Monthly Archives: July 2003

Total Network Outage for Core Router Operating System Upgrade

Network

Info Systems will need to upgrade the operating system for our main network router/switch sometime during the next several weeks. The information regarding this planned outage includes the following:

PROPOSED LENGTH OF TIME: about 3 hours.

SYSTEMS AFFECTED: The ENTIRE EMU computer network. Network connectivity for all desktop computers, servers, printers connected to the EMU network and the Internet will NOT function during the outage. (This is MAJOR network “brain surgery”).

All incoming and outgoing email will be queued during the outage (none should be lost). Anyone on the Internet attempting to connect to any of our web servers (www.emu.edu, http://blackboard.emu.edu, http://mail.emu.edu) will get a “cannot connect to the server” error message. Windows computers connected to the Novell servers will be warned about 10 minutes before the outage that they should save any open documents and logout. We will also send regular email reminders leading up to the outage so everyone is aware of the time that the outage begins.
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Upgrade SUCCESSFUL at 5pm, Fri, 7/25, one hour AHEAD of schedule.

Kudos to Dan Marple Jr of Info Systems and Mike Durkin of STG Networks of Winchester!

Calendar Server Software Upgrade to 9.0.4 – NOT Completed!

Calendar Server

Original Plan:

Upgrade Calendar Server software to version 9.0.4. This upgrade will be done during the same time as the network outage on campus, 3pm-6pm. Users of the Calendar Web Client may see a slightly different (hopefully improved) display of the calendar data in their web browser, particularly for those users who have permissions to view other peoples schedules.

NOTE: This the Oracle Calendar Server. It is NOT the server that hosts CEO Scheduler PLUS used by Phys Plant for room scheduling. It is a relatively new system that went into production in June 2003 and provides personal calendar hosting. It is used by EMU employees, particularly those who need to share their daily schedules with administrative assistants or for persons who wish to utilize a PDA and synchronize a PC hosted calendar with a PDA.

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Result:

Update NOT successful. System returned to pre-update state at 19:00, Fri, 7/28. Process will be rescheduled for a future date.

2nd Bb outage: July 21, 7am-noon

Blackboard Server

The ‘off-line’ test run July 9-11 to ascertain the exact amount of time needed for the real migration indicates that only several hours is required to migrate all existing courses and user account from the older v5.5 to the new v6.

The Blackboard server will be taken off-line about 7am. It is expected to be back on-line at least by noon.

The server was turned back on by 10:30 AM on July 21. Everything on the hardware and server side is functioning normally. There may be some glitches within the software user interface and database content, but those issues will surface only with use over time.