Data Migration Project

The IT Division Data Migration Project celebrates an important milestone phase led by Collaboration Services. The Collaboration group is responsible for the administration and support of productivity applications and tools that help staff connect with colleagues and Berkeley Lab services, including Google Workspace. David Huynh, Computer Systems Engineer, Derrick Johnson, Computer Systems Engineer, and Luis Corrales, IT Collaboration Services manager, form the Data Migration team effort focused on providing alternative options to file storage on network drives.

Since 2019, IT has completed migration of more than 20 TB of data from legacy network drives to unlimited storage on Google Drive, leveraging the Lab’s license with Google to reduce operations costs across the organization while supporting real-time collaboration well before the pandemic. Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Cloud Computing for Science at LBL

(Cloudy with a Chance of Science)

In some respects, cloud computing has been around for so long that it seems old hat these days. Now it seems that everything has moved to the cloud. Or has it? For scientific computing, the move to cloud has been happening at a much slower pace; however, there are many signs that change is finally underway in scientific computing. 

In this article, the Science IT group, including Jeff D’Ambrogia, Fengchen Liu, Tin Ho, Shawfeng Dong, and Gary Jung, will provide information about cloud computing at Berkeley Lab and talk about some of the services that IT provides to help scientists utilize the cloud for science. Estimated reading time: 10 minutes

New and Notable

• New technologies to support Hybrid meetings continue to flourish, with Zoom announcing Smart Gallery which creates multiple individual video feeds from a single conference room camera. IT has been deploying Neat devices in upgraded conference rooms which fully support this new Smart Gallery view.

• Originally released last year, Google Docs Approvals are a great tool for getting formal sign offs when working remotely.

• IT has several tools to support Research Data Management, including UC’s DMP tool for developing Data Management Plans, and Dryad for small to mid scale data publication and archiving. 

• Your LBNL Identity is now fully integrated with UCB’s new Library Search Use UC Library Search to explore the UC Berkeley/LBNL Library collections, the collections of all 10 UC libraries across the state and electronic resources across the world. You can request materials from all the UC libraries and use Interlibrary Loan (ILL)  to obtain materials you can’t get from UC.

• The Microsoft Online environment is connected with the Lab’s Single Sign-On service (SSO) as of Monday, October 18, 2021. When signing into your Microsoft account, either via portal.office.com or when activating Office 365 on a new computer, enter your usual lbl.gov email address. You will be directed to Berkeley Lab's standard login page that you already use to sign in to Google and other Lab services to complete the login process. 

IT Staff Spotlight: Jenny Brown

Jenny Brown joined Berkeley Lab about 11 years ago as a Student Assistant and worked her way towards a Help Desk term and then career Employee. Jenny is currently the Help Desk Work Lead in the IT Support Services Group, providing user and technical support to the Lab community, along with leading many outreach activities across the Lab. This IT Staff Spotlight focuses on her role guiding Veterans Interns as a Non-Paid Work Experience (NPWE) Program Coordinator for IT Support Services. 

Recently, Jenny completed the NPWE Program Manual to provide guidance for other Lab groups who are interested in hiring Veteran Interns and was recognized with a Spot award for stellar efforts! Estimated reading time: 5 minutes

Questions or Comments? Contact IT Communications at itcomms@lbl.gov for questions or feedback related to this newsletter, including corrections or topic suggestions.