Barr Takes Off with Boeing Reusable Space Systems
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Four and a half million pounds of metal, fuel, payload and other materials takes to the air - straight up, carrying seven intrepid astronauts. It's the Space Shuttle Discovery and its crew, launching from Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. As Discovery begins its sweep up the Eastern U.S. coastline, it is easy for service providers like the folks at Barr Systems to feel they've played their part in making it all happen.
The Space Shuttle has been flying for eighteen years. For more than half that period of time, Barr products have provided print management and host connectivity solutions for Boeing Reusable Space Systems, the part of Boeing Space Systems that is responsible for essential areas of Shuttle operations and development. Like thousands of companies all over the world, Boeing relies on Barr solutions to work in the background, providing scientists, engineers, administrators and many other personnel with the print services they need.
At the Boeing complex in Huntington Beach, California, responsibility for keeping systems operations running smoothly falls to Louis Sandoval, Systems Administrator in Information Management. Sandoval recently faced a challenge familiar to all systems administrators: how to support a growing network of users in their print management services - without breaking the department's budget.
Fortunately for Sandoval, the solution he needed was close at hand. The Reusable Space Systems group - until recently, stationed in Downey, California - used the Barr Systems DOS-based print management solution for nearly 10 years. With this legendary product in place, users relied on Remote Job Entry (RJE) to furnish lean, efficient print management services. As Boeing Reusable Space Systems grew, however, and host connectivity and printing requirements became more complex, Sandoval realized he needed a more scalable, comprehensive solution.
Sandoval found that solution in the Barr Enterprise Print Server, a Microsoft Windows NT-based print management and host connectivity solution for the contemporary enterprise. The Barr Server can be configured to meet the needs of any enterprise. To accept mainframe jobs from an IBM S/390 MVS host located in Brea, California, Sandoval chose BARR/NJE, a powerful Network Job Entry (NJE) solution that connects the Barr Server to the mainframe in a peer-to-peer relationship. NJE provides full support for job headers and many other important features.
To connect the BARR/NJE Server to the mainframe, Sandoval chose Microsoft SNA Server, an SNA gateway. He also selected BARR/PRINT TCP/IP, a software module of the Barr Server that accepts jobs from TCP/IP hosts via Line Printer Daemon (LPD). This product allows Boeing Reusable Space Systems to handle print requests originating from its extensive Wide Area Network (WAN), including sites at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
The upgrade resolved Sandoval's scalability concerns by supporting over 3,000 users and 50 network-attached printers. "Before the Barr Enterprise Print Server, we used Barr's DOS-based products. One of the main advantages of the Windows NT-based Barr Server is that there is no specific limit on the number of printers that can be attached, whereas with the DOS product there were restrictions due to the limitations of conventional memory," Sandoval said.
At its new headquarters in Huntington Beach, Reusable Space Systems joins 10,000 Boeing employees that will be integrating with the network, making the move to the Barr Server very timely.
A glance at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Web site (www.nasa.gov) suggests that these changes are accompanied by ongoing developments at the national level. NASA officials are now setting goals that will challenge the space industry in the new millennium. One of these goals is to make access to space much more economical. Currently, it costs approximately $10,000 to get one pound of payload into low-Earth orbit; NASA plans to cut that figure to $100 within 25 years. That will help to make routine commercial, scientific and recreational space flight a reality.
Barr products are part of the solution in this ambitious enterprise because they facilitate replacing expensive legacy equipment with open systems technology, which keeps Information Technology costs down. Sandoval notes that "the Barr Server, along with a third-party conversion product, is used to replace our legacy laser printers with network printers. We are saving money by eliminating SNA printers, along with their expensive maintenance contracts."
At Barr, the need to print is never under-estimated, and the power to print is not taken for granted. Improved propulsion systems, reduced thrust-to-weight ratios, and other technical advances at Boeing and elsewhere need to be developed in a corporate environment where basic services such as print management and host connectivity are not compromised. By improving efficiency and reliability, and cutting costs in host access and print management, Barr is doing its part to make access to space more affordable in the 21st Century.
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