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End of an era [2019-03-04]

Thirteen years ago this month, we got on a plane bound for the Philippines as prospective United States Peace Corps Volunteers.  Following training, we moved to the small town of Compostela on the island of Cebu where we were assigned to support Compostela National High School.  We found teachers and students there eager for more computers, so our work quickly focused on development of a distributed computer system on campus.  By the time our Peace Corps service ended in 2008, we had installed over 100 computers on campus.  Each year since then we’ve continued to come back to Compostela to make updates and repairs.  However this last week we made a major change to that original architecture to simplify it for easier maintenance. 

The original system consisted of a main server, four sub-servers, student computers in four locations, and teacher computers in six faculty department offices.  All files and programs were stored on the main server, so there were wires and WiFi connecting everything together back to the main server.  As we learned more and extended our work to other schools, Neal developed a much simpler system for the new installations in the Philippines and Tanzania.  Since Reneal incorporated in 2012, we’ve installed 49 other computer labs using this simpler system.  Compostela NHS alone continued with this complex main server/sub-server architecture.

The good news?  The teachers at Compostela NHS who were part of the original project starting back in 2006 still have all of their files from those days stored on the main server.  Those files could be accessed on any of the Reneal computers across the campus.  The bad news?  The system was a huge challenge to maintain, with custom software and a wiring scheme that few understood.  We also wanted to provide students and teachers with the latest educational content and features of the new system, but it was a daunting prospect to try to upgrade the server without affecting the legacy files of the teachers.

Thus it was that we proposed a major simplification: to separate the system into three independent servers.  We now have a teacher server and student server in the IT lab.  The teacher server has all of the legacy information with the prior version of the OS and applications for continuity.  However the student server has been upgraded with the new system and features that other schools are receiving.  The library server also is running the latest system now.  As three independent servers, these are much easier now to maintain and the campus wiring is much easier to understand and troubleshoot.  We also set up the IT lab so it can be easily configured to support all teacher users, all student users, or a mix of the two. 

It was a long week for both of us and our computer technicians Lloyd and Ervin to make this happen.  I must admit to a little sadness to see the original system laid to rest.  It was elegant, creative, and the product of incalculable hours of work by Neal.  However we are hopeful that this new setup will better meet the needs of the school while giving them the latest capabilities – and be much easier to maintain.

This coming week, we’ll be back to visiting schools with existing Reneal systems.  These will (hopefully) be easier, with the main focus being on client computer repairs.  Neal is also working on some additional capabilities to add to the system at CTU Carmen.  We are down to only two weeks, so the pace is intensifying!

 [Photo: Compostela National High School Department Heads, new Compostela teacher/student switches]