National-Louis InfoBits Spring 2004 Fall 2003 Summer 2003: SPECIAL EDITION Spring 2003 Winter 2003 Fall 2002 Summer 2002 Technology Operations At National-Louis Expanded Helpdesk Coverage Protecting Yourself From VIRUS Attacks Are You Using Banner Faculty Web? How We Manage Software In NLU’s Computer Labs Lab Software Imaging Schedule Computer Labs - Where are they? What equipment do they have? When are they open? Computer Lab Standard Software List Technology Resource Center OIT Staff Profile Technology News and Views OIT Home OIT Announcements OIT Newsletter NLU Home Print This Page   How We Manage Software in NLU's Computer Labs National-Louis University has computer labs available to faculty for teaching classes, staff and faculty for holding meetings, and to our students for completing homework and other assignments [you may schedule these labs through Campus Administration]. As you can imagine, this equals a large number of machines, both Macintosh and PC that must be maintained. Rather than attempt to do this maintenance on a machine-by-machine basis, which would be logistically impossible due to time and staff constraints, we use a process called imaging to set up computers in mass, generally 20 machines at a time. This allows us to "build" (configure) a single machine, load it with the complete set of software (dozens of programs), and then clone that machine to multiple others. We then make some adjustments on a machine-by-machine basis in order to make the computers ready for a production environment. Managing our lab machines in this manner allows us to ensure a stable environment.