Entries Tagged 'Maintenance Announcements' ↓

Computing Services is currently troubleshooting some issues that we have seen in which computers and mobile devices suddenly can no longer access the network or Internet. If you have problems connecting to the network or the Internet, please reboot your computer, as this should re-establish your connection. If, after a reboot you still are having trouble, please contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at x7741 for assistance. We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for your patience as we work to find a permanent solution to this issue.

Computing Services

Greetings from the Computing Services Department. Now that the initial rush from the beginning of the semester has subsided, Computing Services must perform some key, critical maintenance and security patching to various campus systems to ensure their continued security and availability. The following maintenance activities will take place during our regularly scheduled maintenance window:

-All employee PCs will receive critical Windows, Adobe, and Google Chrome security patches and upgrades beginning at 9 PM. All employees are asked to please log out but leave your computer turned on when leaving work for the day to assist with these critical patches.

-All Banner services (including forms, School Services, etc) will be unavailable as we perform critical upgrades to these systems. All Banner users are strongly encouraged to log out of Banner when leaving work for the day. Anticipated downtime is from 8:30 PM until Midnight.

-There will be brief outages to all Microsoft Servers and campus web services beginning at 9 PM as security and system patches are installed. All services are anticipated to be back up and operational by midnight if not sooner.

The Computing Services Department thanks you for your cooperation and understanding as we perform these maintenance activities. We know that there is never a perfect opportunity to take systems down, and appreciate your patience as we work to keep all of these critical services running, secure and available for all of our campus customers. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at x7741 or via email at computingservices@adams.edu

**Phishing Warning**

Please remember that Computing Services will NEVER ask you to give your username and password, or ‘verify’ your account information through email. There continues to be an onslaught of these phishing attempts sent to many of our users. If you are ever in doubt of the legitimacy of an email, please DO NOT REPLY to the message, instead, contact the Help Desk to obtain further assistance in determining if the message is legitimate.

Thanks and have a great day,

Computing Services

In order to address some slight performance issues that we are seeing with the Banner Forms server, Computing Services must increase system resources to this server. The maintenance will begin after 8 PM, so please ensure that you are logged out of Banner before this time.  Estimated downtime is roughly 1 hour.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, but feel it is important to make this change in order to provide an even more stable, reliable Banner system during these high usage time periods. Thank you for your patience, and if you have any questions or concerns, please contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at computingservices@adams.edu or call us directly at extension 7741.

Thank you,

Computing Services

Due to the beginning of fall semester, this is the last week that we will be performing maintenance before the start of classes. We will put off further maintenance until after the semester is in full swing, and will notify the campus again once new maintenance is planned.

In order to ensure that all maintenance can be completed in one evening, we will be starting the following maintenance activities at an earlier time of 6:00 PM. We apologize for any inconvenience that this earlier start-time may create, but we want to ensure all services can be restored before the start of business on Friday.

-Beginning at 6 PM and lasting roughly 2 hours, all network and Internet services will be temporarily unavailable as the campus firewalls are being moved into new equipment racks in our data center. During this time, ALL network service (Internet access, wireless services, Banner, Home and Shared Directories, etc) will be unavailable.

-Immediately following the completion of the firewall moves, we will be performing an upgrade to the Banner Financial Aid module. During this time, all Banner services including Banner Web services for students will be unavailable. All Banner services are anticipated to be restored by 11:00 PM.

-Duplex (double-sided) printing will be set as the default for all Student Computing Labs on campus. This change is in alignment with the campus green initiatives, and is anticipated to cut down on paper waste coming from the student computer labs.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at 719-587-7741 or via email at computingservices@adams.edu. Thank you for your patience and support as we finish these critical maintenance tasks before the semester starts.

