Services & Systems Outages & Alerts

Details
Testing has uncovered unforeseen problems which will not allow us to upgrade our Banner database today (06/20/08). We will need to postpone the upgrade until a not yet determined date.

An Oracle upgrade is needed on our Banner database.

The following Banner services will be unavailable during the upgrade:

-Banner Web Information System
-Banner Forms (Production)
-ARD
-ODBC Connections to the Banner Database
-On-line conference payments
-Web Admissions applications
-On-line giving
-Course Schedule lookup
-CCC account creation and maintenance

Please feel free to contact the Helpdesk with any questions on the down time. Should there be a major conflict, please let us know.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to improve the systems we support.

Details
An Oracle upgrade is needed on our Banner database. Expected downtime is approximately 24 hours.

The following Banner services will be unavailable during the upgrade:

-Banner Web Information System
-Banner Forms (Production)
-ARD
-ODBC Connections to the Banner Database
-On-line conference payments
-Web Admissions applications
-On-line giving
-Course Schedule lookup
-CCC account creation and maintenance

Please feel free to contact the Helpdesk with any questions on the down time. Should there be a major conflict, please let us know.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to improve the systems we support.

Details
Overnight, our Exchange e-mail infrastructure encountered a storage problem and automatic preventative software measures cleanly shutdown our Exchange databases to prevent data corruption. IT staff worked continuously to remedy the issue and bring our Exchange services back online. Their efforts were successful and services were restored around 1:00 pm.

Please contact the Helpdesk with any follow-up questions or concerns that you may have about the outage.

We apologize for the inconvenience this outage caused. We thank you for your patience and understanding while we worked to restore e-mail services and maintain the integrity of WPI e-mail data.

Details
The Helpdesk received its first report of the Exchange server being down on 6/17/2008 at 7:47:59 AM. Our administrators are working very hard to correct this issue. No estimated down time is available.

WPI members that have their email residing on the Exchange server will not be able to access their mail via Outlook Web Access (http://exchange.wpi.edu) or through email clients such as Microsoft Outlook.

Should you require additional assistance or have questions, please contact the Helpdesk at the contact information above.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding.

Details
During the dates of Monday, June 23rd through Friday, July 4th maintenance will be performed on all STUDENT exchange mailboxes. Work is set to run during the 2 a.m. - 5 a.m. service window on the mentioned date time frame.

This maintenance will allow us to continue to achieve high performance on our Exchange databases and reorganize the number of mailboxes per database as defined by Microsoft’s best practices.

Maintenance is performed per mailbox and will take approximately 15 minutes on average to process. Some mailboxes may be impacted for shorter or longer periods of time. Affected users are advised to wait until after the 5 a.m. service window to attempt to access their mailbox.

Please contact the Helpdesk with any questions or concerns you may have about the maintenance.

Thank you for your understanding while we work to improve the services we provide to the WPI community.

Details
An Oracle upgrade is needed on our Banner database. We have re-scheduled it for next Friday the 20th, beginning at 5pm. Expected downtime is approximately 24 hours.

The following Banner services will be unavailable during the upgrade:

-Banner Web Information System
-Banner Forms (Production)
-ARD
-ODBC Connections to the Banner Database
-On-line conference payments
-Web Admissions applications
-On-line giving
-Course Schedule lookup
-CCC account creation and maintenance

Please feel free to contact the Helpdesk with any questions on the down time. Should there be a major conflict, please let us know.

Thank you for your patience and understanding as we work to improve the systems we support.

Details
The Gordon Library Catalog will be unavailable on Tuesday, June 3, 2008, starting at 7:30 A.M. so that library staff can install the latest patch to the Voyager library management system. The patch adds a direct link from the catalog record view page to Google Book Search and allows users to take advantage of Google Book Search features such as full text, book previews, cover thumbnails, and more. If there is a match between library catalog search results and Google Book Search, users will see a "Google Books" link on the catalog record view page.

Details
On May 23rd 2008 Matlab will be updated on the CCC Matlab server. As a result, the license server for Matlab will be down for an hour until the software update is complete.

