Resources
Video Script
Hello, and welcome to the week three announcements video for CIS 527 in summer 2021. So we’re on week three, which means that lab do… is lab two is due tonight at 7pm. So make sure you get that submitted, as we’ll talk about in a brief moment, the only things you have to submit on lab two are your two puppet manifest files. That’s all I need. Make sure on your manifest files if you installed any libraries that I need to install to test it, you put a little comment at the top of the file that’s also listed in in the assignment instructions. But a lot of students forget that step. Lab two is due tonight at 7pm. This Wednesday, we have the questions for week three. That should be the week three questions I forgot to change the slide. They’re due at midnight on Wednesday night. And then Thursday at 330. We have our guest speaker it’s Dr. Gary Pratt. I’ll talk about him in just a second. And then next week, you’ll be working on week, lab three, which will be due next Monday at 7pm.
So as I mentioned before, on lab two grading it’s Canvas only you don’t need to schedule a meeting with me. However, if you’d like to talk to me about lab two or have any questions on lab two, you’re welcome to schedule a meeting. But for those of you that have already scheduled a meeting, if you don’t need it for grading, you’re welcome to cancel that meeting or just email me and let me know that you don’t actually need to meet. All you really need to do to get lab to graded is submit your two puppet manifest files on Canvas. And then I will grade them on my VMs here.
So our speaker this week is Dr. Gary Pratt. He is the K-State Chief Information Officer and vice president for information technology. He’s been in that role since 2017. And if I’m remembering correctly, he started in that role about a month or so before the Hale library fire it was very soon after he started that we had the major Hale library fire, which may not seem like it impacts IT until you remember that the vast majority of the IT infrastructure was in the basement of Hale library. And hopefully he can share some information about what it was like dealing with that event and the recovery from that event. So he’s really interesting to talk to he oversees all of K-State IT and the IT infrastructure and organization. Gary Pratt is definitely much more on the big picture side of things doing long range planning and preparation for IT infrastructure changes. He loves to talk to students. He’s a teacher by nature. So I hope you get some really good information out of Dr. Gary Pratt, and I hope you have some really good questions to ask him.
So coming up this week, you’re going to start working on lab three, lab three is getting toward the more difficult parts of this class. It’s not the most difficult lab, but it’s toward the top of the list. In lab three, you’re going to set up and configure some core networking services. So you’ll set static IP addresses on some systems, you’re going to configure remote access using remote desktop and SSH, you’re going to install a DNS and DHCP server and get them configured. You’re also going to play a little bit around with SNMP and Wireshark, and a whole lot of really cool networking tools. This lab especially can be kind of tricky. If you’ve never done any networking before. There are a couple of documents toward the end of the modules in Canvas that are hints and diagrams and some troubleshooting information. So feel free to take a look at that that’s really useful information I’ve written up over the past couple years. And of course, the big thing is if you’re unsure, don’t be afraid to ask questions, you can email me, you can ping me on Discord, you can just ask a question of the class. You can also schedule one on one office hours with me using calendly. So make sure you keep that in mind. There’s lots of ways that you can get help on this lab. In general, I tell students, if you’re working on a problem for more than about an hour, and you haven’t made any progress, that’s a good sign that you need to take a step back and maybe ask for help instead of continuing to beat your head against that problem. So don’t be afraid to ask questions if you get stuck.
Other than that, like I always say keep in touch with me. There’s Discord. There’s zoom discussions on Thursdays after our guest speaker. We host Tea Time office hours, mostly Tuesdays at 330. During the summer, once we get past this teacher training session I’m working with and we’ll pick up again at Fridays as well. You can also schedule a one on one office hours with me I’m always available. So hopefully as you work in this lab, you’ll feel like you’re getting some networking figured out. Hopefully, I think this is a really useful lab, especially as you go into any sort of networked environment. It’s one of the more useful labs I’ve heard from students, but it can be tricky. So good luck. Let me know if you have any questions and I will see you next week.