News

CityU has adopted the EMC E-Infostructure, a centralized and consolidated storage system with a capacity of seven terabytes, to manage its ever-growing information demands on teaching, administration and research. The new system, which will accommodate CityU's 25,000 users, is the largest academic networked information infrastructure in Hong Kong.

CityU has adopted the EMC E-Infostructure, a centralized and consolidated storage system with a capacity of seven terabytes, to manage its ever-growing information demands on teaching, administration and research. The new system, which will accommodate CityU's 25,000 users, is the largest academic networked information infrastructure in Hong Kong.Implementing EMC's networked storage infrastructure means the University's Computing Services Centre can now handle more complicated information management tasks more efficiently and without hiring extra staff.

Information Technology (IT) is a renowned strength of the City University of Hong Kong ever since its foundation. The development of IT in the CityU keeps pace with the evolvement of the University, and now IT simply becomes an integral part of the campus life. Since the IT facilities/projects/personnel are scattered in various departments, it’s time to sort them out and present them in a tidier manner. The IT@CityU Web page is designed as the first attempt to provide a total, comprehensive and handy display of CityU’s IT strength on a university-wide scale.

Is keeping up with technology one of your hobbies in life? If this is the case, Computing Services Centre (CSC) Forum and Small Talks are definitely your cup of tea. CSC Forum is a series of seminars conducted during each Semester for all staff and students. Computer professionals from industry leaders are invited to give presentations and demonstrations on their latest technologies. Prior to each seminar, there will be a formal announcement on the Intranet, e-mail sent to every staff and student as well as posters on each department’s notice board.

The CSC Student Terminal Area has undergone significant changes this summer to enhance its teaching and learning environments. Various aspects, including furniture, hardware, operating system and software, have been upgraded. Staff and students will surely enjoy working in this improved environment.Furniture Do you still remember the heavy and dark gray computer carrels in the CSC Student Terminal Area? They were gone forever! This furniture has been used for over 10 years and was rather worn-out. Also, the outdated design of these carrels has caused many problems for our maintenance work. Now, there are newly designed carrels that are lighter, easier for maintenance work, and laminated with brighter colours. Besides, they are designed to house larger monitors and to provide convenient access to power sources and computer interfaces.

Introduction Our native language, Chinese, comes in two different character sets, namely BIG5 (Traditional Chinese) and GB2312 (Simplified Chinese). No matter what Windows operating system you are using, viewing these Chinese character sets is not a problem as long as the Web browser you are using has the Chinese support components installed and has been configured to view the desired character set. It makes life even easier if you view Chinese Web pages that are composed of the same character set as that supported by Chinese Windows. In other words, without the need of configuration and additional language components, you will have no problem browsing Traditional Chinese Web pages under Chinese windows that supports Traditional Chinese character set (the default Chinese Windows operating system used in Hong Kong and Taiwan). The same applies to Simplified Chinese Windows (commonly used in China).

As the Windows 2000 (W2K) upgrade for staff PCs will commence shortly after the completion of pilot run which is now underway, we would like to share with you the following so that you and your department can plan ahead:Preparation work In order to make the upgrade a smooth and speedy one, departments and their staff must be aware of the preparation work involved and their responsibilities (i.e. backup private data, make software media and license keys readily available, verifying whether departmental specific application software or device drivers can run on W2K, upgrade hardware and/or software, etc). We shall furnish departments with those details later.

Videoconferencing breaks the barrier between two partiesat separate andremotelocationsto communicate face to face with each other. It is particularly useful for organising seminars across local/overseas institutions and distant learning courses or facilitating collaboration among students/researchers who are distance apart. Staff who are out of town or tied up with their work in offices can attend conference meetings via videoconferencing. Overseas interviews can also be arranged for university students without the need to travel abroad, thus saving time and money. Ever since the system was launched on campus, a number of joint courses with some overseas universities were conducted. Needless to say, videoconferencing has indeed opened up a greater wealth of information to the CityU community.

In view of the popularity of the Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) and its advantages over Netscape, the Computing Services Centre (CSC) has decided to switch its support effort on browser from Netscape to IE starting from 1 September 2001.Every time a PC is booted up to the student Local Area Network (LAN) in the CSC Teaching Studios, IE will be started and Student Intranet Home Page loaded automatically. If IE matches your preference, which is now our default browser, it is highly recommended that you test your Web-based teaching materials using IE before conducting your lecture there. However, if Netscape is preferred, it can still be selected and invoked from the Student Intranet menu.

Last issue, we mentioned the acquisition of the Network Storage System (NSS) as the standard platform for central storage, and the Storage Area Network (SAN) is chosen as the NSS architecture for deployment. This issue, we will focus on the acquisition of a centralised backup solution (CBS) as another part of the storage management improvement.Benefits of CBS