The University's IT Maintenance window is scheduled from Saturday, August 9th, through Sunday, August 17th. In particular, all IT systems except Blackboard and the University's Web site will be down throughout the day on Friday, August 15th.
Continue reading "Update Regarding the Summer IT Maintenance Window" »
Summary: Internat Mail Access Protocol (IMAP) is a service on the Lotus Notes email system that is needed for the planned conversion from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange. The current version of Lotus Notes IMAP has a bug that is impeding this conversion. UITS is continuing to work with IBM to resolve the problem with IMAP on Lotus Notes. Working with IBM, UITS has set up a separate IMAP server which we believe will rectify the problem and enable UITS to continue moving users to Microsoft Exchange. This "bug" with Lotus Notes IMAP has delayed the schedule of conversions from Lotus Notes to Mircosoft Exchange. Once the new Lotus Notes IMAP server is tested, UITS will update the University community on the Microsoft Exchange conversion schedule for the campus.
Update of July 21, 4:15 PM EDT
University IT Services (UITS), assisted by technicians from our new Internet Service Provider (Level3), Cisco, and other network service vendors, have continued to tune the new campus Internet connection following last Thursday evening's upgrade.
At this time, the campus Internet connection is stable.
UITS continues to closely monitor the campus network. To ensure all problems are resolved, please call the Technology Help Desk at 973-275-2222 if you experience any problems accessing network services from on or off campus.
Additional work is required for the University to realize the increased bandwidth and redundancy that upgrade is intended to provide the campus. UITS is working with Level3, Cisco, and our other service providers to bring the campus Internet connection up to full capacity without further disruption of service for the University community.
More information regarding this incident, including the reasons for last week's upgrade, the problems encountered during that upgrade, and UITS's response to those problems, can be found in previous posts to this blog.
Steve Landry, CIO
Last evenings "fix" to the Internet upgrade has not eliminated the problem of duplicate emails.
At this time, the campus Internet connection is working; everyone should be able to reach all campus systems from off campus and reach all Internet services from on campus.
The new Internet connection is not correctly acknowledging the receipt of external emails from external servers, causing the sending server to resend the email multiple times. No incoming or outgoing email is being lost, but the duplicate emails may make it difficult to manage your "In Box."
University IT Services is continuing to work on this problem, and will have an update for the University community later this morning.
Steve Landry CIO
University IT Services (UITS) strives to provide appropriate and high quality technology services for the University community. As part of this effort, UITS performs a major upgrade to the campus Internet connection about every two years, roughly doubling the capacity of the campus Internet connection as the use of the Internet grows and individual Internet applications consume more bandwidth.
This summer's Internet upgrade has two objectives. First, to significantly increase the capacity of the campus Internet connection. Second, to increase the reliability of the Internet by having two independent connections to the Internet from two different locations on campus. Adding redundancy to campus technology services is an ongoing initiative for UITS (see., for example, the IT Goals and Objective for AY'2007-08 at tltc.shu.edu/blogs/projects/DoIT/2007/11/it_goals_for_200708.html)
Continue reading "Debrief on Recent Campus Internet Problems" »
University IT Services (UITS), working with the University Internet Service Provider (ISP), has isolated the probable cause of the recent problems with the campus Internet connection.
About every two years the University has to double its Internet bandwidth to keep up with the ever increasing use of the Internet. Prior to last Thursday's upgrade, the University had a single 75 megabit per second Internet circuit. Both to increase capacity and provide redundancy, this latest upgrade used two independent 100 megabit per second Internet circuits, configured so that University users had a full 200 megabit per second Internet service and so that each independent circuit would maintain a connection to the Internet in the event one failed.
UITS has determined that the two circuits are not coordinating traffic adequately, causing users to experience intermittent problems, including the receipt of duplicate emails from off campus. This evening, UITS temporarily turned off this this duplexing of the two campus internet curcuits, instead routing all Internet traffic through a single circuit. This appears to have corrected all connectivity issues, including eliminating most of the duplicate emails.
