Tomorrow morning, Friday, September 21, from 12:00 Midnight through 2:00 AM the Microsoft Exchange Email servers will be offline for maintenance. This will affect all faculty, administrative email, and Law School email.
This afternoon University IT Services completed installation of 44 additional wireless network Access Points (APs) in Aquinas Hall. This is providing significantly greater wireless signal strength in that residence hall. University IT Services is preparing Boland Hall for the installation of additional wireless access points tomorrow.
University IT Services continues to test updated drivers from Samsung that will boost the wireless signal strength on the Samsung Ultrabooks used by most residents of Boland and Aquinas Halls. A driver updated is expected to be available shortly for Samsung Series 5 Ultrabooks running Windows 7. If all goes according to plan, faculty and students with the Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook running Windows 7 will receive an email tomorrow outlining the process for updating the driver on your computer. It is a simple process that only involves a few clicks, but the installation will require a reboot of your computer during the process, so please read tomorrow’s email carefully.
Steve Landry, CIO
Update 9/13/2012, 5:00 PM: A new wireless driver is available for Samsung Series 5 Ultrabooks running Windows 7. If you are experiencing problems connecting your Samsung Series 5 / Windows 7 Ultrabook to the campus wireless network, University IT Services recommends that you obtain this latest driver by taking your Samsung Ultrabook to the PC Support Services Mobile Consultation Area on the first (lower) level of Corrigan Hall during normal University business hours (M-F, 8:45 AM – 4:45 PM). The installation will take approximately ten minutes. A new wireless driver is also available for the Samsung Series 7 Slate PC running Windows 8 Prerelease (Windows 8 PR). This will include all Samsung Series 7 Slate PC’s distributed during Freshmen Orientations in June and August and Transfer Orientations in August. This will be installed as part of your upgrade to Microsoft’s latest version of Windows 8 (Windows 8 RTM). This will also fix some minor problems with your Samsung Series 7 Slate PC, such as needing to re-boot when your stylus stops working or your computer freezes. You can upgrade your Samsung Series 7 Slate PC to Windows 8 RTM with the latest wireless driver by taking your Samsung Slate to the PC Support Services Mobile Consultation Area on the first level of Corrigan Hall during normal University business hours. The installation will take approximately thirty minutes.
As previously reported, the MS Exchange email system, serving the University’s faculty, staff and administrators, had a serious problem beginning early morning Thursday (9/06). The likely root cause of this problem has been identified and isolated (see the blog post http://blogs.shu.edu/doit/2012/09/ms-exchange-the-cause-of-the-crash/ for details). All users now have access to their MS Exchange email.
Note that you may have to restart MS Outlook to force Outlook to reconnect to the server. You should also check your Out Box and release any email that you composed in Outlook but which Outlook was unable to send because the server was offline. If you are having difficulty connecting through MS Outlook, try WebMail (a.k.a., Outlook Web Access, or OWA; the link to WebMail/OWA is in the upper right hand corner of the SHU Web site and along the top navigation of PirateNet).
If you had access to your email box any time Thursday (9/6) or Friday (9/7) afternoon, then all your email has been recovered.
If access to your email was restored late Friday night or today (9/8), then IT Services is recovering your email from multiple sources, as described in a prior blog post (see http://blogs.shu.edu/doit/2012/09/update-regarding-access-to-the-microsoft-exchange-email-system/ for details). IT Services restored your email box from a backup taken early Wednesday morning. Email that was sent after the server crash early Thursday morning is in a pending queue that is being delivered now. Once this pending email is delivered, you will have all your email except that sent to you on Wednesday, 9/05. This email will be recovered from another source, the MS Exchange logs and journals, next week and merged in to your In Box. Since recovery from the MS Exchange logs and journals is labor intensive, it may take the better part of next week to complete this recovery process for all users.
I want to thank the University community for their patience and support during this difficult few days. I want to thank the IT Services team who spent long hours working to fix this problem; their effort, dedication and knowledge has been outstanding. And I want to thank the support teams from Microsoft and NetApp for their help during this time.
I want to remind everyone that, while everyone currently has access to the campus mail system, some significant challenges still remain. We’re running on a temporary server, so next week IT Services will be adding additional servers to the MS Exchange cluster to improve reliability and performance. Until then, we may experience additional intermittent email outages as IT Services continues to work on the system. IT Services will work next week to restore Wednesday’s email for those users who are missing it. And other cleanup tasks remain. I ask for the continued patience and support of the University community as we restore full email service to the campus.
