Project Implimentation

Week Four: Project Implementation

The ENPS newsroom system is designed to be implemented in a quick and efficient manner. The ENPS design is based on achieving maximum productivity in the least amount of time utilizing the least amount of resources. Being an off-the-shelf product with limited customization capability or necessity, ENPS is essentially a turn-key solution for a news organizations basic functionality. Implementing the ENPS news system provided an operational system in a very short time period with very few technical problems.

Being an off-the-shelf solution, ENPS was delivered to WXTY as a boxed program packaged with technical documentation and installation CDs. The program was delivered complete and ready to run at version 6.2.14 indicating there have been many version releases prior to delivery. Having been a loyal Associated Press (AP) Newscenter customer and involved in its beta testing, I had the utmost confidence in the stability of the delivered product and its ability to provide the service that was requested and required. After reviewing the provided documentation and assuring the news department that all necessary steps had been provided for, the testing procedure began.

With such a major system upgrade creating a secure testing environment was necessary. The installation and upgrade would involve the complete removal and re-installation of the physical network in the newsroom. Having already upgraded the entire server operating system for WXTY in the previous months, the initial pre-requisite of Windows Server 2003 had already been achieved and tested to acceptable levels of reliability. Building upon the established network, a test environment was developed in the newsroom consisting of the ENPS main and secondary servers, both Dell 2950 Dual Xeon 3.2 GHz (Dell, 2006) machines that exceed the ENPS requirements of a single 500 MHz processor. The test network was developed using a Netgear GS724T switch (Netgear, 2006) that would remain in the working network upon successful completion of the testing phase. Two Dell Optiplex 620 workstations would complete the testing environment by providing working desktop computers that where in general use. The Optiplex computers where intentionally not formatted and retained the existing installation of their operating system. This would provide a more accurate test of the durability and reliability of the ENPS client system in a working environment.

While the new ENPS installation also provide for integrated teleprompting and media ingest and play-out functionality it was decided to delay testing of these features until after the initial roll-out of the productions system. The additional features where not included in the existing system and there was already in-place system to accommodate the functionality. Failure at the initial roll-out of the teleprompt and video ingest and play-out systems would not present any immediate problems.

The initial installation of the ENPS system in the test environment went flawlessly and without incident. The provided documentation provided accurate step-by step instructions at each level of the installation procedure. Having the Dell Poweredge servers pre-installed with Windows Server 2003 provided great time savings. Powering them up and adding them to the existing Active Directory network as ENPS1 and ENPS2 was the limit of difficulty for their installation. Providing them with static IP reservations within the DHCP server would help prevent DNS issues in the future, a choice that was given in the documentation that was decided as acceptable and favorable.

The installation of the ENPS software on the servers was also uneventful and quick. Inserting the installation CD presented on-screen a graphical installer that had two simple options: Install and Exit. Clicking the install option began a series of options on install locations and components to install. Conveniently the documentation advised to take all defaults unless doing a repair installation. After approximately 10 minutes of file replications and folder creations, the installation completed with a dramatic splash screen indication that ENPS was successfully installed. Clicking finish re-booted the machine.

Upon re-boot, another splash screen informed me that the ENPS installation was successful and began a long series of configuration dialogs asking for information such as which serial port the AP wire receiver was attached to (com 2) and the locations of the existing AP Newscenter database. Copying the database from the existing Newscenter database server to the new default database location on the test platform provided immediate indication that indexing had began. Upon indexing completion a new dialog box indicated that users could be imported from Newscenter. I chose import and a list appeared with all existing user names and indications that all users had their original permissions.

A final dialog opened and indicated that the secondary server should be installed at this time. Inserting the same installation CD in the second machine displayed the familiar graphical interface. Clicking install this time resulted in a different result. Obviously code in the installation option searched for and found the existing ENPS server. A single click indicating that this was the secondary server installation resulted in the server installing automatically and self configuring.

From one of the desktop computers I entered the DNS name of the primary ENPS server. A short script ran indicating the installation of an ActiveX control and the ENPS user interface appeared. The systems basic functionality was successful. Communication established. Clicking on the "Wires" button provided indication that the server was collecting data