The University's IT Maintenance window is scheduled from Saturday, August 9th, through Sunday, August 17th. In particular, all IT systems except Blackboard and the University's Web site will be down throughout the day on Friday, August 15th.
Summary: Internat Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) is a service on the Lotus Notes email system that is needed for the planned conversion from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange. The current version of Lotus Notes IMAP has a bug that is impeding this conversion. UITS is continuing to work with IBM to resolve the problem with IMAP on Lotus Notes. Working with IBM, UITS has set up a separate IMAP server which we believe will rectify the problem and enable UITS to continue moving users to Microsoft Exchange. This "bug" with Lotus Notes IMAP has delayed the schedule of conversions from Lotus Notes to Mircosoft Exchange. Once the new Lotus Notes IMAP server is tested, UITS will update the University community on the Microsoft Exchange conversion schedule for the campus.
Update of July 21, 4:15 PM EDT
University IT Services (UITS), assisted by technicians from our new Internet Service Provider (Level3), Cisco, and other network service vendors, have continued to tune the new campus Internet connection following last Thursday evening's upgrade.
At this time, the campus Internet connection is stable.
UITS continues to closely monitor the campus network. To ensure all problems are resolved, please call the Technology Help Desk at 973-275-2222 if you experience any problems accessing network services from on or off campus.
Additional work is required for the University to realize the increased bandwidth and redundancy that upgrade is intended to provide the campus. UITS is working with Level3, Cisco, and our other service providers to bring the campus Internet connection up to full capacity without further disruption of service for the University community.
More information regarding this incident, including the reasons for last week's upgrade, the problems encountered during that upgrade, and UITS's response to those problems, can be found in previous posts to this blog.
Steve Landry, CIO
Last evenings "fix" to the Internet upgrade has not eliminated the problem of duplicate emails.
At this time, the campus Internet connection is working; everyone should be able to reach all campus systems from off campus and reach all Internet services from on campus.
The new Internet connection is not correctly acknowledging the receipt of external emails from external servers, causing the sending server to resend the email multiple times. No incoming or outgoing email is being lost, but the duplicate emails may make it difficult to manage your "In Box."
University IT Services is continuing to work on this problem, and will have an update for the University community later this morning.
Steve Landry CIO
University IT Services (UITS) strives to provide appropriate and high quality technology services for the University community. As part of this effort, UITS performs a major upgrade to the campus Internet connection about every two years, roughly doubling the capacity of the campus Internet connection as the use of the Internet grows and individual Internet applications consume more bandwidth.
This summer's Internet upgrade has two objectives. First, to significantly increase the capacity of the campus Internet connection. Second, to increase the reliability of the Internet by having two independent connections to the Internet from two different locations on campus. Adding redundancy to campus technology services is an ongoing initiative for UITS (see., for example, the IT Goals and Objective for AY'2007-08 at tltc.shu.edu/blogs/projects/DoIT/2007/11/it_goals_for_200708.html)
University IT Services (UITS), working with the University Internet Service Provider (ISP), has isolated the probable cause of the recent problems with the campus Internet connection.
About every two years the University has to double its Internet bandwidth to keep up with the ever increasing use of the Internet. Prior to last Thursday's upgrade, the University had a single 75 megabit per second Internet circuit. Both to increase capacity and provide redundancy, this latest upgrade used two independent 100 megabit per second Internet circuits, configured so that University users had a full 200 megabit per second Internet service and so that each independent circuit would maintain a connection to the Internet in the event one failed.
UITS has determined that the two circuits are not coordinating traffic adequately, causing users to experience intermittent problems, including the receipt of duplicate emails from off campus. This evening, UITS temporarily turned off this this duplexing of the two campus internet curcuits, instead routing all Internet traffic through a single circuit. This appears to have corrected all connectivity issues, including eliminating most of the duplicate emails.
This is only a temporary fix, however. While the current configuration is stable, with this configuration the University is not receiving the full benefit of capacity and redundancy offered by having two independent Internet circuits. UITS will continue to work on the upgrade to the campus Internet connection during the coming week in order to fully complete the upgrade without further disruption to this essential service.
Meanwhile, please report any problems you encounter with the campus network to the Technology Help Desk (Tel.: 973-275-2222) so we can confront and resolve any continuing problems with the campus Internet connection.
Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience caused by these unexpected problems with this upgrade to the campus internet connection.
Steve Landry, CIO
University IT Services (UTIS) and the University's Internet Service Provider (ISP) continue to work on problems following last night's cutover to new Internet circuits.
As of early this afternoon, Blackberry services were restored.
Most connectivity problems have also been resolved as various Internet Service Providers have updated their routing information. It is important for you to let UITS know of any problems you encounter connecting to campus services from off campus or connecting to external servers from on campus, so that UITS can ensure these are not due to problems with our internal network or the University's ISP.
The problem of duplicate incoming emails continues. UITS and the University's ISP are continuing to work to resolve this issue.
Last night (Thursday, July 17), University IT Services (UITS) upgraded its Internet connection. This upgrade was necessary to maintain service, since the campus was approaching the capacity of the existing Internet circuits. Moreover, this upgrade provides two independent Internet connections coming in to campus in order to to provide redundancy for this vital service.
