Computing Resources and Facilities

The School of Computer Science runs its own computer network and set of servers. Computer Science majors, researchers, faculty and staff use this network as the basis for their programming. Specialized research computers are connected to this network, and the School's network is connected to the Internet and high-performance research networks.

Computer Science Systems

A collection of high-end servers forms the basis of our computing facilty.

Three fully-loaded SunFire servers running Solaris 10 drive hundreds of desktops in the School. These computers are arranged in a SunRay group to distribute user logins according to load-balancing rules.  Each of the three computers (named alpha, bravo and charlie) has an identical configuration and similar software installations. (Installed Fall 2009)

A cluster of two Sun V800 servers provides SPARC-based programming tools. The servers are named sol and luna, and have identical configurations. (Installed Fall 2004)

File storage is centralized on a Sun Storage 7410 cluster.  This specialized cluster is fully redundant and data is mirrored within the disk arrays and between the cluster nodes. The 7410 provides data services through a variety of network interfaces including NFS, CIFS, SFTP and WebDAV. (Installed Winter 2010)

The Oracle database system is provided by a three-node cluster of SunFire servers along with two Oracle Application Servers on separate SunFire machines.  The Oracle cluster is based on RAC and data is mirrored between two separate disk arrays. (Installed Fall 2007)

In addition the School maintains specialized servers to handle: MySQL database servers, data backup servers, media servers, PC support servers and special Web servers. Most servers are currently running the Solaris 10 operating system.

Thin Clients

Most users connect to the Sun servers through over one hundred Sunray terminals located throughout the School. These terminals provide a high-resolution window system (Java Desktop System based on GNOME) to users. A full suite of applications are installed on the servers for use. These applications include: Eclipse, Star Office, Matlab, Maple, Programming Languages (LISP, Prolog, Haskell, C++, Java, Miranda).

Computing Labs

The School operates four general purpose labs for undergraduate students. Each lab is open different hours throughout the year, and each lab accommodates between 25 and 30 users.

• 3119 Erie Hall (Sunrays)
• 3150 Erie Hall (Sunrays and group work tables)
• 3107 Lambton Tower (game and media development high-end dual-display PC's running Windows 7; Microsoft Xbox consoles and external HDMI displays)
• 305 Leddy Library West (Sunrays)

Graduate students and researchers are spread out through the third floor of Erie Hall with special computer and work labs.

• Pattern Recognition, Machine Learning and Bio-informatics Lab (3152 Erie Hall)
• Parallel and Meta Computing Systems Software Lab (3151 Erie Hall)
• Optical Communications Lab (3144 Erie Hall)
• High Performance and Grid Computing Lab (3144 Erie Hall)
• Warehousing, Object-Oriented and Databases Lab (3142 Erie Hall)
• Computational and Grid Computing Lab (3140 Erie Hall)
• Software Engineering Lab (3139 Erie Hall)
• Vision Group (3130 Erie Hall)
• AI Research Group (3133 Erie Hall)
• Algorithms, Speech Processing and Advanced Research Techniques Lab (268 Dillion Hall)
• AI Research Lab (3124 Erie Hall)