Enterprise Sakai Creating a Robust Sakai Infrastructure Mr

Enterprise Sakai: Creating a Robust Sakai Infrastructure Mr. Josh Baron, Director, Academic Technology, Marist College Mr. Chris Coppola, President, r. Smart Mr. Howard Baker, Project Manager, IBM Mr. Austin Schilling, IT Executive Consultant, IBM

MARIST COLLEGE • We are NOT a large research university! • Founded 1929 – small complex liberal arts college • Approximately 5700 FTE student population • 200 full-time faculty, 500 part-time • Long history of incorporating technology into the teaching and learning process

Why do we need an enterprise solution? Answer: We’ve learned our lesson from the past…

Learning from the past… • In 1996 the digital horizon was foggy… • We have a better view today… watch out! • Use and production of digital media will grow exponentially over next decade: – Electronic portfolios – Rich media learning objects – Social Podcasting – Next Up: Mobile authoring tools?

A National Learning Grid Colleges and Universities State and Local Consortia K-12 District Museums, science centers, etc. Schema for Provisioning the Sharing of Resources/Tools Certification Exams Online Courses “Raw” Video Content Sakai Repository Student content

Marist/IBM Joint Study • Well Established Relationship, First Project – 1988 • Living Lab for New Technologies – Research projects, IBM Academic Initiative support, Marist grant initiatives • IBM program manager provides overall project management – IBM researchers, developers, business execs, and Marist faculty, IT staff, and students collaborate on numerous projects • Marist students hired as IBM interns – Opportunities for full-time positions

Marist Sakai Goals • How do we create a scalable, enterprise version of Sakai capable of handling future xxx needs? – Port Sakai to IBM Web. Sphere (WAS) and DB 2

Sakai Vision Global Campus Students Educators Administrators Customized Portals App 1 App 2 App 1 App 3 App 2 App 3 Collaborative Learning Environment Sakai Tools & Development Environment Core Services: content, user, security, site Distributed Environment Core Infrastructure

WAS Porting Issues • Classloaders – Tomcat decided to go against specification • Looks in local classloader first unless resource contains certain package keywords (javax, org. xml. sax, etc) • If resource not found, request is delegated to parent classloader – Web. Sphere is the opposite, but allows the administrator to adjust the classloading policy

WAS Porting Issues • Deployment Descriptors – Tomcat is much more lenient with invalid deployment descriptors • If a web. xml file does not match the servlet specification it overlooks the error and allows the web application to function normally – Web. Sphere is much more strict • Will not allow an application to be installed unless there are no errors in the web. xml file

WAS Porting Issues • Filters – The Servlet Specification states that any filter that maps to a url-pattern should be applied before any filter that maps to a servlet name. – Some Sakai components do not follow this spec • Tomcat applies filters in the order in which the Sakai Application is expecting • Web. Sphere applies the filters according to specification

WAS Porting Issues • Need to create a single code base – Easy to install – regardless of app server • Alternative build specified by global settings variable. One code base has necessary source for all versions. • XML specifies build – Source files – Destination of compiled source

DB 2 Porting Issues • Work Involves: – Creating db 2 versions of all sql/ddl scripts – Reworking issues from hibernate and legacy jdbc services • Common Hibernate Gotchas – Long names for indexes – Binary blob types • Solution: Create hibernate dialect. This avoids changes to java source or hbm files.

DB 2 Porting Issues • Legacy JDBC Gotchas – No vendor specific abstraction in Sakai for dealing with vendor specific issues • Solution: r. Smart is working with the community to move to vendor specific helper classes that can be set at runtime to make code more manageable and less error prone.

Marist i. Learnx Near Term Status • Port to WAS and DB 2 near completion • June and July – Migrate courses and test • August – Create production infrastructure – Blade server based • September – Move into production in Marist’s z/OS Certificate program – NOTE: i. Learn = Innovative Learning Environment and Resource Nework

Marist – r. Smart – IBM Contribution • QA environment running DB 2 and WAS will be live in September with several “flavors” of Sakai. • Hosted at Marist College • Marist will also be contributing several QA resources for testing activities • COME JOIN US!

Future Directions - Dynamic Infrastructure to deploy, maintain, and support a Utility based model delivering Education Services to Academic Communities Business Value Better IT – Public Service Goals alignment Increased flexibility Increased utilization Reduce costs Orchestrate: Achieve Policybased computing Provision: Automate Capacity & Workload Mgt Virtualize: Create logical asset pools Simplify: Consolidate IT assets Ability to Dynamically Respond

IBM DI On Demand Workplace – Demo IBM Dynamic Infrastructure Topology Utility Business Services IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager A Server Pool A A Workflow Se. HS/WPS Product Stack get/set DCM. . . Plugin Metering Aggregation/ Correlation De-/Provision App/Portal Server Cluster Data Center Model Web. Sphere SOA Component Clusters WPS Solutions/Apps Se. HS Reporting Objective Analyser ODW OA & DAE Update ND Configuration Sakai CLE J 2 EE Portal J 2 EE Apps Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator r. Smart OSPI Metric Service Evaluate Usage Context Subscribe: Premium/Normal Service Usage User / Robot Web Services e. Portfolio Two kinds of users: a) “premium”: subscribed to get classified requests based on SLOs b) “standard”: no SLOs UBS Filter WES HTTP (ND) Proxy DB 2 Domino Tivoli Directory Server (LDAP)

SPP & IDI Integration @ Marist • Approach – Stage 1 (SPP Po. C) • Start with SPP for base provisioning – Integration of Slackware OS provisioning – TPM installation and setup – Stage 2 (IDI for Education Landscape Mgmt Po. C) • Implementation and deployment of IDI – Leveraging SPP base provisioning – Implementation of Marist Education services Application Landscape Managment (Sakai) – Stage 3 • Converged SPP and IDI solution for Marist Education Services (Sakai) Landscape Management – Improved error recovery and compensation

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