Table of contents

Contextual and technical information, as far as Oliver understands it

• The service runs on an Apache web server running on a Linux server, and depends on files and Perl scripts.
  • Q: What are the current versions of the software, and will any of them start to lag?
• The Linux server is now hosted within Amazon Web Services (AWS), via Cornell's contract.
  • This incurs a monthly charge (amount?).
  • Move to AWS was conceived by Oliver, and he lined up free technical resources at CIT for Ivan.
    • NMR web scheduler migration
• The server is managed remotely by Ivan.

...

• The server had been in B-71 ST Olin before being moved into 248 Baker Lab.
• Shortly after Oliver's arrival in 2012, Oliver notified Ivan of our group's reluctance to continue hosting the server since we were concerned we would be inadvertently drawn into dealing with a preventable crisis. The risk of the crisis was high since the service was critical to NMR's service delivery and the server's hardware was so very old, as was the software it depended on.
  • When the server was finally migrated off the hardware (Oct. 2016, to AWS), that hardware was about 13 years old (or even older? From ~2000?).
    • It was a Gateway E3400 (Intel Pentium III, max capable of 512 MB RAM (PC133 SDRAM DIMM), etc.)
    • http://office.manualsonline.com/manuals/mfg/gateway/e3400.html?p=120
  • Also, as a public-facing web server, we judged that it was unacceptably neglected in terms of best practices as well as practices defined by University policy and expectations. For example, it was not being patched or updated regularly or timely, if at all, against security vulnerabilities.
    • It had been running an OS version from about October 2005 (RHEL 4.2) (Is this correct OS and date?)).
• Early in Oliver's tenure, Ivan hoped to re-write the scheduler. Those plans fell through over the following 4 years.
  • The continued neglect of the server, and its increased potential for a crisis, kept on growing as the years passed.