Information Technology (IT)

The IT group at the MLZ takes care of the conceptual design, installation and maintenance of the entire network service. It comprises the equipment in the offices, computers at the instruments and all other devices like printers and copying machines. They provide a centralised data storage including backup and archiving, access to the Internet and all other servers like webserver, mail or external data exchange via FTP. All this equipment is connected by a high speed network providing a high availability through redundant switching and routing.

The network of the MLZ connects in the order of 500 computers to centralised services and the outer world via an uplink to the German research network (DFN) provided by the Leibnitz Rechenzentrum (LRZ) at the campus in Garching. The devices are distributed over 16 buildings and are organised logically by working groups. For example each neutron instrument is organised in a separate network segment. To connect all the different devices high speed routers organise the traffic in a complex way in order to avoid single point of failures in the distributed network. All important gateways are build up with redundancy in order to provide high availability in the order of 99.9% of the time.

Nearly all data packages transmitted by the numerous computers on side end up at servers operated by the IT group. They comprise general services like file storage with large capacity and redundant disks, communication server like webserver, FTP data exchange, groupware service or the network of different printers accessible from anywhere on site. A single login for most of the systems is provided via LDAP.

To solve urgent problems the group operates a centralised trouble e-mail and they are easily reachable by phone. Comprehensive explanations to every day problems (FAQ) are provided by the internal wiki system.