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IT COMMITTEE NEWS
March 2011

By Evan Rosenberg, Board Member

The DEFHR IT Team would like to recognize its member Terri Arnold. In addition to being a regular volunteer, working with the horses, Terri has been instrumental in making several improvements to the database for the office and barn staff. Terri’s “med sheet” programming automated and streamlined the process of keeping the horse medical records up to date and allowed Brittney’s staff to enter updates in an efficient and timely manner. Thanks, Terri, for your consistent dedication and hard work!

The IT Team has been working for a while on migrating the MS Access database to using SQL Server on the “back end,” as part of its short-term goal to improve performance and its long-term goal to improve the “front end” (screens) going forward. This transition has been a real grind, involving upgrades to all the desktops and a transition to a new HP Proliant file server. The database has been successfully “cut over”! Jerry Howe has spent countless hours working on this difficult project, including hours on the phone with Microsoft Technical Support to solve the problems with the migration. Thanks for all your hard work, Jerry!

The new HP Proliant server hardware project is nearly complete. The IT Team has installed and configured an advanced “RAID 6” disk array, offering state-of-the-art protection for the data being stored on the server, installed all the latest tools (donated) from Microsoft, deployed the enterprise version of Norton anti-virus (to keep the PCs up to the latest level of protection automatically), and the new TimeClockPlus system. Over the next month, the IT Team will be making the last of the Proliant hardware enhancements, enhancing cooling, power supply and memory. The hardware and software on the Proliant will support lots of future growth, with the ability to create several virtual machines in the Windows Server operating system.

DEFHR’s old, mechanical time clock bit the dust recently, and instead of purchasing an expensive replacement, a network-attached electronic time clock and the TimeClockPlus software were purchased, configured and implemented, with an automated interface to QuickBooks. Fortunately, IT Team member Chris Purcell has had experience with this in his professional life, and worked with Lea Gilbert and Will Somers to get this project up and running.

The IT Team invited professional project manager, Valerie Banks, to the farm for a presentation. Valerie’s presentation prompted a lot of great discussion in the group, including folks from the IT Team, Kathy Howe, Brooke Vrany, Dan Mick and Sam Bass. Joyce Sherwood followed with a presentation on the SCRUM project management system being installed at DEFHR. p> Other projects in the works include improving data backups, implementing and migrating to a domain-based network, the entry of historic animal med sheets, the build out of the SCRUM tool, assisting with the project management for the new arena project, starting to plan future improvements to the front end of the database application, etc.

More to come!


 

 

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