Computing Services

Beginning at 9 PM tonight, (8-2) Computing Services will be remotely copying a new Banner icon to all employee desktop computers on campus. This icon will be called simply “Banner” and will be used for DEVL only. The old icon, “Banner INB” will still be used for all production Banner functions. Please read below for further details and testing instructions:

This new icon is necessary because we will be moving to a new Banner INB server towards the middle of August. This is another of the several necessary hardware/software modifications required by Ellucian in  preparation for Banner 9. We will be taking a stepwise approach for this move. You will be receiving a new ‘Banner’ icon on your desktop in the next several days. It will contain the login to the DEVL database. You will need to use this new icon to get to the  DEVL database, as the DEVL option will be removed from the current Banner INB icon. All Banner users need to test their login to DEVL using the new Banner icon.

When you launch the icon, you will receive one or more prompts regarding java and/or digital security. You need to check the box to “always trust” and then proceed. This is similar to the move we  made in June, below is a link to our how-to article that explains the process:

http://howto.adams.edu/index.php/Inital_Login_to_Banner

Once you successfully login to DEVL, test it by navigating to the forms you use in performing your normal functions. You should see no differences compared to the current forms functionality. You will notice that the font is different, and this is the normal font for the new server.

We anticipate moving PROD to the new Banner icon during the week of August 20th. We will send separate notification to you prior to making that change. If you discover any issues, please submit a service request to the Banner group at Computing Services with the title ‘Banner INB issue’ by visiting our online helpdesk system at http://helpdesk.adams.edu

Thank you for your assistance,

Computing Services

Due to the fast approaching beginning of the fall semester, Computing Services is performing several key maintenance activities this week to ensure our systems are ready for the beginning of classes. Typically, all of our scheduled maintenance occurs after 9 PM on Thursday evenings, but due to the need to have vendor support if needed, as well as taking advantage of the reduced number of students currently on campus, a few of the maintenance activities will take place during the day on Thursday, 8/2:

• Beginning at 8:00 AM, the Bradford system which connects students to our ResNet networks will be down for roughly 30 minutes as we reconfigure our networking layout. Minimal outages to the wireless network on campus are expected, and should be resolved by 8:30 AM.
• Beginning at noon, the Pcounter system which tracks student printing activity will be shutdown as we finalize the move of equipment to our new server rack. During this time, students may be unable to print in the labs until roughly 12:30.

The rest of our scheduled maintenance for this week will take place after 9:00 PM during our normally scheduled maintenance period:

• Employee PCs will receive automated security updates and upgrades to the following software packages: Thunderbird, Firefox, Adobe Flash, Adobe Shockwave, and Adobe Reader. Employees are encouraged to log out of their systems but leave them turned on as they leave work on Thursday to assist the completion of these upgrades.
• The campus File Server which hosts all home and shared directories will be down from roughly 9 PM until midnight for a critical OS upgrade. Other various web services will be briefly unavailable during this time as they receive security patches.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at 719-587-7741 or via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Thank you,

Computing Services

The following maintenance activity will take place during our normally scheduled maintenance window:

• At 9 PM, we will be re-enabling storage quotas on all Shared directories. These were disabled previously due to an issue that has since been resolved. There are no anticipated outages or errors to our users due to this maintenance.

As always, please feel free to call the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at x7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

****Reminder- Phishing Attempts****

In the last two weeks, many of our campus users have received numerous phishing attempts in their campus email inboxes. As a reminder, Computing Services will NEVER ask for your account information or password via email. Many of these messages are appearing more legitimate than some of the earlier phishing attacks, so please be careful. If you are ever in doubt of the legitimacy of a message, DON’T RESPOND or click any links or open any attachments to the message. Instead, call the Help Desk at 719-587-7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu for further information or to check the legitimacy of an email.

Thank you,

Computing Services

The following maintenance activities will be taking place this week during our normally scheduled maintenance window

-Employee and TEC Classroom PCs will be receiving critical Windows security patches. Employees are encouraged to leave their computers on, but log out as you leave work on Thursday. This will allow the updates to install overnight and minimize any interruption to our users.

-Beginning at 9 PM, the back-end storage system for the campus BDMS (Xtender) system will be replaced with a newer storage system. Estimated time to complete this migration is 1 hour.

