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Brunskill oversees busy SENS computing organization
By DONNA LONGENECKER
Reporter Assistant Editor
Corky Brunskill is a busy man.
As director of Science and Engineering Node Services (SENS) at UB, Brunskill oversees an organization that provides a nearly unlimited array of computer/Internet technology resources to more than 7,000 researchers, students, faculty and staff.
» UBiquity
In addition to the day-to-day job of keeping the computers humming—not an easy task, given the number and variety of disciplines served by the node—SENS has been a major contributor in the early development and construction of the Center for Computational Research (CCR) and the new Laboratory for Molecular Visualization and Analysis (LMVA), Brunskill says, and is investigating the implementation of a Lightweight Directory Access Protocol (LDAP) infrastructure for the node and other interested parties.
As director of Science and Engineering Node Services, Corky Brunskill oversees an organization that provides a wide range of computer/Internet technology resources.
PHOTO: Donna Longenecker
Morever, SENS is facilitating cluster and experimental computing, and is leading the development of Linux—an open-source operating system—at UB.
The SENS philosophy, indeed its mantra, is "customer service first," says Brunskill, a member of the UB professional staff since 1973. He likens that model to a set of three, interlocking Ballentine rings that define and unify the roles of individual staff at SENS with its overall mission.
"Everybody here has special skills and expertise, but the intense level of support required by our community demand that staff have a working knowledge of each other's specialities," he says. "These common knowledge areas are represented by where the rings overlap, with the center of the rings representing the point where there exists both a common set of tools and sense of mission that represents the service model and the values that make up the SENS support philosophy."
Like CIT, SENS is a full computing-service organization, offering its users mail and access accounts; large-disk quotas; a variety of platforms (the underlying hardware or software for a system); a multi-media production facility that uses high-end graphics; numerous node and departmenal labs, and two campus computing labs in partnership with CIT's Academic Computing Services; set-up and repairs, and an abundance of software.
"We don't just offer software and hardware, but the expertise and the computing power to provide a professor and student with support for coursework and projects that require intense computing power and unique software or hardware resources tailored to the users' needs," explains Brunskill.
For example, if an instructor needs 100 megabytes of disk space per student to teach a course on CAD (computer assisted design) or GIS (geographic information systems), SENS can provide class accounts with directories that enable all students to access the necessary disk resources for the semester on powerful workstations in both departmental and public facilities.
"We actively involve ourselves in supporting our research community by providing high-end research disk resources, computing infrastructures and even grant "boilerplate" for faculty and students doing research," Brunskill adds. "We also provide backup services for approximately 250 research workstations. I don't know if all this is unique to our operation," he says of what SENS offers, "but this is the SENS philosophy. This is how we do business."
The heart of SENS is Ubiquity—a computing environment based primarily on Unix servers, but which works in concert with Microsoft Windows servers—developed about seven years ago by Dave Yearke, associate director of SENS, out of a need to accommodate the diverse platforms available at the university and allow access to resources from a variety of areas.
Computers configured under the UBiquity model can be customized to meet the needs of different types of users while sharing a common set of software tools. An engineering or natural sciences student or researcher using either a UNIX-based (a multi-user, multi-platform operating system) workstation or a personal computer with a Microsoft Windows NT desktop can gain acccess to the resources of the other environment, plus other shared resources.
"The UBiquity model is based on Sun's 'one piece of glass' philosophy, where users on any computing platform can gain access to their data and to the software they need to do their work," says Brunskill of the philosophy behind UBiquity. Two campus computing labs, one in Bell Hall and one in Fronczak, provide access to anyone with a UBIT account; a variety of node laboratories in other buildings provide similar access to all registered node users.
For engineering and natural sciences students, faculty and staff, SENS has created "parallel universes" that use the same equipment with a common desktop environment but are tailored to meet the needs of the particular discipline. In a unique partnership, CIT provides user support for the two shared labs, including supplying student consultants, printers, etc., and SENS maintains the computers and software resources. UBiquity resources are being expanded to include the entire campus community—the result of another partnership between SENS and Academic Computing Services.
"Supporting our community is not without issue," he notes. "For example, in the IT discipline, the professionals try very, very hard to standardize and lessen the variety of supported computing infrastructures, as this approach makes everything easier to maintain, more secure and less prone to problems. We understand that this may be the 'ideal' with respect to support, but we also understand that we work in a university and the very nature of the university is diversity," says Brunskill of the need to meet the vast and various kinds of computing requirements at UB. SENS supports PC platforms, Macs, Sun, Silicon Graphics, Hewlett Packard and several other operating systems, and shares most of its software with anyone at the university who needs it.
"We try to never deny anyone access. We believe it's our job to try to provide every conceivable resource—be it software, platforms, etc.—to our community. It is an impossible feat, but we try to do what our community asks. What works for one researcher, professor or student, like a PC, may not work for someone else," he says.
As SENS continues to expand and refine its services, Brunskill says the staff is ready to meet those challenges. "This is a very difficult, demanding and intense operation. Everybody has a lot of responsibility, everybody is a player. You have to want that in order to work here. It's a complex structure. Everybody has to be able to communicate and understand each other," he says.
Brunskill's zeal about work evinces a genuine happiness about being at UB. "Working in this area, working in the university, you get paid for doing something you would do as a hobby. I don't think it gets better than that; I don't think you can beat that."