Present: William Dougherty-chair & scribe/NI&S; Karen Herrington-IMS; Mike Moyer-Data Center Mgr; Kim Homer-SETI QA; Bill deWindt-LT; Nate Smith-UCS; Brian Jones-CNS; Bill Dooley-DBAA; Susan Brooker-Gross-IT Mgmt.
DBAA:
Due to a DB server (Robin) reboot the following databases will be
unavailable on Sunday, April 17 from 8am to 8:30am:
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The following production web applications will also be unavailable
during this maintenance:
AIS Application Promotion (AAP)
Automated Request Process (ARP)
Internet Native Banner
IMS Password Change Application
Leave Entry And Reporting System
Make A Gift Today (University Development)
Self-Service Banner (Hokie Spa, Hokie Plus, Hokie Team)
Timetable Of Classes
This is in preparation for the Drop/Add period opening on April 23rd, 2011. This is the third time we've opened up the D.A. process on a Saturday. Clearing RAM on reboot seems to assist with intense processes.
LT:
Much like last year, Learning Technologies will be upgrading Scholar from Sakai version 2.6.3 to 2.7.1 during Commencement on Saturday May, 14 2011. Our likely announced window will be "all day" from 6:00am until 6:00pm to err on the side of caution, with the entire process requiring a smaller span of time. A more specific timeline will be formalized as we approach the end of the academic year and I will be able to relay that information at the May SAMS meeting.
Last week's issues were due to DB config changes made on the weekend which didn't show performance issues until later. Tables at issue have huge number of entries (25million). New version should help with this. Query improvement to make calls more efficient is also under way.
SETI:
This Sunday, April 17, from 6 a.m. to noon, there will be an
Enterprise Directory deployment. The ARP will be needed before 8
a.m., but this should not conflict with DBAA's posted maintenance
schedule. All associated webapps will be down, including PIDGen,
Group Manager, Guest Account Management System, MyVT, and the DAT.
The LDAPs and associated auth services will continue to work during
the maintenance window.
This is preparation for forced password change scheduled for July 6th, 2011.
On Saturday, April 16, between the hours of 5am and 7am, Steve Warrick will be
doing maintenance on "freeman" (Hokies Active Directory root domain
controller, dns, and global catalog). Freeman will occasionally be
temporarily unavailable during this window. Other DCs will still be
available, so very little disruption in services *should* occur.
Facilities:
Beginning to schedule load bank test for both generators; probably next Wednesday and Thursday (April 20 and 21).
Password reset recovery options as part of self service: Kimberley Homer brought this up. A new application is being developed by the Portal Group for Account Management, currently only to work for PIDs; Google and Yahoo e-mail services will be available as well as messages being sent to SMS or voice services. Calling 4Help will be an option, but users can remove this if they choose. Fallback option is to visit StuNet in exceptional cases when no self-service options have been enabled AND the option to call 4Help was removed (voluntarily by the user). This process should be ready by June 1st, 2011. Will the StuNet staff need DAT access?
Redesign of Computing.vt.edu is proceeding: DCSS will cover this in detail. Content related to the e-mail service is out of date, but since there is an active RFP for this service, this will have to wait. Topics to cover will be discussed in preparation for the final product.
CNS: Brian Jones informed us that passwords on all network equipment will be changed soon, but this should be transparent to users. This is due to staff leaving the organization over time.
Webmail will be transitioned to CNS Load Balancing at the end of the semester. *Should* be transparent to users.
Question raised about Exchange e-mail replacement. Still waiting on MS contract changes as the product migrates from Business Professional Online Services to Office365.