As part of the Laboratory’s ongoing efforts to improve cyber security, TREX will require VPN for off site access beginning June 29th 2017. Users can get more information about VPN installation at http://go.lbl.gov/vpn and get assistance at http://help.lbl.gov. VPN service is provided at no charge for all LBL employees and affiliates.
Limiting access to the TREX application to those on our network or using VPN helps to limit the exposure of the application to hostile attackers on the internet. Applications exposed on the internet are subject to constant attack, and while LBL’s security systems help to reduce this exposure, IT judged that further reducing this risk was appropriate for TREX at this time.
If you have questions about VPN or feedback about this change, please visit http://help.lbl.gov/
Note that TREX is also undergoing a technical upgrade at the same time. For more details, visit http://travel.lbl.gov/
As part of the broader transformation of Public Affairs into Strategic Communications, IT is pleased to welcome the staff of Creative Services to the Division. We look forward to deeper integration between our teams in the coming months. All of CSO's services from printing to design to photography, video, and web development remain available to the Lab community via the same contacts: [email protected] and http://cso.lbl.gov/
The following staff have joined IT:
Cait Youngquist
Ivan Berry
Phil Butler
Theresa Duque
Ross Lyon
Marilyn Chung
Susan Brand
Zofia Rostoman
Jon Rhodin
The Indico software on https://conferences.lbl.gov has been upgraded from v1.2 to v1.2.2rc1 to fix security vulnerabilities.
May 10 9:30AM All user-facing systems except for scientific unix/scientific clusters are believed to be fully available.
May 10 8:24AM Restoration activities are ongoing. Some business systems which were restored need to be taken down to address a hardware issue (including FMS). This outage should take < 1 hr. Telephony and networking appear to be working correctly - please report issues to [email protected]. There is no ETA for scientific computing/clusters but restoration is in progress and no hardware failures have yet been identified.
The power outage which occurred ~9:30APM May 9th has been partially resolved. Power has returned to most areas of the site (see Level 1 emails). Most IT systems are operational, but some are still being restored. Scientific Computing/Clusters/HPCS have no ETA for restoration at this time.
There is a power outage impacting numerous systems on the site as of 9:40PM May 9 2017. IT is investigating. No estimated return to service.
Some Lab users are experiencing problems with Windows Updates. We are currently working to fix the problem and prevent anyone from being isolated due to the MS17-010 security patch. Please let the Help Desk know if you are experiencing any problems by emailing [email protected] or calling x4357.
In a real-time demonstration, seven vendors of network equipment came together to successfully test the interoperability of FAUCET, an open-source SDN (software-defined networking) controller. The March 30 event was sponsored by Google, LBLnet (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory’s internal network) and ESnet, the U.S. Department of Energy’s high-speed international network managed by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Simeon Miteff, an LBLnet network manager in IT, was the lead organizer of the event.
The demonstration was organized to sustain momentum for SDN -- an emerging technology that decouples the network control plane from the actual data which flows across the network on the data plane. By doing so, SDN introduces the concept of programmability into the network, allowing application owners and network operators to customize network software to meet their needs.
For SDN to realize its potential, it must be interoperable among network vendors while bringing different (and advanced) capabilities to network operators. FAUCET enables verification of this interoperability through a common API, OpenFlow. FAUCET, originally developed at REANNZ and the University of Waikato in New Zealand with the support of Google and others, was created to bring the benefits of SDN to a typical enterprise network and has been deployed in various settings.
The demo was run on switches running Openflow v1.3.x. Designed as a drop-in replacement for a non-SDN switch, FAUCET-controlled hardware provides additional SDN based functionality as well (for example, policy based L2/L3 forwarding and multi vendor stacking). Once each vendor had demonstrated support individually, multi-vendor control and dataplane interoperability was demonstrated by building a virtual switch composed of switches from each vendor, under the control of a single FAUCET controller, able to pass real networking traffic across the room (and therefore a real network).
This demonstration of multi-vendor interoperability creates a collaborative environment between vendors and demonstrates maturity of the Openflow substrate as well as the FAUCET SDN controller, as discussed in a 2016 technical paper on deploying FAUCET, coauthored by Googlers Josh Bailey and Stephen Stuart, who supported the event.
FAUCET has been deployed at multiple organizations across the world and recently was used to host the NZNOG 2017 meeting in New Zealand.
“This live interoperability demo led to some great technical conversations with the vendors, and the enthusiasm of all the participants made this both a productive and enjoyable gathering,” said Simeon Miteff, an LBLnet network manager who was the lead organizer of the event.
Josh Bailey, a Google software engineer who is a technical lead on FAUCET and co-author of the paper with Stuart, found the hands-on demo useful as he made the rounds of vendors, answering questions and helping to debug the installs.