University IT Services has been working with Microsoft and NetApp, our data storage vendor, to determine the root cause of the problems the University has been having with our MS Exchange email system. At this time it appears a software glitch in an until recently unused feature of the NetApp system was causing the problem. This caused the NetApp Storage Area Network to report the size of the file systems incorrectly to MS Exchange. This in turn caused MS Exchange to fill the file systems, causing the recent system crashes and data corruption. Now that IT Services has determined the root cause of the problems, we have disabled this feature and stabilized the system.
I want to thank the University IT Systems team for their dedication throughout the last few days; they have put in many long hours to restore this vital service for the University. I also want to that the technical support teams from Microsoft and NetApp, whose assistance in resolving this problem have been invaluable. And I want to thank the University community for your patience and support as we’ve worked to resolve this problem.
A good deal of work remains to be done. We still have to restore Wednesday’s email for about 500 users. We’re also running on a temporary server, so we need to build and add additional servers to the Microsoft Exchange server cluster for redundancy to improve reliability and performance. And we may run in to additional snags as we complete repairs to this key communication tool. In the meantime, please be prepared for additional email outages with little or no warning until the system is fully repaired.
Last Friday, August 31, I let you know that University IT Services was aware that a significant number of residents in Boland Hall and Aquinas Hall were reporting they could not connect to the campus wireless network in their rooms. University IT Services has been working with Samsung, Intel and Cisco to resolve this issue. I want to thank those residents who were able and willing to help IT Services’ technicians test in their rooms and who tried different configurations on their computers to find the best way to resolve the problem. I want to report that we are making progress on improving the wireless experience for residents in those areas.
Yesterday Samsung provided the University with a new wireless driver for the Samsung Series 5 Ultrabook and Series 7 Slate PC. This wireless driver will increase the power of the wireless radio in those devices. IT Services is testing that driver today and over the weekend. If all goes well, we should be ready to deploy that new driver to the Samsung Ultrabooks and Slates next week.
Our plan is to distribute the new driver via our Microsoft Windows management tools. Sometime next week while your computer is connected to the campus network your computer will download and install the new driver. You may need to restart your computer to complete the installation. We expect that most users will see better wireless connectivity following the installation of this new driver. More details about the new driver and what your experience will be while the driver downloads and installs will be provided next week.
We continue to work with Samsung, Intel and Cisco to improve wireless performance in Boland Hall and Aquinas Hall, and will continue to update you as we take additional steps to improve wireless performance in the residence halls. Please continue to report any new problems you find with the campus wireless network or any other technology. And please continue to remove any consumer access points and turn off any unneeded wireless devices (see the previous email on this at: blogs.shu.edu/doit/2012/08/wireless-problems-being-worked-on-in-boland-and-aquinas-halls/)
Stephen Landry, Ph.D.
Chief Information Officer
Seton Hall University
[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.
Summary: The University is experiencing problems with the MS Exchange servers. Approximately a third of faculty, staff and administrators on the South Orange Campus are currently without access to email. All faculty staff and administrators will experience intermittent email outages as we work to resolve this issue.
The campus Microsoft Exchange email system provides email services to faculty, staff and administrators. Last night at approximately 1AM, the campus Microsoft email server experienced a technical problem causing services to stop. All incoming and outgoing email was queued awaiting delivery. The servers were restarted this morning, and some email service was restored for the majority of MS Exchange users.
Unfortunately, one of the three file systems serving MS Exchange users on the South Orange Campus was corrupted during this incident. For this reason, about 500 MS Exchange email users on the South Orange Campus are still without email service. In addition, the ActiveSync that pushes email to users’ cell phones and other devices was in the affected file system, so for those users who can access their email, access is currently limited to MS Outlook or Outlook Web Access (a.k.a. “OWA”, or “Webmail”).
The University IT Services team is working with Microsoft support to restore the corrupted files. This is taking significantly longer than anticipated due to the size of the files, the time required to repair them, and the need to proceed carefully so as not to inadvertently lose any user’s email. At this time, IT Services and Microsoft believe the repair will be successful and no users’ email will be lost. In the meantime, all MS Exchange email users, including users at the Law School, will experience brief intermittent email service outages as Microsoft and IT Services work on the problem. Further updates will be posted as we have additional information.
