ITS Communications Corner Announcements

See https://weblogs.uni.edu/elearning/2007/10/catid_is_coming.html for more information.

Email, MyUNIverse, WebCT, & ResQPortal will be unavailable starting at 11:59pm Friday evening, February 8, 2008, for up to two hours for system maintenance.

The following systems and their associated applications will be impacted:

• UNI Collaboration Suite (Email, all CatID authentication)
  
• MyUNIverse
  
• WebCT
  
• ResQ Portal
  

Due to system maintenance scheduled for Saturday, March 15, MyUNIverse and HEAT will be unavailable from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The following systems will be unavailable from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, March 16: e-mail (mail will still be received), MyUNIverseCT (formerly WebCT), MyUNIverse, MEMFIS, and many other smaller distributed systems.

In order to adjust our SAN (Storage Area Network) to support the new imaging project we have scheduled the following maintenance to occur Sunday, March 16 from 7am - 1pm.

Due to system maintenance scheduled for Saturday, March 15, MyUNIverse and HEAT will be unavailable from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. The following systems will be unavailable from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., Sunday, March 16: e-mail (mail will still be received), MyUNIverseCT (formerly WebCT), MyUNIverse, MEMFIS, and many other smaller distributed systems.

The production database WEBP will be unavailable on Saturday, March 15th beginning at 8:00am through 5:00pm. The outage is necessary to upgrade the Oracle database to version 10.2.0.3. This outage will impact the following applications:

My UNIverse
HEAT
AD_ASTRA
Residence applications
BALANCE
UNI ID card system
LIB_PROD systems
ASCC

These databases work with the following applications: Ad Astra, Balance, Equitrac, Heat, Library and the My Universe applications.

The upgrade will take approximately 6-8 hours to complete. Please let me know if you have questions about the upgrade or the proposed dates for the upgrades.

ITS will be applying operating system patches beginning at 6am on Saturday July 12, 2008. Maintenance is expected to be complete by 10am.

The following systems and services will be unavailable during the maintenance window:
CatID
Campus E-Mail (Collab)
MEMFIS
MyUniverse
WebCT
Student Web Registration (ResQPortal)
Student Registration (Mainframe)
Discoverer
Webfocus
COD XML System
ResNet Registration
Phone Book (all J2EE applications)
Heat
Library systems

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 (old East Gym). Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

The Facility Services message below explains that the electricity will be shut off in the Curris Business Building August 2, 2008. In preparation, Email, WebCT, and MyUNIverse will be shut down at 5:30 a.m. and all computer systems in the computer room in Curris will be shut down at 6:30 a.m. This includes the mainframe (QWS3270/IBM Mainframe) application transactions (SI12, SI70, etc.) include Cashiering, Admissions, Accounts Receivable, Financial Aid, Registrar's, Public Safety, Residence, and all Web services for registering, instant transcripts, degree audits, parking permits, etc. Campus access to the internet will be maintained during this outage.

The systems will come back online once power becomes available and we expect all the various systems to become available by mid-afternoon.

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 (old East Gym). Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be unavailable beginning at 6 a.m., Saturday, Aug. 30. Maintenance will be completed and service restored by 10 a.m. This maintenance is required to switch from a single application server to a load-balanced multi-server system.

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 (old East Gym). Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be shutdown Wednesday, November 26, 2008 at 6:00 a.m. to diagnose the Chat service and apply settings changes to the application servers. The system will be available by 7:00 a.m.

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.

There will be a planned power outage in the Curris Business Building on Saturday, November 29, 2008, beginning midnight Friday and continuing until 8:00a.m. Saturday morning for phase II improvements to the Curris Data Center infrastructure. Prior to the loss of electrical power, systems will be shutdown in an orderly fashion beginning as early at 9:00p.m., Friday night.

This outage will affect only the Curris Data Center. All of the Services housed in the Curris Data Center including Email, MEMFIS, WebCT, MyUNIverse, ITS File & Print services, SIS applications and wireless internet connections will be unavailable during this time frame.

Additionally, applications for A&F, Marketing & Public Relations, CNS, ESS, DOR, and Advancement not specifically mentioned will be affected as well.