This is only a temporary fix, however. While the current configuration is stable, with this configuration the University is not receiving the full benefit of capacity and redundancy offered by having two independent Internet circuits. UITS will continue to work on the upgrade to the campus Internet connection during the coming week in order to fully complete the upgrade without further disruption to this essential service.
Meanwhile, please report any problems you encounter with the campus network to the Technology Help Desk (Tel.: 973-275-2222) so we can confront and resolve any continuing problems with the campus Internet connection.
Once again, I apologize for any inconvenience caused by these unexpected problems with this upgrade to the campus internet connection.
Steve Landry, CIO
University IT Services (UTIS) and the University's Internet Service Provider (ISP) continue to work on problems following last night's cutover to new Internet circuits.
As of early this afternoon, Blackberry services were restored.
Most connectivity problems have also been resolved as various Internet Service Providers have updated their routing information. It is important for you to let UITS know of any problems you encounter connecting to campus services from off campus or connecting to external servers from on campus, so that UITS can ensure these are not due to problems with our internal network or the University's ISP.
The problem of duplicate incoming emails continues. UITS and the University's ISP are continuing to work to resolve this issue.
Last night (Thursday, July 17), University IT Services (UITS) upgraded its Internet connection. This upgrade was necessary to maintain service, since the campus was approaching the capacity of the existing Internet circuits. Moreover, this upgrade provides two independent Internet connections coming in to campus in order to to provide redundancy for this vital service.
This upgrade included changing the University's Internet Service Provider (ISP). While the new Internet circuits were successfully tested by UITS and the ISP prior to last night's cutover, we are experiencing some problems resulting from this change. Additional work on the campus Internet connection is underway.
At this time, UITS is working on three problems related to last night's upgrade. These are:
We expect these issues to be resolved in the next few hours. I and the UITS team apologize for any inconvenience you may experience due to these unexpected problems with the campus Internet upgrade, and ask for your continued patience as we work with our new Internet Service Provider to resolve these issues.
Steve Landry, CIO
The upgrade to the campus Internet connection has been rescheduled to Thursday, July 17th, beginning at 10:00 PM. Users should expect intermittent loss of Internet services for approximately two hours while this upgrade is completed.
Details regarding this upgrade can be found in the recent post:
http://tltc.shu.edu/blogs/projects/DoIT/2008/07/internet_upgrade_scheduled_this_week.html
This weekend University IT Services (UITS) and the Cross Functional Web Team (a joint team comprised of members of IT and PR) began a major software upgrade of the University's Web site. During this upgrade, minimal changes to the University's Web site will be made.
The upgrades include upgrading to the latest version of CommonSpot (the University's Web Content Management System) and ColdFusion (the Web programming language in which CommonSpot is written), as well as the underlying Oracle database which holds the content elements for the University's Web site.
This upgrade will provide additional features for the University's Web site, including greater integration with other University information sources, such as the Banner administrative system and the Luminis portal. This will allow the University to more easily distribute information via the Web from Banner and other official information sources.
During the next two weeks the Cross Functional Web team needs to minimize updates and changes to the University's Web site in order to complete the upgrade.
On Wednesday (July 9), following an attempt to upgrade the campus Internet connection, the University experienced periods when the Internet was not available. During these periods, users on campus could not access the Internet, and users off campus could not access campus services, such as the campus Web site, email and Banner. These Internet outages occurred throughout the day on Wednesday (July 9) and recurred briefly Thursday evening (July 10).
Technicians from University IT Services (UITS), Cisco, and BlueCat were on campus throughout this incident, and have identified the source of the problem as a newly discovered software "bug" in the network management software used by the University. The software module responsible for this problem has been temporarily disabled. This has restored Internet service for the campus.
This evening (Friday, July 11) the software vendor has released a software patch to correct this problem. UITS is testing this patch. Once the patch has been successfully tested, UITS will apply the patch to the network management system. UITS is also rescheduling the campus Internet upgrade for sometime next week.