-Also beginning at 9 PM, we will be migrating a few back-end virtual servers to a new virtual environment, no interruption to user services is anticipated with this maintenance.

-We will be shutting down Dragula, the old Banner server and re-purposing the storage for this system. No interruptions to Banner services are anticipated.

**** New Anti-Virus Program for Employee PCs- Migration Details Below ****

In an effort to further improve our management of employee workstations, as well as to save licensing costs, Computing Services will soon start migrating all computers on campus from Kaspersky Anti-Virus to a new Anti-Virus, System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP). This new anti-virus integrates much more closely with our current systems, and will continue to provide excellent anti-virus protection for all employee PCs. Below are the details of the migration process that will be taking place over the next few weeks:

Kaspersky will be completely uninstalled and SCEP will be installed in its place. This process is all done remotely, without any intervention required by you. In your system tray (by the clock) you will see the Kaspersky icon, a red “K”, disappear and be replaced by a green shield, SCEP. This will not force a reboot, although we recommend rebooting your computer soon after receiving the new Anti-Virus to ensure the process completely finishes. If you have both Kaspersky and SCEP installed on your computer for more than 15-20 minutes please call the Helpdesk at x7741. We will send a technician over to manually remove Kaspersky to ensure that there are no program conflicts.

Computing Services technicians will be going department by department to check each computer to verify that Kaspersky is properly uninstalled and changed to SCEP. We will be staggering this migration building by building, so it may be anytime in the next two weeks that a technician will be checking your workstation. If you still do not have the new Anti-Virus by June 30^th please call the Helpdesk so we can make sure to manually install SCEP for you.

Thank you for your help and support as we press on with our major summer projects. If you have any questions please feel free to contact the Helpdesk at x7741 or email us at computingservices@adams.edu.

Have a great day,

Computing Services

The following maintenance activities will be taking place this week:

-During our regularly scheduled Thursday night maintenance window (7/5), we will be reconfiguring our network switching infrastructure to improve redundancy to several key services. Beginning at 9 PM, brief outages to various networking services (Employee email, web servers, home and shared directories) are anticipated, lasting until roughly 11 PM as we perform this reconfiguration.

-In order to minimize interruption to our Banner users during the work week, we will be performing Banner upgrades outside of work hours this Saturday, July 7^th. All Banner services including Banner Web and TouchNet will be down from 7:30 AM until roughly 5:30 PM for these upgrades. Blackboard services will not be affected during this upgrade process.

As always, if you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the ASU Computing Services Helpdesk at 719-587-7741 or via email at computingservices@adams.edu Thank you for your support and understanding as we continue to upgrade and improve the services we provide to campus.

Computing Services

The following scheduled maintenance activities will take place during this week’s maintenance period:

-The campus Banner Web server Marilyn will be shutdown and migrated from the old VMWare cluster to the new cluster beginning at 8:00 PM and lasting through around midnight. During this time, Banner Web Services will be unavailable to the campus community. This is the final VM Migration from the older cluster to the new VMWare cluster.

-Starting at 9 PM, the campus Streaming Media server will be replaced with a newer server. Anticipated downtime is from 9 PM until roughly 9:30 PM.

-Also starting at 9 PM, the campus blog server, email list server, and how-to wiki server will receive critical security updates. Estimated downtime is roughly 15 minutes.

***Campus Employee Computer Inventory***

Beginning this week, Computing Services will be conducting an inventory of all computers on campus. Student workstudies will be coming through your department to make sure that all computers are labeled properly and in our database. Inventoring a computer will take only a few minutes. Your computer may be inventoried when you are not at your desk, we ask that if you are going to be away from your desk for an extended amount of time you log out to ensure that the inventory process does not disturb anything you may be working on.

If you have an Adams State laptop please bring it by the Computing Services building at your convenience so it can be inventoried and updated.

Thanks for your support as we continue to update and improve the services we provide to the campus. If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to call the ASU Computing Services Help Desk at x7741 or contact us via email at computingservices@adams.edu

Computing Services