Info Systems proposes to install new hardware for the Faculty/Staff Novell server (FS) on Tuesday, 10/21/2003 during the Fall Semester break. This process will begin with a full quiescent backup (i.e. all users logged out of the server). All users should be logged off the Faculty/Staff Novell server by 6:00pm on Monday evening, October 20.
The installation process will take most of the day on Tuesday, 10/21. Users should NOT expect to be able to access the FS network disk space (i.e. faculty/staff P: G: Z: drives) during normal working hours on Tuesday, 10/21.
While the actual hardware upgrade involves only the FS server, a precautionary full Novell Systems backup will be performed between 6:00am and 9:00am on Tuesday, 10/21. During this time ALL Novell servers, will be off-line which means that the EMU email and calendar systems will be unavailable during this time (i.e. email and calendar access authorization services are provided via LDAP through the Novell NDS service).
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F/S Novell Server
UNAVAILABLE 6:00pm Mon, 10/20 thru 11:30pm Tue, 10/21
ALL Novell Servers
UNAVAILABLE 6:00am thru 12:00pm Tue, 10/21
EMail and Oracle Calendar Servers
UNAVAILABLE 6:00am thru 12:00pm Tue, 10/21
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IMPORTANT NOTE: A more detailed description of the outage timetable is available on a web page here. You are urged to view click the link to see the detailed information.
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Outage Follow Up Summary:
Delays were encountered from the start on Tues morning (10/21) due to problems with the overnight backup procedures plus an unexplained crash of the FSAPPS server. By noon the FS migration process was at least 3 hours behind schedule.
Migration process was started about 12:30pm and finished about 6:30pm. While doing various validation and maintenace procedures a significant error was discovered about 7:30pm (-608, Volume ID number conflict). Research was done and a few procedures attempted without success. Jeremy Good was called and joined the effort about 9:00pm. This lead eventually to placing a support call to Novell (available only because Jeremy has a CNE designation). By 10:15pm a Novell engineer was available and soon identified the problem — a known flaw in the architecture of the Migration Wizard. He provided a procedure which successfully corrected the problem.
By 11:30pm the system was stable but it was the end of a very long day, particularly for Dan Maple Jr. Sophos and backup software were then installed and a server image was done along. The final procedure was to launch a one-time full backup to tape.
One user item needed to be recreated (Brenda Fairweather) because her user record was purposely deleted as part of the testing procedure in the effort to find a fix to the -608 error. Voicemail was left with her alerting her to the need to use our assigned password and then go change it to one of her liking.
— Management summary by Jack Rutt —