Support for Managed/Self-Managed Machines
One of the key distinctions for the level of support that is given
to users is that of managed and
self-managed machines.
- managed:
- managed machines are those that are installed and automatically
maintained using the School's automated machine management system
(LCFG). Such machines are managed according to a centrally held
profile and maintained in that state on a daily basis. Since this
state is predictable and replicable it is both practical and
scalable for computing staff to offer support for such machines.
An additional effect of the ability to control the state of such
machines is that they are regarded to be secure enough to be
connected to networks that have more privileges than networks
where self-managed machines are connected.
- self-managed:
- if users require either special hardware or special software
requiring particular install privileges that cannot be managed
under the LCFG system a machine is deemed to be self-managed. The
user then becomes responsible for installation of the operating
system and any special software. Consequently, the state of such a
self-managed machine is unpredictable. While computing staff will
always try to give advice on issues with such machines it is
neither practical nor scalable for computing staff to spend time
resolving issues on such machines on a one-off basis.
Since the state of software on self-managed machines is unknown,
their security and integrity is also unknown. Consequently they
will only be connected to networks that have fewer privileges than
managed machines.
With respect to support for managed machines, it is important to
distinguish the sort of areas that covers. In general, it relates to
the basic operation of the machine (ie, its reliability/robustness),
its network connectivity and its ability to access standard
Informatics services. It does
not include support for every
piece of software installed. The software packages that are generally
made available on desktop machines for example come largely from
standard distributions. It is not practical for computing staff to
know about all such packages.
Examples of where support would be given include a machine's network
connectivity, who can login to it, that any authorised user can access
the usual Informatics services (eg, fileservers, printing, mail, etc)
environmental issues (eg, fan or disk noise), keyboard and mouse
operation.
