ITS Communications Corner Announcements

The United States has adopted new dates for daylight-saving time (start: second Sunday in March; end: first Sunday in November). UNI’s electronic calendar software was automatically updated on Feb. 4. This caused a problem, however. Meetings scheduled prior to Feb. 4 that occur between March 11 and April 1, or between Oct. 28 and Nov. 4, are now one hour off. Please check your calendar to ensure your meeting times are correct. This was a one-time change. Any meetings scheduled from this point on will not be affected. ITS apologizes for the inconvenience.

Additionally, if you are using Microsoft Outlook Calendar using the Oracle Connector you will need to apply this Microsoft patch.

Oracle says this:

• Oracle Connector for Outlook users need to make sure to apply the Microsoft DST 2007 timezone patch, otherwise recurring events will be displayed one hour off during the affected times. For more information on the Microsoft patch, please refer to the Microsoft Knowledge Base articles:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/timezone/dst2007.mspx
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928388

On July 31, 2007, all Calendar entries prior to July 1, 2005, will be purged from the system as part of the yearly maintenance that we perform on the Calendar database. If there are entries prior to July 1, 2005 that users wish to keep, they must export them from the Calendar server using the file/export command within the Calendar client prior to this event. I suggest exporting to iCal format, though other formats are available. Additional instruction available at http://www.vpaf.uni.edu/tss/documents/oracle_cal_archive_mtgs.pdf

If users re-import that exported data into the Calendar server after the purge has taken place, take note that entries that were marked as private will become public. My suggested workaround for this is to not re-import this information but rather use Outlook, Apple's iCal, or Mozilla Sunbird http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/sunbird/) to open the exported iCal file locally.

Again, this only affects data over 2 years old, entries prior to July 1, 2005.

Wednesday 3/19 between 5:30 - 7:30 am there will be a network outage while the main CBB 19 switch is upgraded. The outage includes devices in CBB server rooms 19 and 21, CBB 22, telecom switch, and UNI museum. During the switch upgrade services hosted in these rooms from the UNI network .128.x and it's vlans will be unavailable.

Some specific services affected by the outage:

AD (Active Directory) authentication
ITS file and print server
Telecom billing
Wireless (UNI-Wireless, WiFi-UNI, Guest Wireless)
Calendar
ITS Backup Server
http://www.unitix.edu
VOIP Service
ITS-NS workstations

Other colleges and divisions with servers on this switch:
AF
ESS
CNS

On July 15, 2008, all Calendar entries prior to July 1, 2006, will be purged from the system as part of the yearly maintenance that we perform on the Calendar database. If there are entries prior to July 1, 2005 that users wish to keep, they must export them from the Calendar server using the file/export command within the Calendar client prior to this event. We suggest exporting to iCal format, though other formats are available. Additional instruction available at http://www.vpaf.uni.edu/tss/documents/oracle_cal_archive_mtgs.pdf

Again, this only affects data over 2 years old, entries prior to July 1, 2006

ITS is scheduled to have two racks of computer application servers offline early Thursday morning as electricians complete work on the power distribution system within the central ITS computer room. Downtime window is between 6am and 8am on Thursday, though actual downtime is anticipated to be less than two hours. We’re optimistic we could be back online by 6:30am assuming no problems are encountered.

Affected systems include (but are not limited to):

• ITS Central File Server (Megatron)
• VMWare Server (Ironhide) containing:
  • Printing server (Jazz)
  • Antivirus server (ITS-NAV)
  • Others
• Calendar server (calendar.uni.edu)
• Microsoft updates server (WSUS)
• ITS User Services Supported Users Backup Server

If you need additional assistance please contact the Computer Consulting Center (CCC) at (319) 273-5555. The CCC is located in Room 36 ITTC Building (formerly known as the East Gym). Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

Sunday, February 8th, from 5-7am there will be a calendar outage to migrate existing services to a new calendar server hardware platform. All calendar entries will be automatically migrated to the new server. All methods of electronic calendar access will be affected until the switch is complete.

Users of the calendar will not notice any changes in functionality. The purpose of the switch is to provide a more stable service for campus.

If you need additional assistance please contact the Computer Consulting Center (CCC) at (319) 273-5555. The CCC is located in Room 36 ITTC Building (formerly known as the East Gym). Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.