WAP wasn’t responding – needed to be rebooted.

Due to an electrial outage in the Maplewood wiring closet. This is affecting the network connections in Maplewood and Oakwood.
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The electrical problem was fixed about 6:45pm and all networks appeared to return service by 7:30pm.

Novell Service Pack 7 needs to be installed.

The planned outage for this Service Pack upgrade is Saturday morning, 03/20/2004.

The process will require several hours of down time. Systems affected will be Novell file servers and all other systems that authenticate with LDAP (i.e. email, calendar, certain web services).

Plans are to begin shortly before 7am on Saturday, 3/20. If all goes well all systems should return to service by 1:00pm.

During the outage the following network services will NOT be available:

NOVELL FILE/PRINT: (P:, G:, Z: drives and network printers)

EMAIL: LDAP authentication will be down so users cannot login to email. No email will be lost because it will be held in queue.

CALENDAR: The Oracle Calendar LDAP authentication will be down. Users will not be able to login to the calendar server.

COMPUTER LABS: Windows computers located in computer labs will not be operational because they require LOGIN to operate. LOGIN is provided by Novell which will not be available during the outage.

CERTAIN WEB SERVICES: A few functions on the EMU web site require user login (i.e. access to web directory from off-campus). These rely on LDAP which will be unavailable.

All other network services should remain operational (i.e. Internet access for browsing and IM).

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All systems were updated – no major problems.

Both NS and ST had to be powered off during restart. Is this due to the KVM switch again?

Ran DSrepair on FS – no problems

Changed the time server for ST – the existing one wasn’t responding.

Upgraded FS first, then FSAPPS and LD (at the same time), then ST and NS (at the same time).

On ST in the NWSERVER directory, renamed DELLMGR.NLM to DELLMGR.NL1.

Since the memory hadn’t arrived for LD, it wasn’t added – will need to be added some morning after we ever get it. This will max the server out to 2G.

The “backup” UPS wasn’t added to the second rack since the power source wasn’t able to be determined – waiting on phys plant to either verify what else is on that breaker or to add a new 20A circuit.

NOTE #1: Last updated 01/20/04 11:30am The most recent updates are in BOLD text below.

NOTE #2: All available work-arounds have been completed. Marketing Services (Communications Dept) and Development Offices will remain without network connectivity until the permanent fix is installed sometime on Tuesday, 1/20.

A Cisco fiber switch located in the Library failed completely about noon today (1/17). This is one of two major fiber switches on campus, providing network service to all the buildings in the southeast corner of campus.

Info Systems is aware of the problem and is working to obtain a replacement device. It is not clear how long this will take but it is unlikely to be before Tuesday, 1/20.

Network connectivity to the following buildings is affected:

Library
Science Center
Marketing Services (Communications)
Development
Martin House
CTP
Weaver House

Only connectivity to these buildings is affected. All servers remain functional (i.e. Internet, email, calendar, SIS(As400), web, Blackboard, Novell). You just can’t get to them from these buildings.

A Critical Information Alert has been posted and will be updated, along with this log, if/when the status of this outage changes. We apologize for the major inconvenience this places on the campus and assure you that we are working as quickly as possible to resolve the problem.

01/20/04 11:10am Replacement part arrived. About an hour of work will be required to prepare it for installation. We expect to install it between noon and 1:00pm. About a 15-20 minute outage in the affected buildings will be required. A 10 minute “warning” will be sent as a Novell Popup Message that will appear on all Windows computers logged into Novell.

01/19/04 10:00am Successful work-around found for the Science Center, Martin House, CTP, Brunk House, Weaver House. All network connectivity to these buildings has been restored as of 10:00am.

01/19/04 08:00am Successful work-around found for the Library. All network connectivity to the Library has been restored as of 8:00am.

01/18/04 03:45pm Cicso confirms via email that the replacement 3508 switch has been prepared for shipment to EMU. It is likely that it will arrive Tue morning, 1/20.

01/17/04 04:00pm TAC opened with Cisco. They will send replacement hardware. Will be to FedEx by Monday and to us by Tuesday. Likely by 11am, but contract only requires by 4pm.

01/17/04 03:00pm Cause found and notice of failure published on Outage Log, Critical Info Alert and Special Notices on Connection page.

01/17/04 02:15pm Problem first investigated by Info Systems

Very brief planned outage required to activate a new version of the central router’s operating system. This is needed to correct a flaw that prevents use of a new component added in July 2003 that provides gigabit connectivity for various servers.

It is possible that no outage will be perceived. If there is an outage all network services would be affected (i.e. email, Internet, Novell, Blackboard, Sirsi/Sadie (Library), AS400, Calendar).

This outage moved us from IOS 7.6(1) to 7.6(3). This did not take care of the problem with the 6148 Gig blade. Cisco states there is a hardwaree/software flaw where packets are being dropped. There is no resolution for this as of now They will be sending us a 6516 blade to use as a loaner till this problem is resolved.

A key component of the central network router is not performing correctly. Info Systems will be taking the router down for at least an hour beginning at 6:30am, Wednesday, August 27.

SYSTEMS AFFECTED: IMPACT: ALL network services will be down.

NO email access (but no mail will be lost)
NO Internet access
NO access to Blackboard
NO access to the AS400 (administrative system)
NO access to Campus Web
NO access to the library system (Sadie)
NO access to the EMU web server

This is the FIRST of possibly TWO procedures to correct the problem. If this fails to correct the problem a new part will be ordered and an additional outage in the near future will be required to install the new part.

This notice will be updated with details as they become available. Check back for more details.

Swapped out the 6148 gig blade from slot 9 and installed into slot 8. Modified the config so the gig blade works in slot 8. Ran tests to verify connectivity using ping, telnet and www. Both showed latency. Called Cisco to reevaluate the case. Moved all Novell servers from the Gig blade back to the 10/100 blade.

Added the gig card driver to the FS server. The server had parameters set out of range. These were modified and the server rebooted. Yet after the reboot they were still the old values. Found these to be set in autoexec.ncf and startup.ncf. Removed them from those fiels and rebooted server. Again modified the values and now was able to install the driver. Changed the drivers bind parameters to be that of the old card. Old 10/100 card is still in server but the card is disabled in INETCFG. Checked connection and it is now at gig full duplex

There will be a short network outage on Wednesday morning, 8/20, to bring the EMU network connectivity to the Brunk house which is being utilized by CTP. The outage should occur before 7:30AM and will last from 5-15 minutes.

This network outage will affect only the following locations:

* Weaver house
* CTP
* Martin house

The LX connection to MH is now to BH. From BH is an SX connection to MH, the continues from MH to CTP to Weaver.

The Fiber connection box in MH is really bad – needs to be modified so we don’t loose connection to that section of campus.

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!

A drive is failing on server NS.

I called Dell and another one is being sent. I checked the drive using Dell’s raid disk test utility. It failed the “smart check”.

I took the “spare” 36 gig drive from MS2 and installed it into the system. The replacement drive will become our spare.

Dan Marple Jr.