This evening the campus experienced some additional network routing problems. This evening's problems affected the Law School, Ring Building, and other locations that connect to the campus via wide area network connections. The problem has been isolated and full service restored.
The campus Internet connection has been fully restored as of 7:00 PM this evening.
The problem has been isolated to one of the Internet security systems. That system has been temporarily deactivated.
University IT Services continues to work with Cisco, BlueCat, and our other network vendors to develop a permanent fix that will resolve this problem and to re-schedule the planned upgrade of the campus internet connection.
The campus continues to experience intermittent loss of connection to the Internet, following last night's attempt to upgrade the campus network.
While University IT Services (UITS), Cisco, and other network vendors have attempted to restore the campus network to its pre-upgrade state, both the new redundant firewalls and the old campus firewall continue to experience frequent "crashes", causing periodic loss of the campus internet connection.
UITS, Cisco, and BlueCat continue to work on this problem and expect to have this problem isolated and resolved within the next few hours. Meanwhile, users on campus will experience frequent, intermittent loss of Internet services, and users off campus will experience frequent, intermittent loss of connection to campus services (email, Banner, etc.).
Last night's upgrade to the campus Internet connection was cancelled due to technical problems.
This morning, technicians from University IT Services (UITS), Cisco, and our Internet Service Provider (ISP) are working to restore the Internet connection to its pre-upgrade state. In the meantime, the campus is experiencing intermittent loss of the Internet connection.
UITS expects to have this situation resolved shortly.
University IT Services (UITS) is performing a major upgrade of the campus Internet connection the evening of Tuesday, July 8th, around 10 PM. This is a major upgrade that will more than double the capacity of the University's Internet connection and will change the architecture of the campus Internet connection to increase the reliability of this critical service. Users should expect intermittent Internet outages for about an hour following this upgrade.
The University currently has a single connection to the Internet, running at 75 megabits per second. After the upgrade, the campus will have two independent connections to the Internet, each running at 100 megabits per second. The connections will be configured so that the campus will continue to have Internet service in the event either connection is lost.
This is a major step in UITS's plan to ensure the University's core IT services are highly available. Later this summer, UITS will upgrade the network in the data center to enable redundant application servers for critical systems such as the campus Web site, Banner, and email. This fall UITS will continue this upgrade by creating redundant network paths between core campus buildings, ensuring that users will be able to access network services even if a campus server or network link is down.
Steve Landry, CIO
This is a reminder that the University will begin changing its email and other network services this summer. This will change the way you log in to the South Orange campus network, access your email, and other critical services. An overview of these changes can be found at the Web site: www.shu.edu/events/email-migration.cfm
Continue reading "July Update on Technology Changes Beginning This Summer" »
The University achieved another major milestone in its Banner Project today with the formal decommissioning of the University's old Plus administrative system.
University IT Services today released an updated draft of the University's Information Security Policy.
The Information Security Policy outlines a number of steps the University is taking to protect confidential information and the integrity of the University's information systems. It provides a framework for more detailed policies and procedures designed to further protect the University's information assets.
This revision was developed by Anand Malwade, IT Security Officer for in University IT Services. Anand recently joined Seton Hall University. Prior to coming to SHU, Anand was an IT security specialist for a major financial institution in NYC.
The revised Information Security Policy can be found online at:
SHU Information Security Policy DRAFT JUNE2008.pdf
This policy will be reviewed by the University's executive team and other constituencies over the next few weeks.
Please send any comments or suggestions regarding this draft policy to me (landryst@shu.edu) and Anand (malwadan@shu.edu).
Stephen G. Landry, Ph.D.
The University's Lotus Notes email system continues to experience problems.