Campus access to the internet will be maintained during this outage.

During this time all services will be unavailable. Services will return once maintenance is complete - this may be earlier than the 8:00a.m. deadline.

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.

The Collaboration Suite team needs an estimated eight hour maintenance window to perform a database upgrade and increase space for email recovery, there will be an outage on Saturday, December 27, 2008 from 12:01 AM to 8:00 AM. This outage will affect *all* applications authenticating with CatID including E-Mail, MyUNIverse, eLearning (WebCT) and mainframe QWS3270 transactions.

All mainframe (QWS3270) application transactions (SI12, SI70, RS04, CVBH, SI19, etc), which includes Cashiering, Admissions, Accounts Receivable, Financial Aid, Registrar's, Public Safety, Residence and all Web services for registering, instant transcripts, degree audits, parking permits, etc.

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.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be shutdown Saturday, January 3, 2009 at 5:30 a.m. to upgrade the database to Oracle 10.2.0.4. The outage is scheduled to last until 11:30 a.m, but the upgrade may be completed and system available before that time.

Jordon Dierks
ITS-Educational Technology
Applications Administrator, LMS

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.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be shutdown Wednesday, February 25, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. to diagnose the Chat service and apply system patches to the application servers. The system will be available by 7:00 a.m.

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.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be restarted Friday, March 20, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. to apply a settings change to the Portfolio application. The system will be available by 7:00 a.m.

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.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be restarted Wednesday, April 15, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. to apply a system patch to the application server. The system will be available by 7:00 a.m.

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.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be restarted Wednesday, May 20, 2009, at 6:00 a.m. to apply a system patch to the application servers. The system will be available by 7:00 a.m.

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.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be restarted Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. to apply a system patch to the application servers. The system will be available by 7:00 a.m.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and ePortfolio system will be shutdown Saturday June 13, 2009, at 4:00 p.m. to move the database to new equipment. Maintenance is expected to be complete and service restored Sunday, June 14, 2009, at 12:00 noon.

During this time students, teaching assistants, instructors and designers will not be able to access eLearning for UNI academic courses, administrative departmental courses, Continuing Education and Guided Independent Study courses, Allen College Courses, Camp Adventure courses, National Program for Playground Safety courses or any personal electronic portfolios hosted on the system.

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. Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

The eLearning maintenance scheduled for Saturday June 13th, has been rescheduled for one week later.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and ePortfolio system will be shutdown Saturday June 20, 2009 at 4:00 p.m. to move the database to new equipment. Maintenance is expected to be complete and service restored Sunday, June 21, 2009 at 12:00 noon.

During this time students, teaching assistants, instructors and designers will not be able to access eLearning for UNI academic courses, administrative departmental courses, Continuing Education and Guided Independent Study courses, Allen College Courses, Camp Adventure courses, National Program for Playground Safety courses or any personal electronic portfolios hosted on the system.

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. Consultants are available to provide hands-on assistance daily Monday through Friday during University Business Hours.

The Oracle database server requires a restart on Wednesday, July 1, 2009, 6:00 a.m. – 6:30 a.m. This will impact eLearning (Blackboard/WebCT) and WEBP (MyUNIverse portal) databases. The system will be available by 6:30 a.m.

Due to hardware changes related to preparing for the new student system, all oracle based systems will be down Saturday 07/25/2009 from 7am - 10am, with the exception email will be down from 5AM to 10AM.

Due to hardware changes related to preparing for the new student system, all Oracle-based systems will be down Saturday 07/25/2009 from 7AM - 10AM. Email will be down from 3AM to 10AM rather than beginning at 5AM as previously announced.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be restarted Wednesday, July 29, 2009 at 6:00 a.m. to renew the system license key. The system will be available by 7:00 a.m.

Email and CatID will be shut down for operating system and application patches, specifically to fix web based email client problems with regard to email attachments and timeout errors.
This will take a period of one hour Friday, August 7, starting at 10pm.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be shutdown Saturday, August 8, 2009, at 6:00 a.m. to install an application service pack. The system will be available by 10:00 a.m.

