New World versus Old World

See also New World and Old World.

We're talking here about a project to revisit and revitalise all aspects of the technology landscape provided and managed by CSG. Rather than lift-and-shift where existing applications and operational strategies are re-homed in a new hardware and operating system enviroment, this project looked at what CSG was doing to support CSE's teaching and research needs versus what was actually required.

Thus it became a project a project of modernisation, of simplification where appropriate, of re-platforming where appropriate, and of discarding unnecessary bits and pieces, also where appropriate.

For example:

1. Removing email and printing support on lab, login and VLAB servers because no one was using it,
2. Removing ye olde booking system because this was an in-house developed tool, the developer and their maintenance expertise had long-since left the building, and we expect/hope that tutors will be able to handle interlopers in their tutorials,
3. Handing over the job of Debian package management (installation, upgrades, dependencies, etc.) to Debian's own package management tools instead of using a CSG-created tool,
4. Handing over limited responsibility and authority to change configurations and install new software packages related to teaching to CSE's own teaching staff while CSG manages the actual keep-the-host-doing-what-it-is-supposed-to side of things. Effectively, CSG supports the platform and teaching supports the teaching tools.

Underlying this is a now well-defined commitment to the Debian distribution of Linux and an equally well-defined commitment to tracking Debian releases as they become available.