The latest version of Matlab, R2020a, is available for departments that have licenses. The software and license codes can be obtained through a mail to postmaster for those entitled to it. The software can also be found on the install-disc. All C&CZ-managed Linux machines will soon have this version installed, an older version (/opt/matlab-R2019b/bin/matlab) is still available temporarily. The C&CZ-managed Windows machines will not receive a new version during the semester to prevent problems with version dependencies in current lectures....

A new version of Mathematica (12.1.0) has been installed on all C&CZ managed Linux systems, older versions can still be found in /vol/mathematica. The installation files for Windows and Linux can be found on the Install-disk, also for older versions of Mathematica. Departments that take part in the license can request installation and license info from C&CZ.

The latest version of Maple, Maple2020, can be found on the Install network share and has been installed on C&CZ managed Linux computers. License codes can be requested from C&CZ helpdesk or postmaster by departments that take part in the license.

Recently C&CZ presented an extra choice for data storage, next to the traditional RAID storage on individual fileservers: Ceph. The main advantages of Ceph are, that is scales almost without limits and does not have a single point of failure, but instead is “self-healing” and “self-managing”. Within Ceph storage, choices can be made, the more expensive ones have no problem when a complete datacenter goes down. The Ceph storage can also be used as S3-storage....

A critical security update for GitLab has been released and is being installed this moment. During the update, GitLab is offline.

The current license period for Mathematica will end soon, departments interested in using Mathematica in the next contract period of 3 years can contact C&CZ.

The virtual machine host ‘oscar’ stopped running at 5:30am. The listed virtual machines are not running at the moment. We are working on it. Update: Resolved. Again, a broken LVM snapshot caused the problem.

For quite some time, SURF EduVPN has been the standard VPN for central RU services. Now all VPN-protected Science services that are also accessible from the Science VPN services and/or from RU Eduroam, can be accessed from SURF RU EduVPN. This includes network drives, license servers, websites, protected labs, access to workplaces and special services such as telgids/ldap/kerberos.

Starting Adobe Creative Cloud software (Acrobat, Illustrator, Photoshop etc.) gives the error message that the license will expire November 29, 2019. For the C&CZ managed pc’s this will be solved before that time. If you manage a Windows pc or Mac, that is owned by FNWI and has Adobe Creative Cloud software installed, please contact the C&CZ helpdesk to have the license prolonged. Checking the expiry date can be done with AdobeExpiryCheck from the Install share....

The brand new macOS Catalina is now available. It is **not** a good idea to upgrade with the first group of users, this will give problems. Up till now, we received reports about Adobe software not working, F-Secure Client Security not working, MestreNova not working, EndNote needing an upgrade to 9.3.1 or higher, Science VPNsec only working after reinstalling VPN. For more information what could go wrong, see Hold Off Catalina and Wait on Catalina....