Endeavor Consortium Work Group Minutes

Tari Keller, Dave Block, Kelly Vickery, Todd King, Margaret Foote, Gary Flanagan, Linda Voyles, Nelda Sims, Mark Paul, Paul Fuller, Tanzi Merrit, Rose Davis, Charlene Davis, John Detwiler, Roberta Kirby, Cathy Reilender, Perry Bratcher, Keith Stevenson, Gerry Williams, Weiling Liu, Aleeah McGinnis (via Video conference—lost but not forgotten)

1. Endeavor Update - Linda Voyles

Voyager

Ninety AIX and five hundred Solaris sites have now been upgraded to Voyager 2001.2. Two sites are now running the beta version of Voyager Unicode, and they are running through the Unicode conversion process one last time with the Library of Congress. Endeavor expects a number of sites to receive Unicode early release version in December. Unicode may go into general release in March or April, and the general release of Unicode will be across all platforms.

The release after Unicode will be the 5.0 version of Voyager and may be in beta by the end of 2004 – look for the release notes on 5.0 to be published on support web sometime in the Spring of 2004—expect to see items on patron privacy, patron purge, etc.

Digital Products

The version of Encompass incorporating the “Fast Search Engine” has gone into beta testing. Expect the general release in the Spring of 2004. The Unicode version of Linkfinder should go into general release in the Spring, also.

Keith asked if Endeavor will asked if Endeavor will consider releasing Oracle 9 on AIX 5. Linda said that there is too much uncertainty on how well the products would operate together and that it would require too much testing for Endeavor to pursue this.

Staff update

Tom Pitts will become the new Technical Support leader at Endeavor. Kay Stanley has been moved into Digital Services Team. The training unit which, will soon be fully staffed, isexpanding its offerings. Endeavor will soon release a knowledge base for digital products on support web. Task force on “Global Data Change” and task force on “Acquisitions” will start meeting in January 2004. On January 23, Endeavor will publish on support web information concerning the 2004 EndUsers meeting.

2. S. S. L. on Eastlib – Gary Flanagan

There is concern being expressed at Morehead University about security and patron privacy due to the lack of encryption when patrons log into their accounts on Voyager OPAC. Morehead uses patron social security numbers as a means of authenticating users into the OPAC and some patrons have refused to use it due to the lack of encryption. Gary is requesting that an S.S.L. product be installed on Eastlib to allow for encryption of OPAC settings. Gary cited Michael Doran’s article about installing S.S.L. products on Voyager and it is offered as an optional setting in the Voyager literature. Dave Block has talked to Endeavor support concerning the use of S.S.L. in Voyager and Endeavor does not actually support its use—they suggested that two web servers be setup as a contingency plan if things go wrong then the Voyager site can quickly be returned to its previous condition.

Eastern Kentucky University, University of Louisville, and a number of other consortium members (on Eastlib and Westlib) are interested in pursuing this, but a number technical and billing issues will need to be addressed first. The systems administrators will setup a conference call with Endeavor technical support to discuss technical implementation—whether all institutions on the hub need to go to S.S.L. or not, whether it means all OPAC entries will be encrypted or not, whether individual virtual web servers per site are required or not, etc.. The cost could be from $50 to $250 per institution per year for S.S.L. certificates, and it may be difficult to bundle the cost with the annual Testlib server invoice for those institutions not using the kyvl.org extension on their OPAC URLs. We need to contact Voyager to see if there is a consortium using the S.S.L. option. Billing: it is preferred that the cost of the S.S.L. be included with the rest of the KYVL invoice that is sent to the consortium members.

3. Service Level Agreement – Tari Keller

The state requests that we include more specific measurable outcomes in the KYVL Endeavor Consortium’s Service Level Agreement. Enid Wholstien, Dave, Keith, Mark, and Tari identified eight specific areas for the consortium to determine predictable metrics which can be included in the SLA. The areas are:

1) Workflows for Voyager upgrades.
2) A method for server administrators to prioritizing issues when consortia members contact hub sites with Voyager server problems.
3) Specified percentage of time that server administrators are to devote to administering Consortium’s Voyager server.
4) Specific backup schedules and retention policies for databases, web logs, and other standard reports.
5) Disaster recover plans.
6) Parallel roles and standards to be met by each hub site.
7) Establish a standard series of methods to measure system response time.
8) hardware tests - efficiency, capacity

Tari provided a handout showing several different methods used to measure response times, and the group discussed the potential for using some of these. Tari, Roberta, Gerry, and Paul volunteered to work on a proposed list of specifics for each of the above areas and present it to the group at the next quarterly meeting in March.

4. Invoices for the Testlib server maintenance

The University of Louisville has paid Endeavor and U of L is working on the specific invoices to distribute to the consortium members. It is requested that all billables for the consortium be placed on one invoice when presented to consortium members.

5. Next Meetings

Next meetings:

March 5th 2004
June 3rd 2004 (Changed to not conflict with KVUG 6/4/03 meeting.
September 10th 2004
December 3rd 2004

6. Other items

Keith had two announcements: 1) Please use the KYVL list when communicating problems to the server administrators because other hub site support personnel do read the list when the administrators are absent. It would also be a good idea when submitting problems to Endeavor support to send them to the list also, that way patterns of problems might be identified on the servers. 2) University of Louisville will implement an enterprise firewall for their network on January 5th. Keith is aware of all the ports Voyager needs to operate, but please be aware of the date and report problems if they occur. This will greatly increase security for the Westlib hub.

Kelly asked the server administrators how serious was Endeavor abandoning us to run a year on a version of AIX not supported by IBM. Keith stated that for an enterprise level system to allow its platform development to lapse into an unsupported operating system was unconscionable. Keith explained that there have been a large number of security releases, of late—about a dozen in a quarter—and that when IBM drops support they will not write patches for a system and they will not provide advice for troubleshooting when problems arise. This means that for a year we our hubs represent a security risk and could become targets for damaging activity. We will be at risk and there will be no assistance if we become targets. Keith has heard rumors that IBM might sell minimal support for the older AIX versions, but he has no idea how much it might cost nor what kind of support it might mean—nor even if the rumor was true. Kelly adamantly suggested that any costs incurred due to this lapse be submitted and paid by Endeavor. Kelly mentioned that the consortium, as a whole, annually pays Endeavor over a quarter of million dollars in maintenance, and he stated that Endeavor does not provide adequate maintenance for this level of payment. Voyager is a product that is reliant on a number of other system—AIX, Oracle, Windows—and at the very least our maintenance dollars should keep us on supported levels of these systems. Keith mentioned that IBM gave adequate and considerable notice that they were dropping support for this version of AIX. A number of consortium representatives expressed disappointment that they watched Endeavor upgrade Voyager when Solaris announced it was dropped support for an earlier OS, but Endeavor did nothing when IBM gave notice. We are not receiving appropriate maintenance from Endeavor.

Submitted by Kelly Vickery, 12/8/03

The next meeting is March 5, 2004 at 1:00 pm at CPE.