This upgrade included changing the University's Internet Service Provider (ISP). While the new Internet circuits were successfully tested by UITS and the ISP prior to last night's cutover, we are experiencing some problems resulting from this change. Additional work on the campus Internet connection is underway.
At this time, UITS is working on three problems related to last night's upgrade. These are:
We expect these issues to be resolved in the next few hours. I and the UITS team apologize for any inconvenience you may experience due to these unexpected problems with the campus Internet upgrade, and ask for your continued patience as we work with our new Internet Service Provider to resolve these issues.
Steve Landry, CIO
The upgrade to the campus Internet connection has been rescheduled to Thursday, July 17th, beginning at 10:00 PM. Users should expect intermittent loss of Internet services for approximately two hours while this upgrade is completed.
Details regarding this upgrade can be found in the recent post:
http://tltc.shu.edu/blogs/projects/DoIT/2008/07/internet_upgrade_scheduled_this_week.html
This weekend University IT Services (UITS) and the Cross Functional Web Team (a joint team comprised of members of IT and PR) began a major software upgrade of the University's Web site. During this upgrade, minimal changes to the University's Web site will be made.
The upgrades include upgrading to the latest version of CommonSpot (the University's Web Content Management System) and ColdFusion (the Web programming language in which CommonSpot is written), as well as the underlying Oracle database which holds the content elements for the University's Web site.
This upgrade will provide additional features for the University's Web site, including greater integration with other University information sources, such as the Banner administrative system and the Luminis portal. This will allow the University to more easily distribute information via the Web from Banner and other official information sources.
During the next two weeks the Cross Functional Web team needs to minimize updates and changes to the University's Web site in order to complete the upgrade.
On Wednesday (July 9), following an attempt to upgrade the campus Internet connection, the University experienced periods when the Internet was not available. During these periods, users on campus could not access the Internet, and users off campus could not access campus services, such as the campus Web site, email and Banner. These Internet outages occurred throughout the day on Wednesday (July 9) and recurred briefly Thursday evening (July 10).
Technicians from University IT Services (UITS), Cisco, and BlueCat were on campus throughout this incident, and have identified the source of the problem as a newly discovered software "bug" in the network management software used by the University. The software module responsible for this problem has been temporarily disabled. This has restored Internet service for the campus.
This evening (Friday, July 11) the software vendor has released a software patch to correct this problem. UITS is testing this patch. Once the patch has been successfully tested, UITS will apply the patch to the network management system. UITS is also rescheduling the campus Internet upgrade for sometime next week.
This evening the campus experienced some additional network routing problems. This evening's problems affected the Law School, Ring Building, and other locations that connect to the campus via wide area network connections. The problem has been isolated and full service restored.
The campus Internet connection has been fully restored as of 7:00 PM this evening.
The problem has been isolated to one of the Internet security systems. That system has been temporarily deactivated.
University IT Services continues to work with Cisco, BlueCat, and our other network vendors to develop a permanent fix that will resolve this problem and to re-schedule the planned upgrade of the campus internet connection.
The campus continues to experience intermittent loss of connection to the Internet, following last night's attempt to upgrade the campus network.
While University IT Services (UITS), Cisco, and other network vendors have attempted to restore the campus network to its pre-upgrade state, both the new redundant firewalls and the old campus firewall continue to experience frequent "crashes", causing periodic loss of the campus internet connection.
UITS, Cisco, and BlueCat continue to work on this problem and expect to have this problem isolated and resolved within the next few hours. Meanwhile, users on campus will experience frequent, intermittent loss of Internet services, and users off campus will experience frequent, intermittent loss of connection to campus services (email, Banner, etc.).
Last night's upgrade to the campus Internet connection was cancelled due to technical problems.
This morning, technicians from University IT Services (UITS), Cisco, and our Internet Service Provider (ISP) are working to restore the Internet connection to its pre-upgrade state. In the meantime, the campus is experiencing intermittent loss of the Internet connection.
UITS expects to have this situation resolved shortly.
University IT Services (UITS) is performing a major upgrade of the campus Internet connection the evening of Tuesday, July 8th, around 10 PM. This is a major upgrade that will more than double the capacity of the University's Internet connection and will change the architecture of the campus Internet connection to increase the reliability of this critical service. Users should expect intermittent Internet outages for about an hour following this upgrade.
The University currently has a single connection to the Internet, running at 75 megabits per second. After the upgrade, the campus will have two independent connections to the Internet, each running at 100 megabits per second. The connections will be configured so that the campus will continue to have Internet service in the event either connection is lost.
This is a major step in UITS's plan to ensure the University's core IT services are highly available. Later this summer, UITS will upgrade the network in the data center to enable redundant application servers for critical systems such as the campus Web site, Banner, and email. This fall UITS will continue this upgrade by creating redundant network paths between core campus buildings, ensuring that users will be able to access network services even if a campus server or network link is down.
Steve Landry, CIO
This is a reminder that the University will begin changing its email and other network services this summer. This will change the way you log in to the South Orange campus network, access your email, and other critical services. An overview of these changes can be found at the Web site: www.shu.edu/events/email-migration.cfm
The University achieved another major milestone in its Banner Project today with the formal decommissioning of the University's old Plus administrative system.
