March 2008 Archives

As previously announced, the University is moving to Microsoft Exchange for its email system. A pilot project involving nearly a hundred members of the University community is now underway. Based on the feedback from the pilot users, University IT Services is refining the plans for deploying the new email system to all members of the University community. Some of the highlights of the current plan include:

• Microsoft Exchange will be available for faculty, staff, and administrators beginning in July. Users will sign up for a training and migration session. During that session, their computers will be upgraded to the latest version of the MS Outlook email client, MS Outlook will be configured to access their old mail on the Lotus Notes server, and their recent calendar entries will be moved to the new MS Exchange system.

• Users will receive new email addresses of the form: firstname.lastname@shu.edu, however, all current users' "shortnames" will also work with the new email system (so email addressed to shortname@shu.edu will also be delivered to your new email address).

• The pilot MS Exchange users recommended that users move to the new system when support is readily available, so most students will be moved to the new system during the fall semester (rather than August). Students will receive 5GB of email storage in the new Microsoft Exchange Labs system, as well a 1GB "Web drive" (Web accessible storage). Law School students will be moved to the new email system over the Christmas Break.

• The deadline for all users moving to MS Exchange will likely be the Christmas Break. Any user who has not attended a training and migration session by that time will be moved to the new system over the Christmas break.

• Users will be able to access their old mail on the Lotus Notes server into the spring semester. Users who wish can easily save their old email to their computers' hard drive using the MS Outlook email client.

More details about the upcoming email migration will be available in the next couple of weeks.

Steve Landry

Every week I get complaints about spam email (unsolicited email advertising) from members of the University community. Here is an excellent article on spam - what it is, how its sent, and what you can do to stop it - from the site "How Stuff Works."

http://computer.howstuffworks.com/spam.htm

This site is a good resource for information on how computers work. Articles include how the Internet works, how computer viruses work, how Web browsers work, and so on.

Stephen G. Landry, Ph.D.

NERCOMP 2008, the northeast regional Educause conference, featuring presentations and workshops on the use of technology in higher education, was held last week in Providence, RI. The conference featured two presentations by Seton Hall University.

"Exploring Literary Texts Through Virtual Worlds", by Mary Zedeck, Instructional Designer in the TLT Center, presented SHU faculty's use of the virtual world, Second Life. During the presentation Mary Balkun, Chair of the English Department, joined the conference from South Orange via Second Life.

"Storage and Server Virtualization at Seton Hall University", by Matthew Stevenson, IT Architect, explored how Seton Hall University was able to consolidate servers and storage to reduce costs and improve the management of a wide variety of applications through the use of virtualization, that is, running many different operating systems and applications on a single server or storage array.

The volume of spam - unsolicited advertising sent as bulk email - is an ever increasing problem for email system administrators. No anti-spam system is 100% effective. In fact, the spam problem parallels the biological problem of immunity and the common cold. When people are exposed to viruses, they build an immunity that prevents them from being re-infected by the virus. However, the cold virus frequently mutates, so people constantly get re-infected. Similarly, anti-spam systems do a good job of filtering emails that users have identified as spam, but the spammers are always changing tactics to try and get their spam though those systems. At Seton Hall University, our BlueCat Networks anti-spam appliance filters about 85% of all incoming email as probable spam.

In the past day we've seen a significant increase in the volume of spam that has come through the BlueCat Networks anti-spam appliance. University IT Services is working with BlueCat Networks to update the systems database to prevent this spam from coming through in the future.

Stephen Landry, CIO

Last night University IT Services successfully upgraded the Pharos Uniprint print management system to the latest version. This version supports Microsoft Vista as well as the new generation of card readers.

With this upgrade, PC Support Services is now able to activate the printers recently installed in the A&S Hall Public Computer Lab and the Nursing Lab. These printers will be on line following the Easter Break. PC Support Services also plans to increase the number of printers in the Information Commons in Walsh Library to six (from the current four), ensuring users can easily and quickly print during peak times (late afternoon and early evening).

With the upcoming distribution of laptop computers for current sophomores and incoming freshmen, Seton Hall University is making the move to the Microsoft Vista operating system and the Microsoft Office 2007 productivity suite.

Each of these products has some significant differences from the current Microsoft Windows XP operating system and the Microsoft Office 2003 productivity suite.

University IT Services (UITS) continues to work with Lotus Development to fix the bug in the current release of the campus email system. Following today's slowdown on Mail13a and Mail13b (the servers for South Orange faculty, staff, and administrators), UITS has begun periodically restarting the Mail13a and Mail13b servers. It is expected that this will prevent the performance issues that we've seen in the past few week. These restarts will only take a few moments. You may experience brief periods during the day where your email is unresponsive, but this should resolve itself in a few minutes. Meanwhile, Lotus Development is continuing to work on a fix for the bug.