These problems began in February when the University upgraded to a new version of Lotus Notes in preparation for the move to Microsoft Exchange later this year. The Microsoft tools that allow Microsoft Exchange and Lotus Notes to share information rely on the IMAP mail protocol. Unfortunately, the new version of Lotus Notes has a "bug" in the way it handles IMAP. As we've added more users to the Microsoft Exchange email pilot, this problem has grown worse. Lotus Development Corporation has provided several system patches to the University, but so far these have not fixed the problem. This has been a significant obstacle to the planned migration to Microsoft Exchange.
At this point, University IT Services is taking several approaches to resolving this issue. UITS has escalated the problem within Lotus Development Corporation in order to expedite the development of a system patch to correct this problem. Also, UITS is preparing additional Lotus Notes servers to bring online with the plan that to spread the current load across additional servers the problems will be alleviated.
Further updates regarding the bug in the Lotus Notes system will be posted to this blog.
Stephen G. Landry, Ph.D., CIO
Representatives from Finance and Technology, including Dr. Stephen Landry, CIO, Paul Fisher, Director of the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center, John Fernandes, Director of PC Support Services, and Irene Wang, Mobile Computing Program Manager, presented today at Parents' Orientation. The presentation explained why SHU adopted a laptop program, how the program works, and some of the things that all parents and students should know about the program.
A copy of the presentation can be found here:
MCParentOrientation2008Presentation.pdf
Any questions, comments, or concerns regarding the University's Mobile Computing Program may be addressed to Dr. Stephen Landry, CIO (landryst@shu.edu).
Two presentations from Seton Hall University were part of the program for the Educause Enterprise 2008 Information and Technology Conference held this week in Chicago, Ill.
Matthew Stevenson, IT Architect in University IT Services, delivered the presentation "Storage and Server Virtualization" outlining Seton Hall University's robust virtualization initiative. Virtualization refers to technologies that enable IT departments to separate software applications from the hardware they were intended to run on, enabling many applications to reside on a few clustered servers, increasing the reliability while reducing the cost and complexity of the University's server environment.
Rob Brosnan, Director of Web and Digital Communications, Public Relations and Marketing, and Marie Somers, Manager of Web Development, University IT Services, delivered the presentation "Analytics and Optimization in Web Development", outlining the Web analytic systems (CoreMetrics) implemented as part of the University's Web redesign project and how data from that system has enabled the Web team to continually improve the impact of the University's Web site.
See the Educause Enterprise 2008 Web site at http://net.educause.edu/ent08
for the complete program for Educause Enterprise 2008, including links to the presentations.
This is a reminder that beginning this summer the University will begin changing our email system from Lotus Notes to Microsoft Exchange. It is expected that the change will be completed by the end of the fall semester.
Microsoft Exchange requires a different authentication system. As part of the changeover to Microsoft Exchange, the University will begin using Microsoft Active Directory for network authentication. So the way you log in to the network will be slightly different when you switch to Microsoft Exchange. In addition, the way you print using network printers and the way you access your shared network drives will also be slightly different.
The University is approaching another major milestone in the Banner Project. At the end of June the old Plus administrative system will be decommissioned. The Plus system served the University well for over twenty years, but has been superseded by the new Banner ERP system.
To prepare the Plus system for decommissioning, UITS announced today that the Plus system will be set to "read only" effective June 1st, effectively "freezing" the data. In June UITS will move the Plus data into Oracle tables. Future projects for UITS include building views to this data that will enable users to more easily view and report the legacy Plus data.
Today, University IT Services took another major step in upgrading the University's IT infrastructure by decommissioning the Novell "Z" drives.
Your Novell "Z" drive provided a limited amount of network storage that was accessible only on campus. To replace the Novell "Z" drives, Faculty, staff, and administrators now have 2 Gigabytes of network file storage in the Blackboard Content System, and this network file storage can be increased (in 1GB increments) up to 5 GB at users' request. In addition to providing up to twenty times the storage of the old Novell "Z" drive, you can access the Blackboard Content System from the Internet, anywhere, any time, by logging into Blackboard (myweb.shu.edu). You can share documents or folders in the Blackboard Content System with others, even if they don't have a Blackboard account. You can learn all the new features of the Blackboard Content System on the Web at: http://technology.shu.edu/page/Blackboard+Content+System!OpenDocument.
