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Improvements to IT Services

13 Oct 2023

Cluster PCs are now faster and more reliable for a better teaching and learning experience

PC clusters

A welcome surprise awaits you if you log on to cluster PCs this term: significant improvements in performance, login time and support services. Great news for all teaching colleagues and students on campus!

Over the summer major work has been carried out by IT Services to upgrade hardware, refresh applications and put in place a new proactive support service. As a result, we can look forward to better PC availability and performance, reduced interruptions to colleague working practices and improved quality of student experience. 

PC upgrades

PCs that were more than three years old have been replaced, younger ones upgraded, and all now feature higher minimum specifications sufficient to run any teaching application in our current software portfolio: 

  • 32 gigabytes of RAM
  • 1 terabyte of solid-state drive (SSD) storage
  • i5 processor 

New support services

A new IT Operations Centre (ITOC) will work closely with the existing Cluster Support team to spot and resolve issues with PCs ahead of and throughout the teaching day before they affect users. This proactive service is now live on 22 clusters and will be rolled out to remaining clusters in the coming weeks. PC availability in clusters is predicted to rise from 90% to 98%, reducing lost teaching hours and improving student satisfaction. 

Throughout October and November there will be a hyper-care period to test, refine and strengthen this new service and seek feedback from faculties to make sure we are ‘Getting IT right for you’. 

This is the first new service to go live as part of the Evolve Programme and reflects a huge amount of work and collaboration across IT Services, the Strategic Change Office and Faculty teams. 

More information 

  • More information on the programme can be found on the Evolve page. 
  • If you do experience any technical issues while using a PC cluster please report them to the IT Support Centre via the IT Support Portal or call  0161 306 5544. Telephone IT support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.