INFN (Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare) is a public-law body founded in 1951 responsible for coordinating and financing subnuclear and nuclear research in Italy. INFN carries out its activity through 19 units located in the italian universities, 4 laboratories, the national networking Center (CNAF) and six associated sites.
Currently in various units there is a generic support for Windows/NT without an overall
coordination; the level of support spans a broad spectrum, in most of the sites it is left
to the end user. The total number of installed machines of different platforms is about
500. Some management tools have been tested and used in the some units; "Systems
management Server" (SMS) and "Zero Administration Kit" (ZAK) are being used
by a very small number of sites. At this moment a nation-wide NT Domain over WAN is set up
in 6 different sites to manage the Windows/NT infrastructure through the porting and the extension of the
CERN-NICE environment, activity started in the summer of 1997 at the University of Bologna and INFN
local unit. This pilot project should verify the feasibility of an overall
coordination and management of the INFN Windows/NT infrastrucure (some documentation, almost
exclusively in italian, is available).
Gian Piero Siroli - May 12, 1999