Support for desktop and laptop systems that are being used for department related work and research is available during standard working hours. Support is available for the following items:

Most major software productivity applications can be purchased at a discount using the volume licensing and site licensing programs the university has negotiated. This includes, but is not limited to:

• Adobe products (e.g. Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator)
• Microsoft products (e.g. Office)
• Endnote
• Maple, Mathematica, Matlab
• Antivirus (e.g. McAfee, Norton)

The RCG can obtain licenses and install the software on your systems. When a commercial software related request is placed, the RCG will fill out the appropriate paperwork (including which fund to charge) and process the request.

Please note that due to restrictions imposed by the university, we cannot provide media or serial numbers to end users.

The RCG currently backs up computers using Restrospect (desktops) and BRU (workstations and servers). We are planning to migrate away from individual client backups (Retorspect) as we implement centralized file services. In the short term, Retrospect backups will continue.

Once centralized file services are available, we will begin migrating backup services to the central file stores. If your system is currently backed up via Retrospect, please help us by ensuring the following:

• Your system remains powered on at night and over the weekends
• If a backup is in progress, please do not interrupt it (you may continue using the computer, but please do not cancel the backup process)
• Please do not make redundant copies of the same data on multiple systems. This increases the time it takes to perform backups and needlessly overloads the tapes that data are backed up to

BRU is currently implemented on the backend of the RCG/Biochem servers and a few individual workstations throughout the department. As we move over from Retrospect to BRU, additional desktop and workstation computers will be moved over to the new software and tape library systems.

If you have systems in your lab that are critical to the operation of your research and are not certain about their backup status, please send in a support request.