LPPFusion’s IT team, CIO Ivy Karamitsos and Systems Administrator Jose Varela, have completed a major upgrade of the IT network and hardware. The upgrade replaced equipment dating back to 2013-2014. By the beginning of this year, network speeds and data access had become a problem. So, the IT team carried out major upgrades over the last six months. Planning had been underway since last year, but like many others, we faced delays due to pandemic-related supply-chain constraints. Our new network equipment was finally deployed in May. With our updated equipment at both the lab and the home office we are now able to:
- Create backups by making full system images incrementally. This avoids having to re-install programs in the event of drive crashes. Deduplication is automatically performed before the images are encrypted and securely copied to a remote location, reducing storage cost.
- Swiftly synchronize data as it becomes available between lab server and home office server. This vastly improves availability of data and internal data sharing.
- Synchronize data from client to server
These steps have vastly improved our ability to quickly and effectively work together regardless of location. We are continuing to synchronize needed data to each client, as well as to implement the latest security standards.
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Fig. 3 Behind the scenes at LPPFusion Studios. Our LPPFusion home office’s main room (top) serves as a work area for Chief Scientist Eric Lerner (responsible for messy papers); as a daytime video set (bottom left, with server station at far left) and as a nighttime video set (bottom right—excluding messy papers.)
While this hardware upgrade was going on, the IT team also updated the website with a new theme, new plugins and a new server operating system. This resulted in minor changes to appearances, but big changes in functionality including easier maintenance and improved social media sharing. Finally, the team redesigned and rewired our combined home office and video recording studio. This involved solving some tough lighting and audio quality problems, but it has given us two different sets in the same room, allowing us to record both day and night. If you watched our two new 2021 videos, we think you’ll notice their improved quality.
This piece is part of the July 1, 2021 report. To download the report click here.
