Athena Core Service Profile
Disregard any specifics on this page for now. We're working on a framework. Oliver
Service Summary
Athena is MIT's primary academic computing environment, providing academic software, courseware, and public computing. The primary purpose of Athena is to facilitate teaching and learning, whether part of the curriculum or independent endeavors. Athena provides a consistent desktop environment throughout campus, allowing users to work on academic assignments at any Athena workstation. Tight integration between the operating system and the Athena environment allows for low-cost deployment of software and the creation of a course work environment with minimal effort on the part of instructors. Additionally, many student printing facilities are currently located in the clusters.
Athena consists of multiple software components and services provided by IS&T. For detailed information on these components and services, including information on how they are utilized across the community, please see the "Components of Athena" page.
High-level Commitments
# |
Commitment |
Type |
|---|---|---|
1 |
6-month "currency" releases tracking Ubuntu releases |
Critical |
2 |
Incremental feature additions and enhancements |
Important |
3 |
Support deployed student computing environment (clusters, kiosks, dorms) |
Critical |
4 |
Support "private workstation" functionality (DLC deployed, personal) |
Critical |
5 |
Develop and maintain development relationship with SIPB |
Important |
Service Scale
Deployment |
Unit |
Units |
Impact |
|---|---|---|---|
Publicly deployed student lab/cluster machines |
Workstation |
268 |
Core |
Publicly deployed kiosk machines |
Workstation |
X |
Core |
Dorm lab/cluster machines |
Workstation |
X |
Core |
DLC student machines |
Workstation |
|
? |
Personal student/faculty machines |
Workstation |
|
? |
Resources Summary
Name |
Effort |
Regularity |
Composition |
Level |
Skills |
Impact |
Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Andrew Boardman |
16 hours |
Weekly |
Substance |
Senior Programmer |
Systems and application Linux development, Debian package creation, release engineering |
Critical |
Blah blah blah |
Bob Basch |
16 hours |
Weekly |
Substance |
Senior Programmer |
Systems and application Linux development, Firefox development, Debian package creation |
Critical |
Blah blah blah |
Jon Reed |
16 hours |
Weekly |
Mixture |
Senior Consultant |
Application development and scripting, documentation, training, support |
Critical |
Blah blah blah |
Constraints
Constraint |
Imposed by |
Impact of relaxing? |
|---|---|---|
Six-monthly releases |
Real world |
Increased cost down the road jumping releases, |
Things to add...
- What our solution for clusters gives us
- Cost per deployment
- How are our clusters better than their (other institutions?) clusters? Are they?
- Software suite?
Overview
Content Tools
Activity