Education and Student Services

Computing Resources

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Computing Resources

The School of Public Health offers various IT and software services to its students.

Student IT and Printing Resources

Students should reference the Student IT and Printing Resources page for computing and printing information.

For support, please email sph-itsc@brown.edu.

File Storage

This is a shared file server that can be accessed from a local machine as well as through the web. It operates like your own personalized, Brown-hosted "cloud" - so to speak. Students have found this helpful for storing files, having a consistent mapped location to run their code from, ensuring their files are backed up regularly, accessing their files from anywhere, and not having to store anything of importance locally. You all have storage located at \\files.brown.edu\home\USERNAME. To access this, follow these steps:

From a Windows Machine:

  1. Open File Explorer
  2. Click on "This PC"
  3. Click on "Computer" and "Map Network Drive"
  4. Select the desired letter for the drive.
  5. Copy and paste the following path in the Folder line:
  6. Select "Connect As A Different User" and hit Enter
  7. Enter your credentials with "ad\" preceding your user name - ex. ad\jsmith
  8. Click Finish.

From a MAC:

  1. Click anywhere on the desktop background
  2. Select from the menu -> "Go" and then "Connect to a Server"
  3. In the path, enter:
  4. Enter your credentials with "ad\" preceding your user name - ex. ad\jsmith
  5. Click Finish.

These same files can be accessed via the web at - https://webfiles.brown.edu/. Once you log in with your Brown credentials, click on the dropdown box and select Isilon Home to see your folder.

Folder Redirecting

To help ensure that your desktop, downloads, documents, pictures, etc. are available to you wherever you are, these folders get copied to the above location. Please check that your folders on your laptops are also in the above "cloud" location. Again, this location gets backed up to ensure if something were to happen to your laptops, your files would not be at risk.

Printers

There are printers in room 251 on the second floor.

Software

Many of Brown's software is available to students (though not all software) for download at http://software.brown.edu/. You will find the last column shows which software is available for students. Please be sure to visit.

Remote Applications Server (MyApps)

MyApps provides a full desktop experience, running in our Azure cloud, and gives "core" and "computational" apps in a way that is very close to a "virtual computing lab" or "virtual desktop".

https://brown.edu/go/myappshelp and/or https://myapps.brown.edu will get you on your way.

  • Please set up the "Microsoft Remote" client if you're going to be a regular user - it gives a better full-screen experience. But, the service is available via an HTTPS connection from anywhere - no VPN required. Some points to highlight are:
  • MyApps is running in Microsoft's Azure service.
  • We currently have capacity for 160 concurrent users (8 users each on 20 servers), and can increase that on short notice.
  • The Desktop, Documents, and Photos folders are using the new Known Folder Move to OneDrive that we're also utilizing on Gen3 Windows machines, so these will feel seamless with new systems as we migrate to Gen3.
  • We've mounted the legacy home folder (\\files.brown.edu\home\username) as H: