[Update 9/08/2012, 8:00 PM: University IT Services has restored all users MS Exchange email boxes. Those users who were restored today - mostly South Orange campus administrators - will have all their email except for that delivered on Wed., 9/05. That email will be recovered from another source next week and merged in to your In Box, so that no email will be lost. See below for more details. ]
Friday, September 7, 2012, 5:00 PM
As previously reported, the Microsoft Exchange Email system experienced a failure early in the morning of Thursday, September 6. This system provides email services for all faculty, staff and administrators on the South Orange and Law School campuses. Yesterday about a third of the MS Exchange email users were not able to access their email at all, and everyone else on that system experienced intermittent outages. Last night and early this morning the IT Services team, working with Microsoft, rebuilt the server completely and ran recovery utilities to restore corrupted data on the file system. As of 5:00 PM this afternoon (Fri., Sept. 7) those mailboxes that were not corrupted in Thursday’s incident were restored and those users will see their pending email delivered over the next few hours.
For those users who do not currently have their email boxes restored, the process will take longer and involve merging data from multiple sources to completely restore all your email. Over this weekend IT Services will restore your email box from a backup from early Wednesday morning. Your pending email from early Thursday morning on will then be delivered automatically to your In Box. Wednesday’s email will then be restored from the system journal over the course of next week. Since restoring from the journal is a long and labor intensive process, completing the restoration will likely take the better part of next week. By merging the three data sources, IT Services expects that no email will be lost.
Please keep in mind that the MS Exchange server currently in place is a temporary fix. Additional work will take place over the coming week to effect permanent repairs. In the meantime, the system may need to be brought down with little notice to perform additional work.
You can see the previous updates on this issue at:
http://blogs.shu.edu/doit/2012/09/campus-ms-exchange-email-down-for-some-users-intermittant-outages-ongoing/
Thank you for your continued patience as we work to fix this important service to the community.
Steve Landry, CIO
Hi Steve, we know your team is working hard to get our email back. Please let your staff know that I appreciate their efforts.
Matt
Thanks, Matt. SGL
I appear to not be among the “most users” whose email service has been restored. I have several fairly urgent tasks for which I need email access. Can you provide me with a realistic estimate of when all users will have service?
I recognize that you have faced an extremely difficult situation and appreciate all that you and your staff have done, so far. However, it would be helpful to know when I will again be able to access my email.