Technical Environment
Our end-user PC hardware platforms are Lenovo desktop PC and laptop workstations using Windows Vista. We are currently implementing a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure environment utilizing VMWare’s View platform to replace all of the physical PCs. These virtual machines are all running Windows 7. All 900 of our workstations/VMs are interconnected by an Ethernet LAN which provides access to the Internet, LAN-based E-mail, LAN-based applications, and provides for workgroup collaboration and the sharing of resources such as file severs and printers. Our network environment is an Ethernet LAN running Windows 2003/2008 Server. We have implemented a virtual server environment of 150 Windows servers on 18 physical hosts using VMware ESX 3.5.
Our end-user software environment is currently Microsoft Windows Vista. Applications we support include Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0/9.0/10.0 as our standard web browsers and the Microsoft Office 2010 suite. We have a wide variety of other packaged software that we support including Adobe, TrendMicro, and other Microsoft products. In addition, our computer applications development department has developed many customized applications for customer use.
Our users have Windows-based access to LAN resources when they are away at nuclear power plant sites via a VPN (virtual private network). All internal users also have access to the public Internet via our high speed lines. INPO operates an internal intranet and a large external internet web site, but the external web site is only accessible to our members through our secure virtual private network. We also have added a third network to house a Learning Management System called the National Academy for Nuclear Training e-Learning (NANTeL).
The software development environment and tools include Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 and Microsoft Access 2010 for new applications and Microsoft Visual Basic 6.0 for legacy applications. We also use Microsoft ASP.NET (Active Server Pages), HTML, VB Script, and XML/XSL. We employ Team Foundation Server for source control of our software files. Our database management software is Microsoft SQL Server 2008 R2.
Managers and senior personnel are assigned iPhone devices for easy email and cell phone contact.