A group of scammers are using a recent email from Microsoft as part of their phishing campaign. They are sending emails similar to a legitimate email from Microsoft with the title “Important Changes to Microsoft Services Agreement and Communication Preferences.” But the scammers have replaced the links in the email with ones that infect your computer with malware. Do NOT follow the links in any email unless you are able to confirm that the sender is legitimate (for example, by examining the header information in the email to make sure the email is really from the source it claims to be) and that the hyperlinks are to legitimate sites (for example, hovering your mouse over a hyperlink will display the full adress which should be to a URL within the source’s domain).
If you have any questions about whether an email is legitimate, DO NOT open the email, but call or forward the email to the Technology Service Desk (Tel.: 973-275-2222; email: servicedesk@shu.edu). They can assist you in determining if the email is legitimate or a phishing scam.
University IT Services is aware that some resident students in Boland Hall and Aquinas Hall are experiencing poor wireless network performance using their Samsung Series 5 ultrabook computers in their rooms. The IT Services networking team is working with Samsung and Cisco to improve network performance.
In troubleshooting this problem, the IT Services networking team has observed that the wireless performance problem is due in part to a significant number of consumer wireless devices in those residence halls that are either not being actively used or that are improperly configured. Consumer access points (such as those available from D-Link, Lynksys, Netgear or Apple) use a different Internet address space from that used by the campus wireless network, and may interfere with the network addresses of users in the vicinity. Consumer devices such as printers or gaming consoles often have built in wireless access points that may interfere with the wireless radio signals if not properly configured.
In order to assist the IT Services networking team in troubleshooting and resolving the wireless networking problems in Boland and Aquinas Halls, we ask that residents do the following:
If you are experiencing wireless connectivity problems in your room and you have not reported it to the Technology Service Desk, please report it by calling extension 2222 or emailing servicedesk@shu.edu as soon as possible. Please provide the location and specific device(s) you are using when you experience the problem. Having complete information about the areas and devices experiencing wireless problems helps the IT Services networking team as they develop remediation plans.
Please remove any consumer access points (such as those available from D-Link, Lynksys, Netgear or Apple) from the residence halls.
Please turn off any wireless devices, such as laptops, printers or gaming consoles, that are not being actively used. Please turn off any wireless “hotspot” feature on your cell phone or smartphone as this can interfere with the campus network.
These steps will help the University IT Services networking team as they work to ensure the best possible wireless experience for all members of the campus community.
The IT Services team will keep you updated as we work to resolve this problem.
Stephen G. Landry, Ph.D.
Chief Information Officer
Seton Hall University
Some students and faculty have asked if the Apple v. Samsung verdict has any impact on Mobile Computing 2012. The short answer is, NO! The Apple lawsuit did not cover any of the Samsung devices Seton Hall University is using for our Mobile Computing Program.
Forbes has an excellent article outlining the impact of the Apple v. Samsung verdict to most of us.
“But does the closely watched verdict mean anything to consumers? No–at least not for now. Why? … You won’t have to surrender your Samsung smartphones or tablets or worry that some court-induced software update will cause your device to stop working overnight. … The verdict raises questions anew about how well the U.S. patent system works. … ‘Patent rights only benefit society when they encourage innovation that would not otherwise have taken place. … Can Apple credibly claim that it would not have entered the smartphone market, where it is presently enjoying 50% profit margins even with competition from Android, had it not been able to obtain these broad patents? I think the answer is no.’ “
This morning at approximately 9:30 AM the data center experienced a networking problem that affected multiple servers. The campus Web site was not affected by this outage, but PirateNet, Blackboard, Banner and faculty and student email were all affected by this brief outage. As of 10:00 AM the networking problem has been resolved, all affected servers are being restarted and access to PirateNet, Blackboard and email have been restored. Full service should be restored by 10:30 AM.
Charisse Pagan
Manager, Technology Service Desk
(973) 275-2222
servicedesk@shu.edu
ExtremeTech recently posted a review of the Windows 8 final build (formally called RTM, for “Release to Manufacture”) titled “Windows 8: Hands on with the final build”. They tried Windows 8 RTM on a Samsung Series 7 Slate PC, the same model being used by Seton Hall University faculty and students in our business, sciences and honors programs. They really like it:
“Windows 8 and the Metro/Modern/Rectilinear interface are an absolute joy to use on a touchscreen. They blow Android and iOS out of the water in terms of ease of use, functionality, and speed.”
