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Governance Minutes ArchiveFebruary 7, 1990
MINUTES Computer Committee Fourth Floor Burruss Hall Board Room February 7, 1990 3 PM PRESENT: Don Allison, Jeff Birch, Darrell Bosch, John Burton, John Cosgriff, David Goodyear, Bob Heterick, Katherine Johnston, Tom McAnge, Fred Medley, Harlan Miller, Dennis Catley for Jim Montgomery, Richard Sorensen, Jim Thomas, Mike Williams ABSENT: Jim Baranowski, Jim Hicks, Dennis Jones, Joan McClain-Kark, Ernie Stout, Jeff Wilcke, Barbara Young VISITOR(S): Bill Sanders (Computing Center) AGENDA ITEM 1: MINUTES OF THE JANUARY 10, 1990 MEETING Motion made, seconded and passed to approve the minutes of the January meeting. AGENDA ITEM 2: COMPUTING CENTER REPORT (WILLIAMS) Mainframe utilization rates continue to grow at about the same rate as they have for the past few years. VM1 utilization during January, 1990, was up 20% over January, 1989. The number of si- multaneous logged users on VM1 approaches 1000 at times. Usage levels on VM2 have doubled in the past year, primarily due to the addition of the CAD/CAM system. Users may have noticed an occasional slowdown of the system during heavy batch usage or when large CAD/CAM jobs were running. Our MVS system is close to full saturation and has been sustain- ing very high paging rates. Although special measures were taken to ensure the smooth functioning of the last student registra- tion, the system was very close to its limit, and additional measures will have to be taken before the next registration. The gradual increase in utilization has had little impact on gen- eral users thus far, though throughput on numerically intensive jobs has degraded significantly. When full saturation is reached, however, the effect is usually dramatic. Since the sys- tems are not far from true saturation, measures to decrease usage may have to be taken soon if funds are not available to upgrade the computers. The committee may want to consider recommending measures to deal with the problem. One measure that has already been taken has been to adjust rates to encourage night usage. Currently the cost of running an interactive job during the day is 18 times the cost of running it under night and evening VM Batch. Increasing this cost differen- tial would probably not change usage patterns further. With the current state revenue shortfall, the University's re- quest for a special initiative for central computing, while viewed favorably by the state, is unlikely to be funded. AGENDA ITEM 3: SUBCOMMITTEE REPORTS The Personal Computer subcommittee report was distributed and will be discussed at the next Computer Committee meeting. The report was based on survey results from each college. The User Services subcommittee also distributed a report to be discussed at the next Computer Committee meeting. AGENDA ITEM 4: ADDITIONS TO THE AGENDA None. The next meeting will be held on March 7 at 3 p.m. in Burruss 400. The final meeting for this academic year will be held on April 4. Meeting adjourned at 3:49 p.m.
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