Introduction

Hi, I'm Erick Engelke, Director of Engineering Computing at the University of Waterloo. 

My department takes care of many (but not all) computing issues within the Faculty of Engineering, and I also sit on the university committee (CTSC) which makes decisions about all computing-related issues for the campus.  I cannot change everything, but I do have input into the process.

I've decided to start blogging to share information with our clients, and to offer a forum for feedback.  Feel free to post or to Email me.

To students, we are best know for Nexus, the computing system that delivers software to approximately 1000 student lab computers in Engineering (approximately 500 of them in Engineering Computing labs, 500 in departmental labs), and about 4,400 computers across campus.

In the last few years, students' own laptops have added to the picture, but not in the way many people expected.  Laptops are useful for many things, and they reduce the reliance on labs for typical commercial software such as Microsoft Office.  However, over 95% of our undergraduates still use nexus labs and our Terminal Server (remote desktop to Windows).

This table is based on the fall 2010 term.  The co-ops, Masters and PhD students sometimes use private office computers, so they are not necessarily adding to the lab traffic.

The labs are often busy, especially as we get closer to end of term.  By November, it's hard to get a spot anytime between 11am and 6pm, or even later in Gear. 

Usage is higher in certain labs, mostly where we have newer computers, or more workspace.  Last term the gear lab was used heavily until 11pm most nights. 

There are several reasons people use labs in addition to laptops, but one of the most prominent is that the labs have specialty engineering software installed.  I've heard other reasons including monitor size/screen resolution, high speed network connection, not lugging a laptop, dead laptop batteries, working in groups for projects, working near friends, etc.

Some students have discovered Engterm, our Windows Terminal Server.  It has many scientific applications on it, but not all the ones in the student lab - some licences prevent us from using software on a terminal server.

One of the benefits of Engterm is that you can access maltab, maple, mathcad or certain other packages from your laptop, at home or school, without having to find a spot in our labs.  To use it, find remote desktop on your computer, and type in engterm.uwaterloo.ca.

Engterm usage seems to peak between 8pm and 10pm, probably when people are working on homework at home.  The graph misrepresents low usage in the early morning hours, as the counters are reset at midnight and ignore people already logged on.

As you can imagine, there are many issues running big computing systems, computing networks, etc.  I have a list of potential topics for this blog but questions from users will probably shift the priority.

I hope your find our systems useful.
Erick