Boston is awesome!

Matt Smith — Tue, 26 Jun 2012 18:42:20 +0000

Using the UITS SSH Gateway

Matt Smith — Sat, 09 Jun 2012 16:42:23 +0000

Adding the following to your ~/.ssh/config will cause all SSH access to servers named *.uits.uconn.edu to hop through ssh.uits.uconn.edu, authenticating as your NetID. Note that if you have kinit’d as /admin, or if you have copied your public SSH key to ssh.uits.uconn.edu and are using ssh-agent, this will be transparent.

Host ssh.uits.uconn.edu
    ProxyCommand none

Host *.uits.uconn.edu
    ProxyCommand ssh -A @ssh.uits.uconn.edu exec nc %h %p

Enterprise, Large Scale File Services

Matt Smith — Wed, 27 Oct 2010 01:28:57 +0000

Admittedly, the world of file services has changed since Novell ruled the roost with Netware. All sorts of new buzzwords exist: Web Content Management, Enterprise Document Management, Document Archiving, Knowledge Management … but you still can’t beat simple file storage service like Windows offers natively. Except, it is really hard to provide that kind of service at a very large scale.
So here is the question — how do I provide a file service with the following requirements:

Must scale beyond 25,000 users (potentially 100,000), each with private “home” directories, plus whatever permutations of group space can be imagined.
Must support large amounts of storage, including individual files of several hundred gigabytes, user/group quotas of several terabytes.
Must support access from OSX, Windows, and Linux such that applications on these systems can natively open, read, write files — in other words, similar to simple CIFS access, though a non-native client to support this functionality is acceptable.
Must support some level of access from mobile devices, including Android, iPhone/iPad, Windows Mobile, and ideally Blackberry too.
Must provide a rich “sexy-looking” web interface.
Must provide consistent abstract interface — in other words, scaling across hundreds of servers is acceptable, as long as users never need to be told “connect to server #17 for X, and server #53 for Y”. There should be some sort of abstracted virtual filesystem.
Must support user-controllable ACLs to facilitate sharing and security.
Must be accessible by non-technical end users with very little handholding – should be “intuitive”.
Must allow integration with backup solution that can provide file-level restoration.
Should allow for storage of data to be accessed by Linux and Windows servers, such as user generated web content, HPC-generated research data, etc.
Should allow for attachment of metadata for searching.
Should allow integration with backup solution that allows end-user to perform file-level restoration.

Some have tried to convince me that Windows DFS can do all this, but I have yet to see a deployment that actually encompasses all of the above. Anyone have any references?

I am quite intrigued by OpenAFS, using the filedrawers web interface, and possibly using the Samba gateway to avoid deploying the OpenAFS client to every machine — anyone with any experience doing this? Anyone serve OpenAFS data out over DAV via Apache, mod_dav, and mod_waklog? Is filedrawers or DAV an acceptable mobile device access mechanism? Pitfalls?

What else should I be considering?

Cameo on the blog of UConn’s CIO

Matt Smith — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 00:00:23 +0000

Email has changed. 15 years ago, email belonged only to those few that had an affiliation with a visionary organization, or paid a monthly fee for the privilege of an address ending in @prodigy.com or @compuserve.com . Today, email is a commodity …

The Next Generation of Student Email

UConn – mjs.fyi

Boston is awesome!

Using the UITS SSH Gateway

Enterprise, Large Scale File Services

Cameo on the blog of UConn’s CIO