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| Issue
44 - June 2005 |
Enhancements
of the Central Student Computing Facilities
By
Joe Lee
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The
Challenges
In recent
years, the substantial increase in student number has led
to the significant shortage of computer teaching studio not
only in its number but also with the right seating capacity.
Unless immediate measures are to be taken, the situation will
undoubtedly be worsened for the years to come. Without the
allocation of additional space, extra teaching studios can
only come from the conversion of open-access terminal rooms
(which are solely used by students for their course work and
self-study), and the increase of seating capacity can merely
be achieved by replacing the existing larger computer desks
with relatively smaller ones.
According
to past experience, teaching studios are heavily demanded
during term time, and therefore, students practically have
little chance to make use of the machines in these studios.
Besides, those students who must use software or courseware
that can only be accessible from PCs in the Terminal Areas
of the Computing Services Centre (CSC) will be most hard hit
as there will be less open-access computers available.
Moreover,
security has always been a major concern in end-user computing
today. In order to protect users from attack, software developers
have designed complicated security infrastructure and implemented
a large number of security features in their products. The
resulting systems or applications, especially operating systems
(e.g. Windows XP SP2) and antivirus tools (e.g. McAfee), are
getting much bigger in size and thus requiring more resources
and longer time to start up. The situation may become intolerable
for large teaching studios when hands-on tutorials can start
only when all machines have been booted up.
The
Project
The CSC
tackles the above challenges by
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Replacing
the computer desks in all the CSC teaching studios with
smaller ones so that more PCs can be housed per room.
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Converting
two open-access terminal rooms to teaching studios to increase
the number of teaching studios in the CSC.
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To
offset the reduction of open-access computers due to room
conversion, an area in the Library will be set aside to
house about 100 units of open-access computers with identical
setup as those at the CSC, and additional 300 notebook computers
will be provided by the CSC for students' use on campus.
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Upgrading
the network switches and replacing all PCs with P4 3.2GHz
CPU to improve the boot up time.
The Results
Difficulties
are unavoidable for a large scale project involving 16 rooms,
several tenders, external contractors, workflow dependence,
tight shipping schedules, etc., not mentioning the teaching
requirements (day and evening) in the Summer Term, and the
deadline for financial settlement before the end of the academic
year. Fortunately, the whole project can be completed on time.
After
renovation, there are now 5 teaching studios with 60+ seats,
3 rooms with 40-50 seats, 5 rooms with 30+ seats, and 1 room
with 20 seats. All PCs in the teaching studios now have a
standard hardware configuration of P4 3.2GHz CPU, 512MB RAM,
and a 15" LCD monitor, having a fast boot up time of
around 1.5 minute instead of four to six minutes before the
upgrade. Use of LCD also provides students with more working
space. The number of seats increased is 180 (80 in CSC and
100 in Library). In addition, a total of 620 notebook computers
are ready for students' use through our Mobile Computer Service.
Room
List:
| Category |
Room |
Seating
Capacity |
| Teaching
Studio
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A |
45 |
| B |
35 |
| C |
20 |
| D |
30 |
| E |
66 |
| F |
62 |
| G |
66 |
| I |
32 |
| J |
66 |
| K |
38 |
| L |
60 |
| M |
40 |
| P |
50 |
| Q |
38 |
| Classroom |
N |
80 |
| Open
Access
|
H |
94 |
| O |
11 |
| Express
Printing/Scanning |
22 |
| Library |
100 |
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