The focus of this workshop is on issues peculiar to university and college computing shops. Schools vary greatly in their approach to running computing infrastructures. The differences can stem from the general culture of the school as well as upper management, or even from departmental versus institution-wide services.

Part of the goal of this workshop is to communicate what works and what does not work for your institution or your organization within the institution. Topics might include funding, student/faculty/staff needs, research, security, purchasing, staffing, training, working with students, working with research and instructional staff, and even the culture and campus integration of computing facilities and support.

To attend the workshop, please send email to lisa09ws-univissues@usenix.org with a short paragraph describing your institution, the biggest issue you face today, or something about your institution that works particularly well or that others might want to consider for their own school. You can also include topics you would like to see on the workshop agenda.

There has recently been a strong trend toward virtualization. VLANs overlay the physical network infrastructure. Physical machines host multiple virtual machines, and storage arrays provide virtual disks. Changes in the architecture no longer require physical intervention. This brings huge benefits, but it creates a new dimension to the challenge of infrastructure management. Cloud computing is an application of virtual infrastructures that allows businesses to expand their own infrastructure on demand by adding resources from external infrastructure providers. This product can give system administrators great flexibility, but only if it is managed properly.

This area is evolving extremely quickly and it is difficult to keep abreast of new developments. This workshop will provide a forum to exchange the latest ideas and experiences.

Participation is welcome from practitioners responsible for deploying virtual infrastructures and researchers interested in the underlying problems. Priority will be given to those with experience of virtual machines and the associated problems. However, some places may be available for those seeking an intensive introduction to these problems. To attend the workshop, please send email to lisa09ws-virtu@usenix.org.

This workshop will be an opportunity for system administrators responsible for government and military systems to discuss common challenges, problems, solutions, and information unique to the government sector. Participants will gain and share insight into the broad range of government system administration requirements and will benefit from making contacts in related fields. The workshop will also be an opportunity to assess interest in creating a special interest group dedicated to government-sector system administration. All discussions will be strictly unclassified.

Are you the system administrator responsible for computing systems owned by government or military agencies? The sysadmin who works in secure environments, deals with classified data, provides GOTS support, and deploys to the latest military hotspots? If so, then this workshop is for you. Discussion topics will include common technical problems and solutions unique to government computing, effectiveness of contract, civil service, and uniformed sysadmins, general employment issues, DoD regulation 8570.01-M, challenges of working across multiple security domains, deployed sysadmin, and more.

To register for the workshop please send email to lisa09ws-gov@usenix.org with a brief description of your professional background and at least one gov/mil topic you would like the workshop to address.

Workshop 7: PUPPET (Half Day A.M.)
Luke Kanies and Teyo Tyree, Reductive Labs
9:00 a.m.–12:30 p.m., Kent A

This workshop, intended for very senior administrators, provides an informal roundtable discussion of the problems facing system administrators today. Attendance is limited and based on acceptance of a position paper (plain ASCII, three paragraphs maximum); a typical paper covers what the author thinks is the most difficult or important issue facing system administrators today, why this is a problem, and why this problem is important. A more complete description of the workshop and information about position papers is available at https://atw.menlo.com/. Position papers should be sent to lisa09ws-atw@usenix.org. Attendees are required to bring a laptop computer.

Workshop 10: SECURITY TODAY (Full Day)
Matt Disney, Oak Ridge National Laboratory
9:00 a.m.–5:00 p.m., Kent B

Information security is a topic important to many system administrators, yet it is challenging to make security a high priority or to stay updated on this very wide and fluid topic. A LISA workshop is a good venue and format to bring together interested admins and experts for discussions on the state of practical security today, best practices, and roundtable explorations of security-related challenges in the daily lives of system administrators. Discussion topics will depend on the interests of the attendees. The set of potential topics is broad and includes technical, productivity, soft-skills, and sector-specific security issues.

Practitioners and subject-matter experts of systems, security, and/or network administration and analysis from all sectors are invited to attend. Security R&D will not be the focus of this workshop.

Send email to lisa09ws-sec@usenix.org to participate.