Those looking to run CCC versions of Matlab during the upgrade will not be able to do so and will receive a license server error. The license server will be restored once the server upgrade is complete.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Helpdesk.

Thank you for your understanding while we work to improve the services that we provide.

Details
The WPI web server will be taken offline in order to install security updates and apply bug fixes. During the short down time, there will be no access to WPI web pages.

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Helpdesk.

Thank you for your understanding while we work to improve the services that we provide.

Details
On Sunday May 11th, the first report of this phishing attempt was reported to the WPI Helpdesk. The message appeared to come from Wpi Internet Support. The email was sent to campus in an attempt to solicit passwords from our community, and was not from WPI IT. This is the second recent occurrence, as a very similar phishing attempt was made against WPI in April.

Phishing is a method of tricking people into giving up their personal information. This can be done by asking users to reply with information, and/or, with spyware. For example, perpetrators may get victims to click on a link that takes them to a Web site where they are subject to a drive-by download.

In the future, if you receive a similar message that you are unsure of, please contact the Helpdesk prior to following any of the links. You also do not want to download or open any of the attached files.

If you have received the mentioned message in your inbox, please delete the message and contact the Helpdesk to look into junk mail filtering options. Do not reply with your password!

Should you have any questions or concerns about phishing or the recent attack, please contact the Helpdesk at the contact information provided above.

For more ways to avoid becoming a phishing victim, please see the following link:
http://www.apwg.org/consumer_recs.html

For more general information on phishing, please see the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

Thank you.

Details
Starting on May 12th all WPI students, staff, and faculty who wish to use CCC licensed academic software from off campus will need to first authenticate using the WPI VPN (Virtual Private Network).

On-campus access to our CCC licensed academic software will not change. The VPN is not needed for on-campus access.

Should you have any questions, please contact the WPI Helpdesk.

Thank you for your understanding and cooperation while we work to secure the services we offer to the WPI community.

Details
Office 2007 will be deployed to all Faculty and Staff ADMIN domain systems after business hours (5:00 pm EDT) on Monday, May 19. Systems may be rebooted once the installation is finished. Systems with Office 2007 already installed may have additional patches installed to bring them fully up to date and may be rebooted as well.

On the evening of the scheduled deployment, please log off, but leave your computer powered on. Do not shutdown your computer. We recommend you add a reminder to your calendar to log off of your computer at the end of your workday on May 19. Deployments for machines not on the network at that time will be done the next day after 5pm.

Should a department be adversely impacted by the May 19th rollout please contact the Helpdesk to reschedule the upgrade to an earlier date or at some point prior to the end of June, 2008.

The installation procedure will take approximately an hour for most computers. Any previous versions of Microsoft Office Products will be removed (or uninstalled) from the computer and the new versions of the following products will be installed: Word, Excel, Access, PowerPoint, Outlook, InfoPath and Publisher.

Other Microsoft product installations will not be affected, including installations of Visio, Project and FrontPage. We plan to deploy updated versions of Visio and Project later in the summer. More information about this will come in a later IT News bulletin.

Access databases should work as expected under access 2007. Users who encounter database problems can contact the Helpdesk who can recommend a consultant to assist. The CCC does not support custom Access databases.

More information about known issues and workarounds can be found on the helpdesk website at http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/CCC/Help/Software/office2007.html.

Training for Microsoft Office 2007 topics are currently available from the ATC instruction website at
http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/ATC/Instruction/. To register, click the ‘Schedule & Registration’ link.

Please contact the Helpdesk (call Ext. 5888 or e-mail helpdesk@wpi.edu) with any questions or concerns regarding this process.

Thank you.

Details
We are delaying plans to upgrade myWPI (powered by Blackboard) and are instead opting to perform system maintenance.

The vendor is expected to make offerings available later this summer that will benefit the WPI community. Postponing the upgrade to August will allow us to take full advantage of the anticipated offerings. Specific upgrade dates and details of the new features that will be included in the upgrade will be publicized in the near future.

During the May 5th downtime, regular system maintenance will be performed and will include the application of a security related patch.

