The Computing and Information Technology department is hoping that students won't notice their latest project.
The department is upgrading the campus' current network systems from Windows NT to a Windows 2000 Active Directory system, which officials say will create a centralized location for data on all campus servers and will make UB's network ready for future technologies.
Lesniak said few students, if any, would notice the changes in the network, but that is the goal of the project, he said.
"We will be measuring our success with how few problems this whole process will cause," he said. "If no one notices us while we're making these upgrades, then we'll consider this project a success."
CIT officials expect the $330,000 directory to be completed by this Christmas, with all the departments consolidating their directories in the next year, marking the end of a project that CIT started two years ago, according to CIT officials.
"All the current networking technologies we have are reaching the end of their life cycle," said Richard Lesniak, the Director of CIT's Academic Service and director of the Active Directory project. "With these upgrades we're able to move forward."
The upgrades will take UB's current active directory system -- where different departments of the university have information and department specific directories stored in separate servers all over campus -- and streamline it, putting the information on those servers in a centralized location.
This will free up server space in those different departments and put it in one centralized directory, making it easier for faculty and staff to access their data, according to Dave Costello, information technologies manager for the School of Management.
"Here in the School of Management, we have a lot of multi-disciplinary faculty, going between management and economics, with different offices in each department," said Costello.
"Under the current system, those professors can't get to information, like class and research data, in those different departments without going between different accounts, a cumbersome process. With the Active Directory, faculty will be able to move between their different accounts using just one password from whichever desk they may be at," Costello said.
Costello also said that the new server space would make it possible for the university's different departments to be more efficient, and would open the door for further services in the future.
"Very few people will see any day one, right out of the box benefits," he said, "The real benefit, and the benefits students will eventually enjoy, will come in the form of the possibilities of expanded services in the future. This is more of a springboard for the future."
Officials also cited increased security as a reason for the new project.
"The current system has a number of security vulnerabilities, such as the blaster worm viruses. We've found that the new system is a lot more secure," said Lesniak.
Costello added that under Active Directory, departments would be able to make stronger passwords while making information more secure, a double benefit for all departments.
Lesniak said the system is replacing a current protocol called DCE, an outdated system for storing information, such as student records, and replacing it with an expanded version of a protocol called LDAP, which holds both public and private student information. This centralization will make it easier for many different departments to share, exchange and edit data, said Lesniak.
The wide-reaching scale of this project required the assistance of many more people than those from CIT, said Lesniak.
"Reorganizing for this project involves not just central CIT, but the technical support people for all the different departments working together," said Lesniak.
Costello said that regardless of the benefits of the new system, the upgrade became necessary when it was recognized that UB's system was soon going to be outdated.
"Microsoft decided they were going to end support for the Windows NT networks," he said, "so that made it necessary for us to upgrade."
"The money being spent on this project really would have been spent on upgrades anyway; it was just a matter of timing," Costello said. "Our servers in the department of management are getting towards the end of their life cycle."
