DOCUMENTATION ~ because the server is largely volunteer-dependent, documentation updates may be slow and outdated or missing material may not be fixed for long periods of time
- LIMITED BACKUPS ~ the server runs fast and loose with backups (this is changing, but still mostly true --SP); limited funding is available for backup equipment or backup software and currently, there are no volunteers available to do the backups even to back up to itself from the unix command line
- NO BACKUP SERVER ~ if the server were to crash or be stolen, there would be no substitute server available to restore services; an emergency funding source would have to be found to replace the server or DOS would use a hand-me-down, outdated workstation to partially reinstate some services
- HOUSED IN DEAN OF STUDENTS ~ since the server is physcially located in the Office of the Dean of Students, it is dependent upon building resources and an office work environment. Power outages, department moves, network traffic, router failures, etc. can all disrupt services. Whatever the Office of the Dean of Students experiences, so, too does the CIS server. Back in 1999, for example, a member of the night crew unplugged the server to vacuum an office. On October 4, 2004 there was a partial power outage on campus that corrupted the server configuration. Dean of Students also needs to reboot the server on occasion if the server must move physical locations, when updating software, and/or when troubleshooting or developing services.
Another point of interest to note is that the server is split into two machines running Mac OS X Server. This can good, bad, both, or neither depending upon the circumstances, but most users probably would not notice, anyway.
Why is it good that the server is a Mac?+ requires less attention to manage and maintain than Windows
+ requires less technical expertise, experience, and training
+ virtually no viruses or widespread security problems for Mac OS X
+ unix-based Mac OS X allows us to use popular unix-centric packages such as Apache, PostFix, Cyrus, SquirrelMail, Mailman, php, MySQL, perl, phpMyAdmin, and other open source products and services
+ unix-based Mac OS X allows us to grant shell access to advanced users via SSH
+ Dean of Students has better support resources for Mac than Windows and probably would not been able to offer this service using any other OS/platform
+ volunteers can get good Mac and Unix experience
Why is it bad that the server is a Mac?- server purchase price is initially higher than an equivalent Linux system
- Microsoft-based technologies not compatible (FrontPage extenstions, asp.net, Access, etc.)
- volunteers cannot get experience with IIS and Microsoft technologies
All in all, UCI Dean of Students tries to offer great e-mail and web services to clubs and organizations at little or no cost to them. Some services are competitive with or even exceed services that are available commercially, and we feel that UCI is among the leading universities nationwide in this regard. Feedback, contributions, funding, and new resources are always welcome and will be used to help improve our services to clubs and organizations and student volunteers.
Thanxalot!
--ST
--SP
