Hardware Specifications

• 12 Dell Precision T1650 Workstations
  • Operating System: Windows 7 64-bit
  • Processor: Intel Xeon 3.5 GHz, 4 core (launched Q2, 2012)
  • Monitors: Two 24" monitors, 16:10 aspect ratio
  • Memory: 16GB RAM
  • Drive Capacity: 1TB open storage on D: drive
• 3 Bloomberg Financial Workstations
• 1 Fujitsu FI-6230Z Scanner with flatbed and automatic document feeder (up to A4-sized paper)

Software List

Statistics and Data Analysis

• Matlab R2012a
• R, RStudio
• Stata 12
• SAS 9.3, JMP
• SPSS 19 (2 machines closest to the Bloomberg Terminals - monitors are labelled "SPSS")
• QSR Nvivo

Mapping

• ArcGIS 10.1
• Google Earth Pro

Visualization

• Tableau Public 7
• Adobe Design Standard CS6 (Photoshop, Illustrator, In-Design, Acrobat Pro)
• Inkscape SVG editor

Other

• Microsoft Office 2010
• EndNote
• FileZilla FTP client
• PuTTY
• StatTransfer conversion tool

Also note: The Duke OIT site license page includes information about obtaining software packages for which the university has a site license, allowing members of the university community to download and install the software to personal machines.  Many of the above packages are available to be installed on personal machines in this manner.

Policies and Operating Procedures

In general, priority for use of the Data & GIS lab machines is given to users with projects that require the specific software or hardware offered in the lab.  During busy periods and when others are waiting, individuals without such needs may be asked to relocate to a less specialized lab space.

Computer maintenance cycle

The computers in the lab are periodically unavailable in order to undergo maintenance. The maintenance schedule is designed to avoid the busiest times in the lab, but on evenings in the weekends there may be many hours when the computers are unavailable.

File storage

As is the case in many lab environments, the computers in the Data & GIS cluster are set to clear files saved on the C: drive (including the "Desktop" and "My Documents" folders) automatically. There are, however, several alternative file storage options.

• The D: drive of each computer offers 1TB of open data storage. Be aware, however, that these are public drives. Each user of the computer can see any files saved by anyone on this drive. Also, the D: drives are not networked, so files are only saved to that particular machine.
• USB flash drives and external hard drives can be attached to the machines for secure data storage.
• Files can be saved to AFS/Webfiles (which can be mapped to a network drive via WebDAV) or uploaded to other cloud storage services or campus servers.  Network drives will disconnect when you log out of the machine.

Long-running jobs

It is expected that, from time to time, lab users will have long-running processes that will need to be accommodated. We ask that you try to take advantage of times when the lab is not busy and others are not waiting to use the computers. Please also be aware that the computers will be unavailable during some late evening hours on the weekends for scheduled maintenance. You may wish to split files when possible to reduce the time between saving points and minimize the likelihood of losing work.

Scanning

Lab users with a scanning project (especially one that is related to data analysis or visualization) have priority on the scanning workstation.