Due to a bug in the file system our production database server must be restarted to get the production portal database back. This is going to be done at 3:30pm today. This will impact MEMFIS, WebCT, MyUNIverse, and web based reporting.

All databases are expected to be back by 4pm. A follow up email will be sent when this has been taken care of.

The root cause of this issue is the power outage in Gilchrist Hall over the weekend.

We are actively working with Sun on a permanent fix for this issue.

All impacted databases are now up and their corresponding web/application servers can now be restarted.

The eLearning system will be shutdown beginning at 6:00 AM on Wednesday, September 2, 2009 for application server maintenance. Maintenance will be completed and service restored by 7:00 AM.

The eLearning system will be shutdown beginning at 6:00 AM on Wednesday, October 7, 2009 for application server maintenance. Maintenance will be completed and service restored by 7:00 AM.

RESCHEDULED: The maintenance scheduled for Wednesday, October 7, 2009, has been deferred and will now occur at 6:00-7:00 AM on Saturday, October 10, 2009.

The eLearning system will be shutdown beginning at 6:00 AM on Wednesday, November 4, 2009 for application server maintenance. The maintenance will be completed and service restored by 7:00 AM.

The eLearning system will be shutdown beginning at 6:00 AM on Wednesday, November 25, 2009 for application server maintenance. The maintenance will be completed and service restored by 7:00 AM.

The eLearning system will be shutdown beginning at 6:00 AM on Wednesday, December 2, 2009 for application server maintenance. The maintenance will be completed and service restored by 7:00 AM.

The eLearning system will be shutdown beginning at 6:00 AM on Wednesday, January 13, 2010, to apply system patches to the application servers.

The eLearning system will be shutdown beginning at 6:00 AM on Friday, January 22, 2010, to apply a hotfix to the application. The maintenance will be completed and service restored by 7:00 AM.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 6:00-7:00 AM on Wednesday, January 27, 2010. This short-notice maintenance is necessary to resolve an issue with the log files directory path, which was introduced during last week’s hotfix installation.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 6:00-7:00 AM on Friday, January 29, 2010. This off-cycle maintenance is necessary to resolve a bug with releasing grade book columns, which was introduced with the hotfix installation on 1/22.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The files to resolve the student My Grades release issue were put into place at 6:00 a.m. Friday, Jan. 29, however, a data refresh error prevented the changes from migrating to all of the application servers. The data refresh error was not discovered in time to initiate another system restart.

Another application server restart is being scheduled for Saturday, Jan 30, at 6:00 a.m. and the student My Grade release issue should be resolved by 7:00 a.m.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 5:30-7:00 AM on Wednesday, March 3, 2010. This maintenance is necessary to resolve an intermittent bug with restoring section level backups, which was introduced with the hotfix installation on 1/22.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 6:00-7:00 AM on Wednesday, March 31, 2010. This restart is necessary to resolve an issue with high CPU utilization on one managed node.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 5:30-7:00 AM on Wednesday, April 14, 2010, to resolve a performance issue with one node in the application server cluster.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 5:30-7:00 AM on Wednesday, May 5, 2010, to apply a system patch.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 6:00-7:00 AM on Wednesday, June 16, 2010, to apply a system patch.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 6:00-7:00 AM on Wednesday, August 4, 2010, to apply a new license key.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio system will be shutdown Wednesday, August 11, 2010 at 5:00 a.m. to apply a service pack to the application. The system will be available by 8:00 a.m.

During this time students, teaching assistants, instructors and designers will not be able to access eLearning for UNI academic courses, administrative departmental courses, Continuing Education and Guided Independent Study courses, Allen College Courses, Camp Adventure courses, National Program for Playground Safety courses or any personal electronic portfolios hosted on the system.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 6:00-7:00 AM on Wednesday, August 18, 2010, to apply a new SSL certificate.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.

The eLearning system will be restarted between 6:00-7:00 AM on Wednesday, August 25, 2010, to add an additional node to the application server cluster.

The Blackboard/WebCT learning management and electronic portfolio applications will not be available during this period.