dwaldron April 10th, 2009
Morgan Hall lost electric power at approximately 10:17 p.m. on Thursday, February 9. Battery units provide power to our servers under these circumstances, but they can do so only for a short period of time. (Less than two hours.) The purpose of these battery units is to provide the Digital Infrastructure (DI) group the opportunity to shutdown our servers in an orderly way. Should the servers lose power during normal operation they can be damaged and/or data can be lost. DI staff members arrived on campus shortly after the power failure and were able to shutdown the great majority of servers before the battery units were drained. Power was restored in the early morning hours. By 4:45 a.m. most IT services had been reinitiated, though some problems stemming from the power failure persisted until 10:00 a.m. OIT is grateful to John McCreight and Mike Naylor who worked throughout the early morning to restore IT services to the campus community.
dwaldron September 15th, 2008
High winds resulted in the loss of electricity to the Wooster campus yesterday evening. The power loss resulted in the loss of IT services. Power was restored at approximately 3:30 this morning and OIT began work on the restoration of services at approximately 6:00 a.m. With relatively minor local exceptions, we believe that all IT services have now been restored. Please report any problems that you experiece to the Help Desk at 330 287-3000 x4357.
dwaldron January 31st, 2008
At approximately 8:15 p.m. on Tuesday, January 29, the campus lost power due to a falling tree branch. Battery units provide power to our servers under these circumstances, but they can do so only for a short period of time. (Less than two hours.) The purpose of these battery units is to provide the Networks, Telecommunications and Systems (NTS) group the opportunity to shutdown our servers in an orderly way. Should the servers lose power during normal operation they can be damaged and/or data can be lost. NTS arrived on campus shortly after the power failure and were able to shutdown the great majority of servers before the battery units were drained. Power was restored to campus shortly after 11:00 p.m. At that point NTS began to restart services. With the exception of the Datatel system, all critical services were operational by 3:15 a.m. Datatel was available before the beginning of the next business day.
At about 8:30 on the morning of Wednesday, the 30th, NTS staff began working with our support vendor to research anomalies with the storage area network (SAN) that appeared following the power outage. The SAN provides data storage for a significant number of our critical servers. The SAN became unstable while running the routine maintenance and diagnostic routines the vendor recommended. It became necessary to shutdown the SAN shortly after noon. This interrupted those services that rely upon the SAN to house data. These include the Datatel system. The problems with the SAN were corrected at approximately 5:30 p.m. and all services had returned to normal operation two hours later.
We regret the inconveniences that these outages created for the campus community and appreciate your support and understanding. IT is very grateful to NTS members Vince Di Scipio, Roger Dills and John McCreight would worked into the wee hours of Tuesday morning and throughout the following day to restore services.
dwaldron November 19th, 2007
Each of the learning spaces in Kauke Hall includes a scaler as part of the multimedia equipment. Kauke 037, 141 and 243 have experienced persistent problems with their scalers. Faculty members teaching in these rooms have reported problems with the projection of video from the classroom computer and the DVD/VCR combo unit. At times no images from these devices could be projected and the input source could not be changed via the Pixie Pro control unit. These issues stemmed from the problems with the scalers. Booting the scaler, which required the intervention of an IT technician, typically restored normal operation.
The scaler manufacturer has now acknowledged that the issues we have experienced are associated with a known manufacturing defect. The problems occur when the scaler’s main control unit is not properly seated in its socket. The manufacturer will repair these units under warranty.
As previously reported, the scaler in Kauke 037 has already been replaced by a unit from a different manufacturer. The original unit has been shipped back to the manufacturer for repair. Its return is expected within the next few days. When it arrives, it will be installed in Kauke 141. The scaler in Kauke 243 will also be replaced witin the next few days.
We very much regret the difficulties associated with the defective scalers.
dwaldron November 15th, 2007
Faculty members teaching in Kauke 037 reported problems with the projection of video from the classroom computer and the DVD/VCR combo unit. At times no images from these devices could be projected and the input source could not be changed via the Pixie Pro control unit. After firmware updates to the multimedia equipment and reprogramming of the control unit failed to resolve these issues, the problems were traced to the audio/video scaler. That unit has now been replaced with a scaler from a different manufacturer. IT will take careful note of the performance of the new unit.
In conjunction with the replacement of the scaler, IT has installed a new equipment rack inside the media cabinet in Kauke 037. The rack provides for better organization of the multimedia equipment and cabling. The rack slides out from the media cabinet and can be rotated to provide easier access for technicians servicing the equipment.
dwaldron August 20th, 2007
Routine hardware and software maintenance is typically carried out between 6:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. Tuesday mornings. On Tuesday, August 21, IT will upgrade the operating systems of our print servers during this window. These upgrades are intended to improve the stability of print services. Printing and copying services may be briefly disrupted during the upgrades. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Questions should be directed to the employee help desk at 330 287-3000 x1111.
dwaldron March 13th, 2007
Over the last few weeks IT has been attempting to isolate the source of the slow printing to several of our public and departmental printers. We have recently moved the public printers behind a firewall to protect the printers from network traffic not intended for them. These steps have made a significant change in the speed at which those devices operate. User Services will be contacting individual departments to discuss the steps necessary to continue to move the devices to a protected network.
Vince DiScipio
Director Networks, Telecommunications and Systems
dwaldron February 12th, 2007
Over the weekend there was a tremendous spike in the amount of spam email arriving on campus. This spike taxed our servers and essentially halted the delivery of outgoing email. Messages were enqueued - they were not lost - and normal delivery has now resumed. We expect that the backlog of messages will be cleared sometime early this afternoon.
Last week 1.9 million email messages arrived on campus.
dwaldron January 16th, 2007
Colleague and ScotWeb will be unavailable from noon on Friday, February 2, until the morning of Monday, February 5. During this period, IT will be upgrading Colleague from software Release 17 to Release 18. It is necessary to perform this upgrade at this time because Release 18 is mandatory for the Colleague Advancement software that the College is in the process of implementing. Colleague Advancement is slated to enter production on July 1.
The changes in Release 18 are primarily technical and behind-the-scenes. Users should experience no substantive changes in the software’s behavior or appearance. On Monday morning it will be necessary for each Windows user to perform a simple procedure to update his or her client. Users will shortly be provided with the necessary instructions.
IT has been preparing for this important upgrade for a number of months, and folks in our client offices continue to test Release 18 to verify that it functions as required. We very much appreciate your patience as we take yet another critical step toward completing the OSCAR project. Please direct any questions that you might have about this upgrade to Marlene Brown at x2304 or mbrown@wooster.edu.