New Storage Array and SAN Installation Complete 10/27/2008

The Installation of the new storage array and SAN to support upgrades of the database and email systems was completed with the reboots of all database servers from 5:30 to 6:30 AM this morning. CRM was restored at 7:45 AM. The extended timeframe was necessary to ensure that all existing and new LUNs had redundant paths to their hosts in the SAN.

Database/Email Systems Unavailable 10/25

Saturday, October 25, Technology Services will be performing important updates on our database systems and storage area network. This will impact our database and email systems. In order to minimize service disruption, there will be two groups of outages:

  • 7 AM until 5 PM  – Cascade Web, Banner, Famis, Basis, and the CRM will be unavailable.
  • 7:30 AM until 9:00 AM – Email will be unavailable.

Network files and shares, and other network services will not be impacted.

Outgoing email Outage – Thursday October 16th from 6:30-7:30am

From 6:30-7:30 am on October 16th upgrades to the Sophos Pure Message anti-spam and anti-virus servers will cause delays in outgoing messages (from @ups.edu accounts to Internet users).  Service is expected to be fully restored by 7:30am.

Update:

Outgoing mail was down from about 6:45-7:20am, mail is now flowing regularly.  Please contact the helpdesk if you see additional delays.

Sophos Anti-Spam Service Outage – Tuesday, October 14th from 5:30-7:30am

All Sophos pure message anti-spam and anti-virus email servers will be down for maintenance from 5:30-7:30am to upgrade the software to the latest version. This upgrade is required to improve spam blocking for UPS email users.

During the upgrade mail should continue to flow between the University and the Internet, but may be slightly delayed at times until the upgrade is complete at 7:30am. The spam quarantine will be unavailable during parts of this outage as well. If the quarantine is not available please check back later in the day.

Update — 10/14/2008 @ 6:54am

All upgrades are complete and working as expected.  Due to the upgrade process some email may have been delayed by a half hour or more, but should now be back to normal.

Spam Quarantine Outage – Friday, October 10th 6:30-8:30am

Starting at 6:30am on Friday, October 10th, the Sophos Spam Quarantine will be down for maintenance.  During this time users will not be able to access their spam quarantines, but mail will continue to be delivered as normal.  The Quarantine is expected to be available by 8:30am.

Update — 10/10/2008 @ 8:30am

Migration is taking longer than expected waiting on replication of small files.  We currently estimate that the Spam Quarantine will be up approximately 9:30am.

Update — 10/10/2008 @ 9:45am

Migration was completed at approximately 9:30am.

Web server replacement (www2.ups.edu)

Next week we will be moving web content on www2.ups.edu to new web server hardware. This is a routine replacement of an older web server. The move will take place on Tuesday evening, August 19, beginning at 5 PM and ending early morning on the next day, August 20. During this time it will not be possible to update websites on this server; however, the website itself will be available for normal viewing at all times. This will have no effect on content served from the main University web server, www.ups.edu.

Database Server Reboot 4.17.2008

Email sent to liaisons:

Thursday April 17, Information Services will be performing critical changes on our database systems to improve recent performance concerns.

Access to all database systems including Cascade, Cascade Web, Banner, Famis, Basis and Millennium will be unavailable from 5:30 AM until 6 AM Thursday.

If you have questions or concerns regarding this outage, please contact Jenifer Brauen by telephone at ext. 2725, 253.879.2725, or via email at jbrauen@ups.edu. Thank you for understanding our need to conduct critical systems work.

Thank you.

– Jenifer Brauen