The City University of Hong Kong has substantially increased its monitoring efficiency, enabling IT professionals to comfortably monitor more services than was possible in the past. Staff responsible for monitoring the systems and networks regularly scan for unauthorized access, attend to alerts automatically generated by monitoring software and watch for abnormal events that warrant further investigation. In the past, using conventional furniture, staff members were hard pressed to keep track of the many different consoles required to monitor the University's far-flung network. Investing in a multilevel console made it possible for each professional to keep track of a higher number of monitoring points while also reducing the space required. "The outstanding flexibility of the monitoring solution that we selected made it possible to easily configure a system that greatly increased our productivity and has allowed us to continually make adjustments as our needs change," said Raymond Poon, Associate Director of Computing Services, Computing Services Centre.

City University is one of Hong Kong's seven universities funded by the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of China. The university was established in 1984 and today serves more than 13,500 full-time equivalent students. It offers more than 90 academic programs in a wide range of disciplines. More than 800 full-time academic staff execute teaching, basic and applied research, consultancy and other scholarly activities. The university offers undergraduate and graduate degrees in business,science and engineering, humanities and social sciences, creative media, law and higher vocational studies. Thirteen research centers provide a sound training environment for more than 500 research students enrolled on masters and doctorate degrees. Four new applied strategic development centers were recently established promote to stimulate applied R&D initiatives and strengthen the university's collaboration with external organizations.

Large campus network
The university's campus network, called CTNET-II, has been continuously evolving to cope with ever-changing user requirements and adapt to new technologies. The current network consists of two parallel backbones, one for data and one for video. They are interconnected for mutual fail override and backup. About 80 multi-core fiber optic cables with a total length of 18 km have been laid and over 250 networking devices installed. The ATM data backbone primarily provides data services. It is comprised of 3 ATM core switches and 5 central routers.

ATM core switches are interconnected in a mesh fashion using multiple links of multi-mode fiber running at 155/622 Mbps. Connected to these ATM core switches are the 68 ATM edge switches which support over 6,000 machines. Links to the old FDDI network are still maintained for the remaining host connections.

The video backbone mainly provides video-on-demand, video conferencing, live TV broadcast, live Internet broadcast, digital image library, and multimedia application services. It consists of 3 Gigabit Ethernet core switches and 50 100 Mbps Ethernet switches. Each department has at least one 100Mbps uplink for dedicated video services. The video backbone is carefully configured to ensure that video applications delivered from the video network can be run with optimal performance and will not affect the network traffic of services provided on the data network. Extensive external communication facilities on CTNET-II are generally available to staff and students and diverse information services have been developed and made available on the CTNET-II. The easy access to the wide range of electronic resources and the ability to communicate with students and scholars locally and internationally has a significant impact on the university's academic activities and has proven to be of great benefit to the students. The university's computing services center (CSC) is responsible for monitoring the systems and networks. CSC has about 40 IT professionals to look after the campus network and the central systems. Some are responsible for programming, some for front-end support, while some are constantly monitoring all critical services offered by the campus networks and central systems. Computer Associate's Unicenter TNG, Hewlett Packard's OpenView, Northern Telecom's Optivity and SunNet Manager are used to monitor the university's systems and networks.

Running short of space, people and time
About one year ago, the CSC found itself running short of space, people and time. There are about 200 central servers and a large number of network devices in the computer room. The room was arranged with a combination of desks and cubicles. Terminals were placed on desks and on shelves. With this configuration, staff members were able to monitor only one or two terminals at one time. "CSC staff were unable to accommodate many of the new servers, properly manage our system and network equipment and solve our cable management problems," Poon said. Because the number of terminals was much larger than the number of people, staff members frequently had to walk around the room to view other monitoring points. It was inevitable that terminals with no one sitting in front of them were monitored less thoroughly than the others. As new equipment was added, it was impossible to fit it all in a single room, which increased the difficulty of the monitoring task.

Poon looked at command consoles provided by six different suppliers. He saw several significant advantages in the NetComSL console provided by Engineered Data Products (EDP), Broomfield, Colorado. "Our selection process is always to look for cost-effective solution that comes with affordable price tag and meets our requirements," Poon said. "At the end of the selection process, we concluded that EDP offered the best solution at the lowest price when compared to other vendors. This system provided the flexibility to design the console almost from scratch around the requirements of our application. In addition, the modularity of the system makes it possible to reconfigure it relatively easily whenever our needs change. EDP's products have the great flexibility in accommodating different sizes of equipment.. This makes our lives much easier for the time to come as technology advances rapidly and dynamically, we want a rack system that can last."

EDP's NetCom SL technical furniture system is engineered to make reconfiguring and expanding a workstation simple while keeping costs to a minimum. It's possible to add to an existing workstation simply by adding expansion frames. There is no need for additional support uprights within a string of units, maximizing floor space and reducing costs. Each frame upright includes integrated cable management allowing for easy front and rear access within the footprint of the unit. Steel shelves with 400 lbs capacity can be increased to 850 lbs with heavy-duty support brackets. The space under the work-surface is free of support legs to provide ease of movement through the configuration. The shelves and work-surfaces are aligned so that equipment can easily be stored across them. Integrated vertical and horizontal cable management within the footprint of the workstation provides space savings and easy access.

Better monitoring without more people
"After installation of the new consoles," Poon said, "our staff members were immediately able to see a positive improvement. They were able to keep track of a larger number of monitors than in the past without any sense of being overwhelmed. In most cases they locate the monitor that requires the most attention from each operator on the first level, the monitor that required the next amount of attention on the second level and the one that requires the least attention on the third level. Simply by moving their heads up and down, operators can scan the screens and obtain information that they had to get up and walk around the room for previously. The command console also contains task lighting that makes it possible to reduce room lighting. This makes it much easier for the operators to read the monitors and reduces eyestrain. With the new console, we are able to do a better job of monitoring with the same number of people."

"EDP's products have the greatest flexibility in accommodating different sizes of equipment and allow re-configuration easily," Poon concluded. "This makes our lives much easier. As technology advances rapidly and dynamically, we want a rack system that can last. In particular, after the installation of EDP racks, our support staff have ample working space inside the computer room without worrying about unintentionally bumping machines around them. In fact, we've been able to put all consoles for critical services in one place so that the operator can at a glance know whether a particular machine or server is in trouble. If we had to make the decision all over again we would still pick EDP because we believe that it offers the best solution at the lowest cost. We are completely satisfied with the system."

For more information contact Engineered Data Products, Inc. 2550 West Midway Blvd., Broomfield, CO 80020. Phone: 303-465-2800 or 800-432-1337 Fax: 303-465-4936 Website: www.edp-usa.com

Jerry Fireman has a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism from Wayne State University and a Masters of Business Administration from University of Michigan. He worked 4 years as Engineering Editor for The Valeron Corporation, a cutting tool manufacturer, and 7 years for French & Rogers, a high tech advertising and public relations agency ending as Vice President/Account Supervisor. He founded Structured Information in 1984 and has served as President ever since. Fireman has written nearly 6,000 articles for over 1,200 trade journals in 24 countries around the world.