The Teaching, Learning, and Technology (TLT) Center today announced their faculty development Summer Series.
The TLT Center Summer Series is a yearly event that consists of weekly faculty development workshops throughout the Summer. This year we are offering ten full day sessions each week from May to August. Each session will run from 9:00 am to 2:00 pm. Breakfast and lunch will be served during each day.
Go to technology.shu.edu/webs/tech/training.nsf/(CTC+WebView+Date)
or continue this blog post below to see the entire Summer Series calendar.
Continue reading "TLT Center Summer Faculty Development Series" »
Dr. Martin Sandler, Assistant Director for Assessment in the Teaching, Learning, and Technology (TLT) Center, today released the preliminary findings from the University's Spring 2008 Mobile Computing Assessment Survey.
The Mobile Computing Assessment Project began in 1998 in order to assess the effect of the University's Mobile Computing Project on teaching and learning. For the past ten years the assessment project has consistently shown high faculty and student satisfaction with the program and that the University's technology program has had a positive impact on student learning.
This year was no exception. The Spring 2008 Mobile Computing Assessment survey was administered to a random sample of 1152 students, with 509 responses, for an overall response rate of 44%. Three quarters of the respondents agreed that the use of technology has improved their learning.
A summary of the preliminary results from the assessment survey can be found at:
Spring 2008 Teaching and Learning with Technology Survey - Preliminary Findings.doc
Contact Martin Sandler at sandlema@shu.edu for more information regarding the Mobile Computing Assessment Project and the results of the Spring 2008 survey. Click here to view the 2007 summary of the Mobile Computing Assessment Program.
This summer's maintenance for IT systems will begin on Saturday, August 9th, at 12:01 AM, and end Sunday, August 17th, at 11:59 PM.
During this maintenance most IT systems will be available most of the time. However, some interruptions to IT services will occur during this period while work is being performed on campus networks and servers. University IT Services will send out more detailed information on this maintenance as we get closer to August, and University IT Services will alert the University community whenever a particular system will be out of service for an extended amount of time during this period.
Continue reading "IT Summer Maintenance Schedule Announced" »
Remember that Seton Hall University is replacing its email system beginning this summer. The new campus email system is based on Microsoft's Exchange email system. The new system will be available to faculty, staff, and administrators beginning this summer, and everyone will be moved to the new system by the start of the Spring 2009 semester.
To answer your questions about the new email system, University IT Services has prepared two draft "Frequently Asked Questions" (FAQ) documents. These drafts should address any questions you have regarding the coming move to MS Exchange email. These FAQ's can be found at:
EMPLOYEE MIGRATION FAQ.docand
STUDENT MIGRATION FAQ.docPlease let University IT Services know if you have any suggestions, questions or concerns regarding the coming move to MS Exchange email. You can make your questions or concerns know by calling or writing the Technology Help Desk (Tel.: 973-275-2222, Email: helpdesk@shu.edu).
Matthew Stevenson, IT Architect in University IT Services, presented last week on Seton Hall University's server and storage virtualization initiative at Sungard Higher Education Summit 2008, held April 14-17 in Anaheim, CA.
Server and storage virtualization refers to a set of technologies that separate IT software from the hardware it would normally run on. Most IT applications are designed to run on a dedicated server, including dedicated disk space. Virtualization allows IT to run many "virtual machines" on a cluster of computers with shared disk space, dramatically reducing the cost of running each individual application. It enables better overall performance, since servers for individual software applications are usually scaled to accommodate processing peaks which occur infrequently. Virtualization also enables redundancy, since the "virtual machines" can move around the physical computers in the cluster, so the applications continue to run even if one of the physical computers in the cluster fails.
