Instituted in 1987, the TARDIS Project is a student-operated computing facility, hosted by the Informatics Department at the University of Edinburgh. Our systems currently reside in the James Clerk Maxwell Building, which the Informatics Department intends to vacate in the near future.

The project provides free web hosting, e-mail accounts, mailing lists and other services to registered students and staff from the University. Thanks to our pool of local student system administrators, we are able to continually maintain and tailor our services to meet the ongoing requirements of our users; including services for student clubs and societies.

While we place great importance on the uninterrupted provision of service to our users, this in itself is only one goal of the project. We also aim to gather and foster a local community of practically-trained system administrators from the University of Edinburgh.

Students interested in system administration are welcomed and can join the discussion and development of the project, and those with some existing experience - though perhaps only in small-scale system administration - are able to work with a real, live computing facility with a large user base.

n

I think tardis rocks because:

• We can provide a safe (Xen) introduction to new sys admins
• We provide a realistic environment for system administration with large numbers of users and large volumes of data
• We provide a realistic environment for learning and experimenting with real-world network technologies
• Skills users and admins can gain are not generally taught in Informatics courses, since they're somewhat more practical/vocational than theoretical
• We provide useful services for students (though people might potentially think it's wrong if these are provided long-term?)
• We provide useful services for societies with sys-admin capable members
• We have hardware such as the Cisco kit, the Suns, the Intel Xeon box and the rack, which students will not have access to elsewhere.

Tardis exists to:

• Gather and promote system administration talent in Informatics
• Help the effective use and management of computer technology amongst University societies
• Provide an environment for discussion regarding sysadmin technologies (established and new)

Probably would be worth pointing out:

• That people have blagged jobs through Tardis contacts or Timelords or something.
• Timelord types make good contacts in general (or at least, Steve likes to give us hardware).
• That people feel they've learned something through Tardis, and that it makes for good CV pimping.
• That we have a quite surprising number of active users and societies using us (quite potentially 3 figures)
• People have used our services and environment to do their projects/dissertations. (We got another query about this kinda thing last week)

What would help us:

• A small amount of space (one rack) in an inf-student-accessible location

What we require, worst-case:

• A machine with network access :(

What we need to do:

• Get more people interested
• Reduce our heat output and footprint