They acknowledge that the next few months are critical ones for Microsoft and Windows 8, and in particular, wide adoption is going to depend on thousands of developers who now have Windows 8 developing the thousands of apps that will make Windows 8 a game changer for Microsoft.
The PEW Internet and American Life Project, in collaboration with Elon University, recently released a paper outlining what they see as a likely scenario regarding the future of higher education.
The paper gives this as a probable future scenario:
By 2020, higher education will be quite different from the way it is today. There will be mass adoption of teleconferencing and distance learning to leverage expert resources. Significant numbers of learning activities will move to individualized, just-in-time learning approaches. There will be a transition to “hybrid” classes that combine online learning components with less-frequent on-campus, in-person class meetings. Most universities’ assessment of learning will take into account more individually-oriented outcomes and capacities that are relevant to subject mastery. Requirements for graduation will be significantly shifted to customized outcomes.
The article focuses on the enterprise features of Windows 8 and the Microsoft management suite. From the article: “The release of Windows 8 may still be months away, but Seton Hall University isn’t waiting for general availability of the new operating system in October. It’s already using it on tablets and ultrabooks. As part of its SHUmobile program — a collaboration with Microsoft, AT&T and Nokia — Seton Hall is giving incoming freshman either a Samsung Series 7 tablet running the Windows 8 Release Preview version or a Samsung Series 5 laptop running Windows 7, depending on what area of study the student is pursuing.”
From the article: “Microsoft may have lost its mojo as far as Vanity Fair is concerned, but Seton Hall University still wants the goods. The New Jersey institution with 10,000 students has decided that this year it will hand out Samsung tablets and notebooks running Windows 8 to incoming freshmen for its Mobile Computing initiative. For 14 years that program has provided a laptop in some form to all undergraduates as part of their tuition and fees. When school cranks up in the fall, 2,500 students will use Windows 8 devices. As a side bonus, freshmen will also receive Nokia smartphones running Windows. “
SETON HALL UNIVERSITY LAUNCHES THE SHUMOBILE PROGRAM
Program to Provide All Incoming Freshmen with Cutting-Edge Integrated Hardware and Software Suite from Microsoft, AT&T and Nokia
SOUTH ORANGE, NJ., JULY 26, 2012– Seton Hall University announced today the launch of the SHUmobile program in collaboration with Microsoft, AT&T and Nokia. Leading with a pre-release version of Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system to incoming freshmen in June, and strengthened by Windows Phone and Microsoft’s Office 365 Cloud Services, Seton Hall has established a state-of-the art technology ecosystem to enhance the living and learning environment for the class of 2016.
The SHUmobile program will supply all incoming freshmen with either a Samsung Series 7 Slate PC currently running Windows 8 or a Samsung Series 5 laptop with access to Windows 8 and Windows 7. Freshmen will also receive a Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone running Windows Phone and cloud services through Office 365 for education. As part of a phased rollout, Seton Hall is upgrading its campus-wide email, storage, communications and collaboration platform to Microsoft Office 365.
Dr. Larry Robinson, Provost, explained, “We know that student engagement is critical to academic success. We also know that technology can help make the connections between students, with their faculty and with other campus units much more frequent and meaningful. Ensuring that every student has the technology regardless of socio-economic circumstances will help our students complete their degrees, helping to fulfill the University’s mission and to advance one of the nation’s top educational priorities.”
By bringing together industry leaders such as Microsoft, AT&T and Nokia, Seton Hall is providing its students with unprecedented access to University resources and services through their PCs and smartphones, without raising the cost of tuition.
“Seton Hall is creating a technology ecosystem that brings together industry leaders with Seton Hall to enhance the 21st Century learning environment with the latest technology that will engage students and enable them to be flexible, adaptable and creative—skills they need in order to compete and lead in today’s global environment,” said Dennis Garbini, University Vice President of Administration. “It represents a transformative change at the University, as well as for higher education.”
“The suite of Microsoft software and services combined with cool hardware will provide Seton Hall students and faculty with new ways to get anytime, anywhere access to digital content, and fully functional tools that allow for communication, collaboration and content creation no matter what device they choose to use,” said Siegfried Behrens, General Manager for US Education, Microsoft Corp. “Microsoft is committed to building innovative new products that will help students reach their potential and build skills required to gain employment in a competitive global workforce.”
