August 2008 Archives

To the University community:

As you know, a number of important changes are underway in the University's technology systems and services. These changes include:

• The current portal (myweb.shu.edu) is being replaced with Banner's Luminis portal, providing immediate access to your Banner information, email, calendar, announcements, and other services.


• The current Lotus Notes email system is being replaced with one based on Microsoft, providing better integration with other University systems, including Banner.


• The current IT directory services are being replaced with Microsoft's Active Directory. The directory service is what allows you to log into the various IT services. Active Directory will enable additional services such as the ability for users to reset their own passwords and to allow users' accounts to be generated immediately when a new Banner record is created.

A Microsoft "Early Adopter" program is underway testing users' conversion to Microsoft Exchange and Active Directory. This program has uncovered some problems with the current conversion and coexistence tools. In short, the tool does not convert all users' appointments from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange, and meeting invitations made in one system are not always showing up correctly in the other. University IT Services (UITS) is suspending the Microsoft Early Adopters Program while we work to resolve these problems.

After the end of the Fall 2008 "Add/Drop" period, UITS will resume planning for the rollout of these important new technologies. While the plans are still under development, it is likely that the first priorities will be to complete deployment of the Banner Luminis portal, migrate all users to Active Directory, and move all students to the new Microsoft Live email system.

In the next few weeks, UITS, in collaboration with the University's Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable, will host a series of open forums to present the plans for these changes, get the feedback and recommendations of the University community regarding these plans, and to demonstrate these new technologies to the University community. Look in this blog in the next few days for further information about these open forums.

Stephen Landry, CIO

Since the upgrade to Blackboard 8 two weeks ago, University IT Services (UITS) has worked with Blackboard to improve the performance of the Blackboard system. At this time all Blackboard features and services are working correctly. This includes single sign-on to Banner Self Service and access to your Pirate Gold account.

As always, please call the Technology Help Desk at 973-275-2222 if you have any questions or experience any problems using Blackboard or any IT services.

University IT Services (UITS) has completed the upgrade of the University's Internet connection.

The University now has two separate, independent connections to the Internet (one from Newark and the other from Morristown). Each connection is capable of carrying 100 megabits per second. This not only doubles the speed of the University's Internet connection, but provides service continuity in case one of the local Internet connections is disrupted. This evening, UITS performed a successful failover test, demonstrating service continuity when either Internet connection is lost.

The upgrade of the campus Internet connection to provide redundancy is an important step in achieving UITS's strategic goal of ensuring all IT services are redundant and highly available for the University community.

Last week the University's Blackboard systems were upgraded to the latest version (Blackboard 8). This new version provides improvements in the discussion boards, grade book, and other Blackboard features. An overview of the changes in Blackboard 8.0 can be found at: http://tltc.shu.edu/blackboard/

Following the upgrade, the University is working with Blackboard to tune the system for optimal performance. At this time, some features in Blackboard 8 are working slower than in the previous version, including single sign-on to Banner Self Service, access to the Blackboard Content System, and access to your Pirate Gold account. As the new system is tunes over the next few days access to these features will return to normal.

The system maintenance scheduled to begin tomorrow, Friday, August 8th, is being rescheduled. No scheduled system outages are planned for tomorrow.

This week University IT Services (UITS) completed an upgrade of the network in the data center. This network upgrade added load balancing to the data center network, enabling UITS to install redundant servers to support key network services. Over the next few weeks, UITS will be adding additional servers to provide additional performance as well as to ensure service continuity in the event one server crashes. The University's Web servers (www.shu.edu) and Blackboard (myweb.shu.edu) already have redundancy. Banner, the new Luminis portal, Microsoft Exchange, and network services (including authentication services such as LDAP, DHCP and DNS services) are the next services targeted to to have redundant servers.

This is another step toward achieving UITS's strategic goal of ensuring that are key network services are redundant and highly available to the University community.

Congress just passed the Higher Education Opportunity Act. This act contains several new regulations for higher education. In particular, this act requires that all colleges and universities develop and implement plans to reduce illegal file sharing of music, movies, and other copyrighted material on their campuses and that they provide their students legal alternatives to illegal file sharing.

Seton Hall University's IT management team is reviewing the requirements of this new law, and we will update our plans, policies, and procedures accordingly.

Meanwhile, I want to remind all members of the University community that unauthorized sharing of copyrighted material is illegal. The Recording Industry of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), and other industry organizations actively monitor popular file sharing sites and prosecute offenders. As an alternative to illegal file sharing, Seton Hall University provides Ruckus, a free, legal, file downloading service to members of the University community. To find out more information about Ruckus, or any SHU IT services, call the Technology Help Desk at 973-275-2222.

Stephen Landry, CIO

Another wave of phishing emails has arrived.

"Phishing" is an email or Web site that looks as though it is from an official organization, such as a bank or credit card company, that is intended to trick you into revealing personal information. That information can be used for identity theft or other forms of fraud.

Members of the University community have reported receiving emails purporting to be from the IT group asking for user ID's and passwords. The email states that these are required because of an upcoming email upgrade. These emails have been sent to many colleges and universities. They are usually filtered out by the University's anti-spam system and appear in users' spam folder. The University is especially concerned by these emails, however, since users may assume these emails are somehow connected with the upcoming move from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange. These emails are a phising attempt, and should be ignored.

Seton Hall University IT will never send you an email asking you to reveal personal information. Neither will most banks, credit card companies, or other legitimate businesses.

If you have any questions about whether or not an email is legitimate, or if you have any questions about SHU IT, please call the Technology Help Desk at 973-275-2222.

Steve Landry, CIO

Following a successful pilot of Microsoft Exchange email this spring, the University is planning to move all users from the current Lotus Notes email system to Microsoft Exchange. This move is planned to take place during the Fall 2008 semester for most users. To test this plan, University IT Services (UITS) is launching an "early adopter" program in August. This program will test the full conversion of users' calendar entries from Lotus Notes to Exchange and Microsoft's "coexistence" toolset that will allow the new Exchange and the old Lotus Notes servers to exchange information. Volunteers from UITS, Finance, and HR will be the first to move to Exchange as part of this Early Adopter Program.