Update: As of July 1, 2010, Ilios 1.0 is no longer available for license as we focus our efforts on a complete overhaul of the application.

Please check out the Ilios 2.0 Project website to learn more about the next version of Ilios and our plans for sharing the application with the Health Professions Education community.

The information below is being provided solely for reference purposes.

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Technical Requirements for Ilios 1.0

This information is designed to help business officers, administrators and technology managers who are responsible for the assessment, and potential licensing, functional implementation, and/or technical support of Ilios. The following points should be considered before Ilios is licensed and implemented.

• Why is this Information Important?
• Key Points to Consider Prior to Implementing Ilios
• Limitations on Support
• Required Personnel and Skills
  • SQL Server DBA
  • ASP Developer
  • System Administrator
• Ilios Technical Prerequisites
• Required Software
• Recommended Hardware

Why is this Information Important?

The UCSF Information Services Unit (ISU) would like to ensure that adopters of Ilios are completely satisfied with the technical implementation of Ilios. To this end, it is important that we establish expectations for UCSF technical support and clearly define the licensee’s requirements for on-site personnel, hardware, and software needed to adequately support Ilios. Your decision to license and implement Ilios should not only be based on its pedagogical relevance to your curriculum, but also on your ability to have the resources necessary to fully utilize and maintain the application.

Ilios was designed and created in a joint effort between UC San Francisco’s School of Medicine Office of Educational Technology (OET)and Information Services Unit (ISU). ISU is responsible for the technical aspects of Ilios. Before deciding to implement Ilios as your curriculum management tool, please consider the following two points in regards to technical requirements and support:  

• Support from UCSF’s ISU is very limited. ISU offers assistance at cost in installing and initially configuring the application, but maintenance is the responsibility of the licensee.  

• Ilios is a complex application that requires specialized skills, personnel, and application hosting environments in order to be maintained and utilized. It is not a plug-and-play application, and will not function without the proper support resources.  

The following sections describe the level of support that ISU offers, requirements for maintaining and utilizing the application, and high level requirements for installation and configuration.

The primary motivation for creating Ilios was to drive the School of Medicine’s highly collaborative curriculum. It was not originally intended for distribution.

Ilios is licensed as-is. UC Regents makes no warranty, expressed or implied, that Ilios is free of bugs or other defects. However, Ilios is a mature and stable system that has been driving a complex curriculum at UCSF for several years. ISU will strive to ensure a successful implementation and to help identify and solve issues which may arise, according to the following conditions.

• ISU will provide up to two (2) days of on-site support at cost for software implementation, but ISU cannot guarantee resource availability for subsequent technical support. It is expected that each customer will have the required software, hardware, and staff in place to support Ilios as outlined in the Required Personnel and Skills and Ilios Technical Prerequisites sections below.

• Ilios software is licensed “as is.” Therefore, ISU is not obligated nor resourced to resolve program logic, code, configuration, enhancement, database, functional, or other related questions or problems associated with the implementation or ongoing use of the software.

• ISU does offer an avenue for submitting general technical questions . All technical questions must be submitted to IliosSupport@medsch.ucsf.edu. ISU will not respond to questions submitted directly to individuals within ISU or the Office of Educational Technology. ISU will provide a response to each question within one week.

Ilios’ complexity requires several distinct skill sets to install, maintain, troubleshoot, and modify. The following are the minimum required personnel and skills:

SQL Server DBA

• Recommended three (3) years experience on SQL Server 2000
• Thorough comprehension of RDBMS and normalization theory
• Thorough comprehension of Microsoft’s T-SQL and stored procedures
• Thorough comprehension of functions, triggers, jobs, and full-text indexes

ASP Developer

• Recommended three (3) years of experience developing complex, large-scale Classic ASP applications
• Thorough comprehension of Microsoft’s T-SQL and stored procedures
• Thorough comprehension of ADO, HTML, and CSS
• Familiarity with XML and JavaScript

System Administrator

• Recommended three (3) years of experience administrating Microsoft Windows Server 2000, SQL Server 2000, and IIS 5.

Ilios Technical Prerequisites

Ilios is a complex system that requires many separate pieces to function properly. It is important to have a thorough understanding of the hardware, software, and skills required to install, maintain, and modify Ilios.

Required Software

Ilios requires the following servers and applications to function properly. All appropriate licenses should be acquired prior to installation.

• Microsoft Windows 2000 Server SP4
• Microsoft IIS 5.0
• Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• Microsoft .NET Framework v 1.0.3705
• Microsoft Visual Studio .NET Enterprise Developer
• Crystal Reports for Visual Studio.NET
• ASPUpload Active-X control from www.aspupload.com
  • SoapSDK.exe
  • SqlXML.ms

Recommended Hardware

UCSF runs Ilios on three separate servers; a Web server, database server, and file server. ISU runs Dell Optiplex servers with a base configuration of Windows 2000 SP4, 1 gigabyte of RAM, 60 gigabyte hard drives, and dual Intel Pentium-4 2.8 GHz processors. The file server has a terabyte array attached and the database server has two gigs of RAM. To optimize encryption speed on the Web server, we installed two gigabit Ethernet cards with onboard hardware encryption.

Ilios may run on a single server or servers with lower specs. However, this implementation has worked well here.