This document lists guidelines to be used in allocating scarce resources (staff time and computing funds) to support instructional, administrative, and research computing. These guidelines are intended to provide direction to the Computer Science Laboratory Director and Computing Resources Committee (CRC) on allocation of scarce resources for computing. The guidelines do not answer specific questions or guarantee specific services (i.e., can I expect someone to backup files if I purchase model x of brand y). Rather, the guidelines can be used in answering such questions whenever they arise.
These guidelines are written at a time when the funds and staff time to support computing equipment is critically deficient. At present (before the arrival of the $750,000 SCHEV equipment order) we have 171 machines on the Internet supported by a total of 130 hours per week of staff time. Of this, 100 hours per week support instructional equipment (as defined in part II); 30 hours per week support shared, administrative, and faculty-office equipment; and 0 hours per week support research equipment. Faculty, staff, and students must work cooperatively, and recognize that difficult resource allocation decisions need to be made on a daily basis.
A. The resources available should be used to help the department as a whole maximize the quality of its instructional programs and research output.
B. Supporting teaching mission: When the university computing facilities do not completely support the needs of educating computer science students, the department should acquire its own facilities that will enhance their learning about computer science, or guide students to obtain their own facilities.
C. Supporting research mission: When funded research brings in facilities that fit in with the departmental mission, or calls for them as part of cost sharing that is deemed suitable, and a reasonable long-term plan for support and space is acceptable, the department should increase its facilities as a result.
D. Balancing expenses and revenue: The department must maintain a revenue stream sufficient to support its facilities. Therefore faculty are requested to provide a portion of the monies used for support (see part IV).
E. Benefiting from economy of scale: The department should exploit economy of scale whenever possible, including site licenses, bulk purchases, giving preference to support of certain types of equipment and/or software, etc.
F. Encouraging innovation: Faculty, staff, and students should be encouraged to be creative, to work with state-of-the-art facilities, to pioneer new technologies that will help the department carry out its mission more effectively and bring acclaim.
G. Entitlement: The department will try to provide resources to each faculty member in supporting their computing needs, taking into account Principles D and E. The resources provided to faculty members will go further if that faculty member selects machines which cost the department less to support. For example, the Laboratory Director's staff may know more about one operating system than another, there may be site licenses or software libraries on campus that reduce the cost of software upgrades for certain platforms, or there may be service shops on campus that make repairs to certain brands of equipment less expensive.
Given the above principles, CRC will from time to time suggest priorities and plans that will lead to balance, as well as progress toward our mission. After suitable discussions, those policies and plans will be enforced, leaving CRC to focus on its other responsibilities.
B. "Instructional equipment" (IE) is defined as any equipment in a departmental undergraduate or graduate lab and on any graduate student desk. For example, IE is presently in rooms McBryde 116, 102, and 555.
C. "Shared equipment" (SE) is defined as any equipment that is used by multiple persons and hence provides some type of "general purpose" computing services. Examples at present include printers in McBryde 565, some equipment in 104 (file and X-terminal servers, server.cs.vt.edu, and vtopus), and equipment in hourly secretary offices, such as 633 and 575.
D. "Administrative equipment" (AE) is defined as equipment on any administrative person's desk. For example, AE equipment is presently in rooms McBryde 551, 562, 565, 564.
E. "Faculty-office equipment" (FE) is the primary workstation that a faculty member uses in his or her office.
F. "Research equipment" (RE) is any equipment other than IE, SE, AE, and FE.
G. A "network connection" is a physical connection into which the network adapter of a piece of equipment is attached to access the Internet. This is the item for which Communication Network Services (CNS) currently charges $5 per month.
H. "Support" is defined as:
A. Priorities in allocating support resources.
In general, the resources available for support will be allocated on the basis of urgency of need, and given equal urgency, in the following priority:
B. Guidelines for network support.
The department will pay the monthly CNS network connection fee for all equipment. Any installation fee for a network connection for all equipment other than IE, SE, AE, and FE will be paid by the requesting faculty member.
Any funds contributed beyond the $4000/8% baseline amount may be earmarked for staff support for, or maintenance of, specialized research equipment. The recommended amount is one month of GRA time per faculty member per year, which the department will pool to hire additional staff.