IT Press

The following service will be affected during this week's Thursday night IT maintenance window starting at 10 p.m. and lasting until 2 a.m.:

• Network File Storage -- All Network File Storage services, including personal network file storage (S: drive), department volumes (Y: drive), non-Documentum web pages, research volumes and roaming profiles will be unavailable for approximately 30 minutes during the maintenance window.

• Windows/Linux patching -- Windows and Linux servers will be down for approximately 30 minutes for monthly updating.

Please note: The IT maintenance window occurs every Thursday night from 10 p.m. to 2 a.m. You should expect one or more IT services to be unavailable during this weekly time slot.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 341-HELP (4357).

Missouri S&T experienced a brief campus-wide network outage at 4:20 p.m. today. The outage was caused by a core router failure in the Computer Science data center.

IT will continue to investigate the root cause of the failure and will provide more information as it becomes available.

As a result of today's Next Generation Network upgrade, access to a small portion of user home directories (aka "S: drives") is unavailable. In addition, access to user and department web directories/volumes will be unavailable for approximately 18 hours.

Please note that user data was NOT affected and web sites being served from both user and department web directories/volumes are still available from the Internet. Only a user's ability to EDIT the aforementioned sites has been affected.

This interruption in access is necessary to restore proper directory permissions. For most users this service interruption will require no action at all. However, if you have set any custom permissions for accessing your S: drive, user web or department web directories, those permissions will need to be reset once service has been restored.

If you require assistance with resetting your permissions, please contact the IT Help Desk at 341-HELP (4357).

On Dec. 2, IT will perform a cleanup of all Blackboard courses older than two years as part of Missouri S&T's two year Blackboard course retention policy. After Dec. 2, any course content, enrollment, and entire courses themselves which are older than two years, will be purged from Blackboard and will not be recoverable.

If you wish to retain content in any of these courses, it is important that you archive, export, or copy off any content you wish to retain for these courses prior to the remove date.If you require assistance with archiving or copying off any of the course information, please contact the Educational Technology team at 341-4131 or edtech@mst.edu.

You should receive several email reminders during November, listing your specific courses that are set to expire. If you are one of multiple instructors for any of these courses, please coordinate efforts with other instructors in the course to ensure any data which needs to be retained is archived or copied by Dec. 2.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP (4357).

Missouri S&T has been working with MOREnet to increase our campus bandwidth capacity and offer improved Internet performance by upgrading to an NGN (Next Generation Network).

Related to this upgrade, most IT services will be unavailable on Saturday, Nov. 8 from 8 a.m. to noon.  Customers should expect the following regarding campus computing services during this time:

• Email and voicemail will be unavailable (new messages will queue up for delivery, but customers will be unable to access existing messages during the outage)
• Network File Storage will be unavailable, including personal and department folders and web volumes
• Customers will not be able to login to CLC computers
• IT hosted servers will be unavailable
• IT applications hosted on itweb.mst.edu may not function correctly
• New systems or computers attempting to get access to the network will not be able to connect

For more information about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP or read the NGN announcement from MOREnet.

Service has been restored for all web volumes and network file storage.

Due to an ongoing problem, which we are working with Microsoft to resolve, user web volumes and department web volumes that AREN'T in Documentum are currently unavailable.

Additionally, some customers' network storage drives are unavailable.  90% of user home directories are available, and we are working to restore service to the remaining 10%.  No customer data has been impacted.

Department drives, research volumes, roaming profiles, and most customers' network storage space are available.  We are working to restore service, and will pass along information as we find out more.

If you have any questions about this issue, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP (4357).

Microsoft released a new security patch on Oct. 23 to patch a vulnerability that could lead to remote access of Windows-based computers.  The Missouri S&T IT security team is urging all faculty, students and staff to make sure your automatic updates are turned on and that you reboot your computer as soon as the updates are installed.

This update will be pushed automatically to all IT-managed computers, but if you have a personal machine, you should make sure the update is installed.

If you have any questions about this issue or how to turn on auto update on your computer, please contact the IT Help Desk at 573-341-HELP (4376).

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month.  Check out the IT website for tips on how you can help protect yourself.

October is Cyber Security Awareness Month.  Check out the IT website for tips on how you can help protect yourself.

Friday, October 17, 2008 - 5:50 a.m.

As of 5:50 a.m. today, access to all network file storage has been restored.

IT teams worked through the night to identify several key factors which played a role yesterday's outage. At this time we are still working with the vendor to analyze the diagnostic information, to see if we can more clearly identify the exact cause. We will also be evaluating our ongoing operations of network file storage to identify changes, which may be needed to prevent this type of outage in the future.

IT would like to thank the campus community for your patience while we worked to resolve this issue. Should you experience additional problems related to network file storage or other technology related areas, please contact the Help Desk at 341-HELP (4357).

Thursday, October 16, 2008 - 11:05 p.m.

IT teams continue to work through the night to coordinate a solution with multiple vendors to restore network file storage. Further communications will be forthcoming when service has been restored.

Thursday, October 16, 2008 - 4:40 p.m.

At noon today, an emergency maintenance outage was taken on all network file storage (Minerfiles service). See below for more details.

Working through the day, IT has been able to identify the underlying cause of the outage and is working with Microsoft to develop a procedure to correct the issue.

While the outage has been extended, the extension is partly a result of our efforts to safeguard everyone's data. We apologize for the extended nature of the outage and are working to correct the issue as quickly as possible. We will continue to work throughout the evening until service is restored.

Please stay tuned to IT Press (itpress.mst.edu) for the latest updates regarding this emergency maintenance event.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the IT Help Desk at 341-HELP (4357).

Thursday, October 16, 2008 - 11:50 a.m.

There will be an emergency maintenance outage of all network file storage (Minerfiles service), starting today at noon.

This outage will impact: user web volumes, user home directories (S: drives), CLC profiles, and departmental directories (Y:, P: drives, etc.).

Length of outage: Approximately 1 hour, but due to the nature of the issue being corrected, may take slightly longer. We are continuing to work to resolve this issue.  It is taking longer than anticipated due to unknown problems with one of the sub-systems involved.  We will continue to work with the vendor (Microsoft) to diagnose the issue, and will restore services as soon as possible.
 
IT has engaged the vendor, and is taking an outage now to prevent a longer, unscheduled outage from occurring in the future.

If you have questions or concerns, please contact the IT Help Desk at 341-HELP (4357).