The new program is the next generation of the university’s 15-year-old Mobile Computing Program. As part of the program’s annual technology refresh, juniors’ computers will be upgraded to Windows 8 PCs before the fall semester. By September, 100 percent of the undergraduate population will be utilizing Office 365, with approximately 50 percent running Windows 8 PCs and approximately 25 percent on Windows Phone using the Nokia Lumia 900 smartphone on the AT&T mobile internet network
“Seton Hall University is constantly exploring the boundaries of how mobile computing can be used inside and outside of the classroom to create a more dynamic and creative learning environment, and to enrich the overall student experience.” said Dr. Gabriel Esteban, Seton Hall University President, “Technology is ever evolving, which makes it critical for our students to consider how it is best employed to help them be more productive, creative and flexible thinkers.
“This truly is a unique program that elevates the playing field for students and connects them 24/7 with the university using the latest technology,” said John Irwin, AT&T Senior Vice President, Public Sector and Healthcare. This ecosystem of technology that Seton Hall is providing its students is at the vanguard of higher education, and AT&T is proud to support them with our network and services.”
Check out these videos to see the technology in use with Seton Hall’s students:
One of the country’s leading Catholic universities, Seton Hall University has been a catalyst for leadership — developing students in mind, heart and spirit — since 1856.
With more than 60 rigorous academic programs, and schools singled out for distinction by The Princeton Review, US News & World Report and Bloomberg Businessweek, Seton Hall exemplifies academic excellence. A student-to-faculty ratio of 14:1 and an average class size of 20 provide a truly supportive educational environment; students enjoy hands-on guidance from a world-class faculty that includes Fulbright scholars, leading researchers, industry leaders, and former ambassadors. Dozens of Seton Hall students have been chosen for highly selective national and international awards in recent years, including Rhodes, Fulbright, Pickering, and Udall scholarships.
Seton Hall offers superior opportunities for career development before and after graduation. More than 75 percent of students participate in an internship, practicum or clinical program to gain professional experience; the university also boasts a career-related job placement rate 10 to 15 percent above the national average and an international alumni network more than 70,000 strong.
The university combines the resources of a large university with the personal attention of a small liberal arts college. Its attractive suburban campus is only 14 miles by train, bus or car to New York City, with the wealth of employment, internship, cultural and entertainment opportunities the city offers.
Gartner, Inc., the world’s leading information technology research and advisory company, has a review of Windows 8. They really like it:
[M]ost of the reasons I tend to be against tablets are solved thanks to Windows 8. … I think Windows 8 is on to something. I don’t think it’s always unproductive to have a tablet; if I thought it was a waste all the time I wouldn’t own one. My main issue is that I see more people using tablets in areas where a mouse/keyboard and maybe a monitor or two would be better suited. That’s the reason I like this [Windows 8] slate device so much, it’s really just a laptop in a different form factor but since its running Windows 8 if I wanted to use it like my iOS device I can thanks to Metro. If I want to use it for high productivity I can, thanks to the fact that it runs all my native Windows apps and can be docked so I have a real mouse, keyboard, and monitor. I see Windows 8 as a great compromise with the end-user consumer. It says, you can use one device and always maintain the highest level of productivity. I think enterprises can get behind that.
Today is the release of Microsoft’s Windows 8 Consumer Preview (beta). This innovative Operating System (OS) is designed to bring together the PC, mobile and tablet worlds, enabling the same apps to run on all your devices. A review this morning of Windows 8 by Zach Epstein, editor of the Boy Genius Report (www.bgr.com), highlights why Windows 8 will be a force of change in both consumer and corporate technology.
Apple’s iOS platform seemed to come out of nowhere and take the world by storm in 2007. The introduction of the first-generation iPhone set in motion a chain of events that lead up to the holiday quarter in 2011, when Apple recorded the most profitable quarter in technology history thanks mainly to unbelievable iPhone, iPod touch and iPad sales. No platform is selling as quickly as Apple’s mobile platform right now, but iOS is still in its infancy and the fact remains: as hot as iOS is right now, and as popular as smartphones and media tablets are, no platform installed base on the planet even comes close to approaching the size of Windows right now. …
We are now entering the post-post-PC era, and its focus is the PC. A new, smarter, more versatile PC. A PC that lets users browse the web casually in bed and work with massive databases in SQL Server. A PC that can run a $0.99 news reader as well as it can run proprietary $99,000 CRM software. A PC that is as ideal for playing Angry Birds as it is for running a modeling environment that allows its user to build schematics for a skyscraper. This is the future of computing. …
I’ve spent the past week playing with and working on a Samsung tablet powered by Microsoft’s new operating system. It’s nice to be able to work and play on the same tablet.