Seton Hall's IT department has a very robust virtualization program. Matt and his team were the first to successfully run Sungard's Banner system in a virtualized environment. This is of great interest to the higher education community, since virtualizing Banner promises to allow Banner to run on much less expensive hardware and enables server redundancy for business continuity. Over fifty people attended Matt's presentation at Sungard Summit 2008 to learn how Matt and his team were able to virtualize Banner.
For an overview of Seton Hall University's server and storage virtualization program, see, for example:
http://tltc.shu.edu/blogs/projects/DoIT/2008/03/shu_presents_at_nercomp_2008.html
University IT Services today released the preliminary findings from the Microsoft Exchange pilot group. Almost all users in the pilot group found MS Exchange email as easy or easier to use than Lotus Notes email. Most did not want to go back to Lotus Notes! This project helped University IT Services a great deal in refining our plans for moving the campus to MS Exchange email.
As a reminder to the campus community, MS Exchange email will be available to faculty, staff, and administrators on the South Orange campus beginning in July. Schedules for the one to two hour training and migration sessions will be published next month. During the session, users will receive an overview of the MS Outlook exchange client, their Lotus Notes calendar entries and address book will be transferred to their MS Exchange email account, MS Outlook will be installed on their computers, and the MS Outlook client will be configured to be able to view their old email from the Lotus Notes server. The deadline for converting to MS Exchange is the end of December. South Orange campus students will be converted in November 2008, and Law School students will be converted in early January 2009.
PC Support Services began Sophomore Refresh 2008. All sophomore students in good academic standing and who are registered as full time students for Fall 2008 are eligible to replace their current Lenovo ThinkPad T60 Laptop PC (or their ThinkPad X60 Tablet PC) with the latest model.
See this previous blog entry for details about the new laptops.
As of today, over 600 sophomores have already upgraded their computers.
Seton Hall University's Lotus Notes email servers now have IMAP enabled. You can now access your campus email using any IMAP client, including MS Outlook and Thunderbird.
IMAP (Internet Mail Access Protocol) is a common way for users to access email over the Internet. Until recently, users at Seton Hall University were limited to accessing their campus email using the Lotus Notes client or the Lotus Notes Webmail interface. Now that the Lotus Notes servers have been converted to IMAP, you have additional choices for access your campus email.
There are advantages and disadvantages to using IMAP to access your campus email. One advantage is the wide choice of IMAP clients available. Popular IMAP clients include Microsoft Outlook and Thunderbird. Another advantage is that many IMAP clients, including MS Outlook, enable you to aggregate email from multiple sources. In other words, you can configure your IMAP client to show you your gmail along with your campus email, so you don't have to switch between Web sites or email clients to view all your new email.
IMAP only transfers email, however, so you're not able to view your calendar entries using an IMAP client. In addition, IMAP clients need an email "relay" service to send mail, and to prevent the spread of spam, the Seton Hall University email relay is currently not accessible off campus. While we are planning to upgrade the campus email relay this summer to make it accessible from off campus, unless you have an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that provides a public email relay service, at the present time IMAP can only be used to send email from on campus (most, but not all, ISP's do support IMAP by providing email relays to their customers).
IMAP is a key component in the campus' move to Microsoft Exchange email. With IMAP, you can configure MS Outlook so that you can continue to access your old Lotus Notes email after your email account is switched over to the MS Exchange server.
To learn how to use IMAP to access your campus email, call the Technology Help Desk at 973-275-2222, or follow the instructions provided in the following document:
SHU Outlook IMAP Configuration Instructions MARCH2008.doc
This afternoon Steve Landry (CIO) and Paul Fisher (Dir., TLT Center) gave a report to the department of the College of Arts and Science at the monthly A&S Department Chairs meeting.
The presentation included a review of the University's plan to replace the campus email system with Microsoft Exchange beginning this July.
The entire presentation (in MS PowerPoint) can be obtained here.
The University has been informed that there have been problems with the national Internet backbone the past several days. This causes intermittent problems accessing some Web sites. This problem should be fixed in the next twenty four hours.