Stephen Landry, CIO

For the past six years faculty and students in business, science and honors programs have been using a pen-enabled tablet in their classes.  Through 2011 this was a convertible laptop / tablet hybrid (specific models used included the Lenovo ThinkPad X200t, X210t, X220t, etc.).  In 2012 Seton Hall University joined Microsoft’s Windows 8 First Wave Program.  Seton Hall became the first higher education institution to deploy Windows 8 and faculty and students in business, science and honors programs were provided a Samsung Series 7 Slate PC running Windows 8.

This year the Mobile Computing Committee of the Teaching, Learning and Technology Roundtable reviewed many options for Mobile Computing 2013 and recommended that the program provide a single hybrid laptop / tablet model for all students (except faculty and students in art, music and film who receive a Mac). The University’s selection of the Lenoxo ThinkPad Helix (announced in the IT News and Annoucments blog here and in the Setonian here) has garnered some attention in the technology press.

A news story on the Seton Hall University Web site can be found here:
http://www7.shu.edu/technology/mobile-computing-2013.cfm

Some examples from the tech press include:

Engadget: http://www.engadget.com/2013/04/23/lenovo-thinkpad-helix-heads-to-school-with-seton-hall/

Ultrabook News: http://ultrabooknews.com/2013/04/23/lenovo-helix-shipping-seton-hall-university-plans-to-deploy-2000-first-video-review-available/

Stephen Landry, CIO

The University has set each Sunday morning from 12 Midnight ET to 7 AM ET for routine maintenance of IT systems.  While most systems are available during most maintenance periods, University IT Services is working on systems during this time and systems may be unavailable during this maintenance period.  University IT Services will attempt to alert the University when major systems will be affected by systems maintenance.

To this end, please be advised that University IT Services will be performing necessary maintenance in the University’s data center during this weekend’s maintenance period.  Most systems will be unavailable this Sunday, April 21, from 12 Midnight to 7 AM.  The campus network, the SHU Web site, Blackboard and student email will remain available during this maintenance. All other systems, including PirateNet, Microsoft Exchange email, and Banner, will be offline Sunday, April 21, from 12 Midnight until 7 AM while this maintenance is being performed.  Please plan your work accordingly.

Frank Sweigart, Director of Systems Support, University IT Services

Update 4/22/2013:  Repairs to the SAN in the Corrigan Hall data center were successful and the hardware problem that caused last weekend’s outages has been fixed.  All systems were back online Sunday morning at 7 AM ET and all production systems were verified by the appropriate systems administrators, except Cognos.  Cognos was offline Sunday morning for a scheduled upgrade to Cognos 10.2.  The Cognos upgrade was completed around 10 AM ET.  SGL

Users are reminded to report any production systems problems as soon as they are observed.  University IT Services has technicians standing by 24x7x365 to resolve any production system problems.

Steve Landry, CIO

The outages were traced to failed hardware in the network switch connecting the date center servers to the storage.  Working with our SAN vendor, a temporary fix has been put in place which should prevent further outages.

Steve Landry, CIO

The Lenovo ThinkPad Helix has the following specification:  Intel 3rd generation Dual Core i5-3317U, 1.7GHz processor; 4GB DDR3L 1333MHz RAM; 256 GB Solid State Drive (SSD); 11.6″ 1080p Multi Touch Display with Gorilla glass; Intel HD Graphics 4000 Graphics card; 720p HD Webcam; Integrated Intel Centrino Advanced N 62055 2×2 a/g/n  Wireless card; Dolby Home Theater v4 Stereo speakers; 1 USB 2.0, 1 SIM card and 1 Minidisplay port (Tablet); 1 USB 3.0, 1 Minidisplay port (base); Digitizer  Tablet Pen.

A full specification sheet along with pictures of the Lenovo ThinkPad Helix can be found here: Fall 2013 Mobile Computing Slate Specifications with Picture 02282013

Information about Seton Hall University’s Mobile Computing Program, which provides a standard laptop to all faculty and undergraduate students, can be found at: http://www.shu.edu/offices/technology/about-mobile-computing.cfm

This year’s selection process was guided by the Mobile Computing Committee of the Teaching, Learning and Technology (TLT) Roundtable that included faculty and students.  I want to thank the members of the committee for this help in this year’s selection process.

Stephen Landry, CIO

The SAN uses thousands of individual disk drives.  To ensure that the data is always available, the data is stored in multiple locations across the SAN using a technology called RAID (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAID).  The SAN constantly checks the individual disk drives and takes a drive out of service when it may be failing.  When a disk fails, the system restores the data automatically using spare drives built in to the system.

The new NetApp operating system installed Sunday morning has more extensive checks of the individual disks in the SAN.  As a result, it marked dozens of drives as needing replacement and took them out of circulation.  This caused a degradation of SAN performance while the SAN restored the affected file systems.  Some systems lost their connection to the SAN while this occurred, causing short, intermittent outages on several systems yesterday and earlier today.  All systems are now functioning normally.

This morning during the normal weekly maintenance period beginning at midnight University IT Services upgraded the NetApp Storage Area Network in the University’s data center.  This will add speed and reliability to the University’s data storage systems.  Most systems were available during this upgrade, but there were some intermittent system outages during the upgrade.  The upgrade was scheduled to complete at 7:00 AM this morning, however, some upgrade tasks continued in to this  morning.  Users may experience a few intermittent systems outages this morning until all upgrade tasks are completed.  It is expected all system will functioning normally by around 12:00 Noon today.

Stephen Landry, CIO

Update 3/13/2013, 9:00 PM: Cisco has determined the problem was a failed wireless controller. A replacement is being scheduled for installation.  The campus wireless load had been re-distributed among the remaining controllers and all services are running normally. – - SGL