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LISA 2000: 14th Systems Administration Conference, 
New Orleans, December 3-8, 2000
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Workshops

Join Your Peers for Two Days of Focused Discussion

  • Senior system administrators will want to participate in one or more of these all-day workshops. Participation in each workshop is limited by room size, which ensures a seminar-like atmosphere. To attend a workshop, you must be a registered conference attendee.
  • Please note that these workshops are full-day sessions. Attending a workshop precludes attending any tutorials on that day. See the individual descriptions for information on how to register for a workshop. Accepted registrations will be confirmed by the workshop coordinator.

Monday, December 4, 2000   9am - 5pm Tuesday, December 5, 2000   9am - 5pm
Workshop 1: Large Project Deployment Cancelled
Coordinator: Joel Avery, Nortel Networks

This workshop will examine in detail several complex projects that have faced obstacles such as size of deployment, compressed schedule, legacy systems, or office politics. Participants should be senior administrators, architects, or designers who have real-world examples of major projects they have solved or will soon face.

For more information about this workshop, including how to register, please see https://www.usenix.org/events/lisa2000/largeproject/.

Workshop 2: Teaching System Administration
Coordinators: Curt Freeland, University of Notre Dame, and John Sechrest, PEAK, Inc.

The focus of the workshop is the implementation of the course framework developed at the USENIX Systems Administration Education Workshop at LISA '99. Participants will work toward the development of course materials (syllabus, lectures, labs, homework problems, and exams) suitable for use in a college-level course on systems administration.

This one-day workshop will include presentations by university and vendor systems-administration instructors, as well as group discussions where the participants will begin to design a syllabus and other course materials.

Participants will be current and potential instructors of university-level systems administration courses and senior system administrators with an interest in this topic.

To register for this workshop, please send email with a short description of your background in teaching systems administration to ustsa-l@peak.org.

Workshop 3: MetaLISA
Coordinators: Cat Okita, Global Crossing, and Tom Limoncelli, Lumeta/Lucent Technologies

Many system administrators find themselves managing other system administrators, either officially or unofficially. The more experienced sysadmins become, the more likely it is that they will be asked to do "management" things. In this workshop, attendees will describe real management situations and will discuss ways of handling these situations, with particular attention to issues specific to managing system administrators. Both old-timers and new managers will find it useful to attend. The format will be moderated discussion.

To register for this workshop, please send email with a short description of your management background to metalisa-workshop@usenix.org.

Workshop 4: Developing Strategies for Managing Very Large Storage Installations Cancelled
Coordinator: Stephen M. DiPietro, Compaq Computer Corporation

Computing facilities containing a petabyte of storage are currently being planned and constructed. Managing these emerging facilities will present unprecedented challenges to system administrators. In this workshop we will explore the system management issues presented by these very large storage installations.

To register for this workshop, please send email with a short description of your storage background to petabyte-workshop@usenix.org.

Workshop 5: Advanced Topics Workshop
Coordinator: Adam Moskowitz, Blackstone Technology Group

This one-day workshop will focus on the most difficult problems facing system administrators today. Attendance is limited and based on acceptance of a position paper. Additional information on this workshop is available at https://www.menlo.com/atw2000/.

Potential workshop attendees should submit a one-page position paper in ASCII to atw-workshop@usenix.org. Papers should contain a statement of what the author thinks is the most difficult or important issue facing system administrators today.

Workshop 6: Large-Scale Service Providers
Coordinators: John Orthoefer, Genuity Inc., and Cat Okita, Global Crossing

This workshop is for system administrators with many geographically dispersed datacenters of varying sizes. The format will be moderated group discussion. Topics include:

  • Remote access, installation, and updating
  • Securing a small network of machines
  • Monitoring systems and services
  • Service redundancy and fail-over

Potential workshop attendees should send email to lssp-workshop@usenix.org with a short position statement and a facilities description.

Workshop 7: The Present and Future of AFS
Coordinators: Esther Filderman, Pittsburgh Supercomputing Center, Ted McCabe, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Derrick Brashear, Carnegie Mellon University

This workshop for AFS administrators will cover current work being done at AFS sites, issues in AFS administration, and where the future of AFS is headed.

Potential participants should send email to afs-workshop@usenix.org with one or both of the following: a short paper addressing topics they believe are important to the present or future of AFS, or an abstract of a paper to be presented on work done or in progress in relation to AFS or Arla.

Workshop 8: Workshop on Process Maturity and Benchmarking
Coordinators: Carolyn Hennings, Megapipe, Tom Limoncelli, Lumeta/Lucent Technologies, and Alva L. Couch, Tufts University

How does your IT organization compare to others? How do your methods and procedures compare to those of others? There is no metric for comparing two organizations, which makes it very difficult to plan for and assess improvements in an IT organization.

A metric known as the Systems Administration Maturity Model (SAMM) has been proposed. In this workshop we will discuss SAMM and alternatives and will try to build a common understanding of this area. The outcome of the workshop is intended to be a vision and action plan for moving forward.

Further information about this workshop can be found at https://whatexit.org/process/.

Potential participants should send email to metrics-workshop@usenix.org with a paragraph or two about their experiences and interest in IT organization metrics and practices.


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