Date of Award

Fall 12-1-2005

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Information Systems (MSIS)

First Advisor

Stephen Krebsbach

Second Advisor

Omar El-Gayar

Third Advisor

Ronghua Shan

Abstract

The University of Kansas Edwards Campus expanded from one building with three computer labs to two buildings with six computer labs, doubling the number of computers that must be managed, yet there is no funding for additional IT staff. The campus will add a third building in the next five years. The current method for maintaining computers, service packs, updates, and software is to manually check them. There is no systematic method for keeping track of license counts and maintaining virus protection and updates. A more efficient method of managing computers was needed. We examined commercial products and determined that they did more than was needed and yearly client and server licenses would be cost prohibitive. The IT director, as project sponsor, decided to develop a management tool in-house. Diana Marrs, project manager and secondary programmer, and Adam Sailer, primary programmer created an object-oriented development plan. The project scope included obtaining and displaying system information, hardware and software per machine in the network. Three functional areas were developed - data acquisition and storage, network communication, and a graphical user interface. Because there was no need for historical data and each data object was stored on the server and read directly from the GUI, there was no need for a database to be developed so this item was removed from the original plan. Additions to the scope included a systray icon, a print function, an install program, a delete function, and a system details section. Weekly meetings were held between the project sponsor, the network administrator, and the design team for progress updates and revision requests. The project is near completion. The computer management tool successfully broadcasts a request for data, the client machines gather their data and return it to the server where the data objects are stored, and the server provides a GUI for display. This was progressively tested on 1-69 machines to analyze network load and speed of results. The client will be installed on all 213 computers within the next two weeks and final testing for response and network load will be conducted. A second install will occur when the additional items have been completed. All code up to this point has been open source or newly developed by the team. The amount of data obtained goes far beyond the original request and will identify machines that need updating and help the institution remain within licensing limits.

Comments

dsu-th-222

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