Bailey maintains an active blog on FAUCET at https://faucet-sdn.blogspot.com/.
“Multi-vendor interoperability is critical for network providers like ESnet to get confidence about deploying SDN software and technology, while not being subject to vendor lock-in,” said Inder Monga, director of ESnet and long-time contributor to SDN efforts in the industry.
Vendors participating in the demo are (in alphabetical order) Allied Telesis, Cisco, HPE (wired and Aruba wireless products), Netronome, NoviFlow and Intel OpenVSwitch with DPDK. This group plans to hold such interoperability gatherings at a yearly cadence, while continuing the momentum to add new features to the FAUCET open-source software.
Problems with the Lab's outbound and inbound calling provider caused service interruptions beginning at 8AM today.
All Services have now been restored.
Zoom became our supported video conferencing tool about 18 months ago. Everyone at the Laboratory can be automatically provisioned for an account. Zoom provides both audio conferencing (including by regular old telephone dialin) and clear sharp video conferencing and screen sharing. Let's check in on a month at LBL with Zoom...
Here's a snapshot of Zoom use at LBL in February:
The top 10 users used 71,222 Meeting Minutes!
Top users include NERSC, ESnet, Chemical Sciences, IT, Biosciences, and Systems Biology.
Join the 693 registered users at LBL at go.lbl.gov/zoom
The IT Servers Applications and Middleware Support (SAMS) Group performed infrastructure upgrades on February 21, 2017 from 7:00 PM to 10:00 PM. During this period, Commons (Confluence) and Conferences (Indico) were not accessible. Check this page for updates on this scheduled outage.
IT regularly makes visits to divisions, projects, and areas to talk about what's new in IT. Here are notes from the EESA townhall we did today. If you're logged into GSuite with your @lbl account you can see the slides embedded below too:
Tools I covered:
- Zoom for video conferencing
- http://go.lbl.gov/zoom or via the GSuite Waffle at the upper right hand corner.
- Use the Zoom Chrome Plugin - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/zoom-scheduler/kgjfgplpablkjnlkjmjdecgdpfankdle?utm_source=gmail
- Hangouts for Text Chat in Groups
- Docs, Sites, Slides
- Realtime Editing Demo
- Editing vs Suggesting vs Commenting (upper right corner option in docs).
- Explore button (bottom right) in sheets demo. https://support.google.com/docs/answer/6280499?co=GENIE.Platform%3DDesktop&hl=en
- Video can now be embedded in slides.
- Forms can now support adding an upload, but only for people @lbl.gov
- Google Drive
- Unlimited Storage for All
- Access via CLI - suggested tool (not supported by IT) https://github.com/prasmussen/gdrive
- Globus
- Data Transfer Nodes for large data flows
- contact: [email protected]
- Compute
- Service Models: http://lrc.lbl.gov
- Jupyter Notebook http://jupyter.org
- LBL Jupyter Hub Service https://sites.google.com/a/lbl.gov/high-performance-computing-services-group/getting-started/jupyter-notebook
- Singularity for Portability and Reproducibility: http://singularity.lbl.gov
- Chrome
- Suggested Extensions: Zoom, Google Drive, Gqueues,
- LBL developed calendar extension: http://go.lbl.gov/calendarextension or https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/berkeley-lab-calendar-ext/kdcnnfecnmocgnanlkkpikaingfjehec?utm_source=chrome-ntp-icon
- Backups http://go.lbl.gov/druva
- Simulated Phishing: http://go.lbl.gov/simulatedphishing
- Publication Tools
- Links to all the tools at Research Management Tools
Questions or Suggestions: Please email [email protected]
Smartsheet users are currently experiencing connectivity issues to Smartsheet. We are awaiting information from Smartsheet on this issue and will update this blog post as we obtain more information. For Smartsheet status, visit this page.
Feb 2, 10:32 PST
Feb 2, 10:27 PST
Feb 2, 09:54 PST
Feb 2, 08:58 PST
Feb 2, 08:29 PST
Smartsheet is currently experiencing an outage that is affecting access to their service for some users. We are currently waiting resolution from Smartsheet, but have not received an estimated time of resolution. For further information on Smartsheet status click here.
Update from Smartsheet:
Jan 26, 17:45 PST
Jan 26, 17:12 PST
Jan 26, 10:03 PST
The Sympa server which runs the mailing list service was down for about 2 minutes starting on 12/16 at 7 PM for necessary infrastructure maintenance.
During the upgrade, Sympa lists (including level1 lists) were unavailable.
Any messages sent to list addresses (@lists.lbl.gov) were delivered after the outage completed.
