Return to Main Menu

LYNX workstation offers reliability, security by George Spain OCIO Technical Publisher The popular LYNX workstation project is expanding beyond the clinical environment and now offers non-clinical departments and service areas a “dependable, stable, reliable and secure” computing resource, the Office of the CIO (OCIO) announced recently. LYNX was originally chosen to replace ClinLAN. MUHA purchased 3,500 licenses for its clinical service areas; however, the managed workstation concept proved very popular with non-clinical departments as well. As a result, MUSC purchased an additional 400 licenses and is offering them on a cost-recovery basis to all departments in the MUSC enterprise.  “We will continue to purchase more as the demand increases. We’d like to see every workstation at MUSC, more than 8,000 of them, with some kind of management system installed to ease maintenance, enhance security and simplify upgrades,” noted Kurt Nendorf, OCIO’s director of infrastructure systems. “LYNX insures a stable, reliable, secure and centrally manageable workstation that improves efficiency and contains costs associated with installation and maintenance of operating systems and applications. “The idea is that for a one-time fee, a department can be assured of a reduced-maintenance workstation. As it stands now, there’s a $75-per-hour charge to university departments for troubleshooting broken hardware and software components. We expect that by adopting LYNX, departments could save a considerable amount of money.”  Once activated, LYNX automates installation of core applications, updates, patches, etc. Radia, the software heart of LYNX, allows workstations to be imaged, which allows full restoration of all workstation applications and resources in the event of a hardware or software failure that incapacitates the computer.  The one-time charge to departments for licensing and installation of the Radia software is $150 per computer. “We want people to know that this is strictly a cost-recovery process,” said Melissa Forinash, controller for OCIO.  “The money helps to offset the cost of the additional licenses. The Radia software component carries a $29 yearly maintenance fee per license, but those fees will be paid centrally through the OCIO.”  Department managers can submit an IIT form to Rob Williams, business support manager for the Department of Information Services (e-mail willrobj@musc.edu). Williams will notify Ken Bowman’s field engineer leaders, Jeff Uyak or Greg Murphy, who will  install the software and license on the workstation.   Friday, Oct. 22, 2004 Catalyst Online is published weekly, updated as needed and improved from time to time by the MUSC Office of Public Relations for the faculty, employees and students of the Medical University of South Carolina. Catalyst Online editor, Kim Draughn, can be reached at 792-4107 or by email, catalyst@musc.edu. Editorial copy can be submitted to Catalyst Online and to The Catalyst in print by fax, 792-6723, or by email to petersnd@musc.edu or catalyst@musc.edu. To place an ad in The Catalyst hardcopy, call Community Press at 849-1778.