Biennial Report 2005-2007 - Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics

Facilities 277drawing files have been developed at EWF. The machine has also been used for cutting and shapingof Fiber Reinforced Plastic [FRP] sheets of different shapes as required by different users. Theusers include the members of our Institute as well as the members of other Institutes like CalcuttaUniversity, S. N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences etc. The CNC machine has been extensivelyused for: Processing a large number of PCBs (both single and double sided having thicknessvarying from 0.4mm to 3.2 mm) as per the requirements of different users, and special method offixing solder filled eyelets has been used for requirements of Plated Through Holes (PTH) in doublesided boards, Shaping of copper clad glass-epoxy boards into Hexagon for making PSD Detectorsof NAP Division.Debashis Bandyopadhyay8.2 ComputerThe Computer Section is responsible for providing the general computing and networking environmentof the whole Institute. In particular, it decides and implements policies on networking,network security, Internet access, e-mailing solutions, web services etc. It also provides some generalpurpose computing and common user terminal, printer and scanner facilities.Based on extensive research for the past few years, the current year saw the Computer Section setout to implement a new policy on the structure of the Local Area Network (LAN) and mail- andweb-servers in place at the Institute. It was determined that the existing structure of departmentalmail-servers with public IP numbers within a flat LAN had to be abandoned in favour of a newwidely accepted structure of a divided network where a no-access Militarised Zone (MZ) contains thewhole network except a centralized server-farm in the De-Militarised Zone (DMZ) to be protectedby a Firewall (FW). It was decided that seven servers in a fail-safe cluster configuration (also knownas high-availability cluster as opposed to high-performance cluster configuration) would be installedto implement the FW and the server-farm.Accordingly, the servers (Xeon processor based) alongwith a Storage Area Network (SAN) forcollective redundant storage were ordered. The operating system was decided to be Red HatEnterprise Linux (RHEL). All the necessary hardware and software arrived in time and some timelater in the year, after the initial hardware installation, software installation started. The ComputerSection engineers and the RHEL engineers had to work together to determine and build several userinterfaces for e-mails, account management, web-page management, user-authentication, securitypolicies etc. Efforts were also on to implement protection from spam, virus and worm.After the initial installation, the servers were opened for use by a group of users on a trial basis.User opinions were sought and recorded and work continued to address all issues. Once all issuesare settled, the facility would be open for all users from early next financial year and accordinglyall departmental servers would stop functioning.As with other years, redundant large bandwidths were provided for all users for Internet access.Along with the current work on the server farm and the new security policy, work also beganon planning the extension of the current LAN to include the new Phase III building and theupgradation of the current LAN in Phase I and II buildings.The Computer Section provided facilities for all conferences and workshops held in the Institute.Also all visitors, summer students and undergraduate associates used the facilities.