This evening at approximately 6:00 PM Systems Support responded to reports that PirateNet logins were unusually slow. After working on the system for about thirty minutes, Systems Support had to reboot the server to clear the problem. This resulted in an otage lasting approximately ten minutes. Systems Support is working with Datatel+SGHE (formerly SungardHE) to determine the root cause of this and other recent brief PirateNet outages.
This afternoon about 2:30 PM the University’s main Web site (www.shu.edu) experienced intermittent problems. One of the two servers became very slow due to a corrupted file. The University’s Web site employs two servers which are load balanced, so that in the event one server fails the other will pick up the load. In this case, however, because one of the servers was slow but not off line, the load balancer did not automatically detect the problem and continued to direct about half of the page requests to the slow server. The situation was corrected manually after about twenty minutes. During this period, some users experienced slow page refreshes. Attempting to “refresh” the page a few times would usually correct the problem, since half the page requests were going to the good server. All system are now fully restored.
Seton Hall University today released a Request for Proposals (RFP) for laptop computers for Mobile Computing 2012. The request is for laptops that use the new Intel processors (code named “Ivy Bridge”), with delivery in June for Freshmen Orientation and July for Refresh 2012 for eligible faculty and Juniors. The RFP has been sent to many major laptop vendors, including Dell, HP, Lenovo, and Samsung.
The University also released a Request for Information (RFI) for tablet computers. While we do not have firm plans for continuing this year’s successful Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet pilot, the RFI will help us determine what tablet devices will be available in June and July and their likely cost; this will help us determine the best strategy for supporting tablet devices for students and faculty.
Vendors interested in obtaining a copy of the RFP and/or RFI should contact the Procurement Department at Seton Hall University.
Yesterday morning and again yesterday afternoon (Monday, February 20) there were brief periods when Banner Self Service and PirateNet were down. Users accessing the system in those periods received an error saying that too many users were logged on and the system could not handle more. However, it is unlikely that the number of users actually exceeded the system capacity, since yesterday was a University holiday. It is more likely that the process that releases system resources when a user logs out “hung”, causing the system to become overloaded with inactive users. University IT Services technicians on call over the holiday weekend were able to restore the systems after brief outages of approximately 30 minutes. University IT Services is monitoring the systems carefully to ensure the problem is resolved.
This morning between 6AM and 8 AM Blackboard performed a restart of the servers in their data center. It is expected that this will resolve the problems we’ve experienced over the past few days with Blackboard. Seton Hall University performed a restart of our PirateNet servers at the same time in order to ensure the Blackboard channel in PirateNet was syncing with the Blackboard servers. Campus users of PirateNet and Blackboard experienced brief outages during this period.
Standard operating procedures normally require advance notification of system downtime, but in this case these were unplanned emergency measures taken to restore access to key systems. I apologize for any inconvenience the University community may have experiences these past few days as we went through some unplanned outages of Blackboard and PirateNet.
University IT Services is required to adhere to “good practices” in IT security. Part of this “good practice” is to require users to have “strong” passwords (that is, passwords that are not easily guessed or broken by hacking tools). The University’s password policy requires staff and administrators to change their passwords every 90 days and faculty and students to change their passwords every 180 days.
A recent mass mailing among a group of faculty has questioned this practice and requested more information about why the University has such a policy. This is my response to the individuals who initiated this mass mailing:
The University’s current password policies are mandated by the Audit Committee of the University’s Board of Regents based on the recommended “good IT security practice” of the University’s external auditors. This practice, along with the requirement to have a “strong” password, protects not only your email but other University systems, since your email ID and password provide access to a wide range of University systems, including Blackboard and Banner. These systems hold protected personally identifiable information including students’ academic and financial records. If you are having difficulty changing your password, please call the Technology Service Desk at 973-275-2222; they can assist you with your password change.
This morning between 9:00 AM and 10:00 AM Blackboard again had a network problem in their data center resulting in Blackboard being extremely slow for Seton Hall users (to the point of being unusable). Blackboard is investigating this problem and taking steps to prevent a recurrence.
Stephen G. Landry, Ph.D., CIO
Update: 2/15/11:30 PM: PirateNet is being rebooted again this evening around midnight to clear some residual errors from this morning’s Blackboard outage. – - SGL