If you have any questions regarding this or the August upgrade, please contact myhelp@wpi.edu.

Thank you for your understanding while we work to improve the services that we provide.

Details
WPI IT staff will NEVER ask you for your password. If you have provided your password mistakenly, contact the Helpdesk immediately.

Phishing is a method of tricking people into giving up their personal information. This can be done by asking users to reply with information, and/or, with spyware. For example, perpetrators may get victims to click on a link that takes them to a Web site where they are subject to a drive-by download.

In the future, if you receive a similar message that you are unsure of, please contact the Helpdesk prior to following any of the links. You also do not want to download or open any of the attached files.

If you have received the mentioned message in your inbox, please delete the message and contact the Helpdesk to look into junk mail filtering options.

Should you have any questions or concerns about phishing or the recent attack, please contact the Helpdesk at the contact information provided above.

For more ways to avoid beocoming a phishing victim, please see the following link:
http://www.apwg.org/consumer_recs.html

For more general information on phishing, please see the following link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing

Thank you.

Details
For security purposes, Windows account passwords expire every six months. Previously, people were only notified of a password expiration upon login to a WPI domain computer or when accessing WPI Exchange email (exchange.wpi.edu). Since not everyone logs in using these methods, some people never knew their password was about to expire.

In an effort to move toward single sign-on, the Windows password is often used by 3rd party systems like myWPI (my.wpi.edu), the Web Information System (bannerweb.wpi.edu) or the VPN (Virtual Private Network) client. While convenient, these tools are unable to interpret the Windows password expiration warning. As a result, people accessing these systems are unaware of a password expiration. Once the password has expired, access to these systems fails until the password is reset.

To address this problem and minimize disruptions, we have added a new email notification to the password expiration warning process. Now, people whose Windows passwords are due to expire will receive an email notification. The notices will be sent to the WPI email address by helpdesk@wpi.edu prior to the expiration date at 15 days prior, 7 days prior, and the day before the expiration date until the password expires or is reset.

Once the password is reset, the notices will stop. Directions for resetting the password online are provided within the notification. For help choosing a secure password, please see: http://www.wpi.edu/+Helpdesk/Accounts/securepassword.html

Should you have any questions, please free to contact the Helpdesk.

Details
On Thursday, March 6, 2008 starting at 6:00 am, the Computer Science (CS) Oracle database server will be taken offline for about two hours. The oracle database will be patched with the latest security updates.

Thank you for your understanding while we work to improve the services that we provide.

Details
A major upgrade of myWPI will address known issues and will offer additional features to myWPI users. No action is required by users. Details on new features available as a result of the upgrade will be forthcoming in April.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation as we work to improve the systems we support.

Frequently Asked Questions

Here are some answers to questions users may have about the upgrade:

What about D-term and Spring semester grades?
This upgrade has been scheduled to occur after the D-term and Spring semester course grades are due to the Registrar on May 2, 2008 at 5:00 PM (EDT). Students may check their final course grades online from the Student Web Information System at http://bannerweb.wpi.edu. Course sites remain available for 21 days after the end of a term, so students will still be able to access their D-term sites following the upgrade to review grades on individual assignments. If you need a course site to remain available for longer than 21 days after the end of D-term, send a request to myhelp@wpi.edu.

I need a course/organization/project-group site. What should I do?
Course or Organization site requests submitted using the forms found at http://www.wpi.edu/+Collaboratory/HowTo/MyWPI/forms.html will still be processed before and after the upgrade, usually within two business days. However, during the downtime, we will not be able to process any site requests. Any submissions during this time will be queued until after the upgrade is complete.

What will happen if I am working on a course or organization site prior to the upgrade? Will I lose my content?
No content will be lost in any myWPI sites. You will simply lose access to your site during the upgrade. Following the upgrade your myWPI site will appear exactly as it did before. The only major changes will be to an improved Gradebook.


Following the upgrade, will I still be able to copy content from prior courses like I could before?
Yes, prior course content will still be available for copying into current and future course sites.

What resources will be available for learning about the new features that will be available?
Prior to the upgrade, an announcement with details about the new features will be sent via e-mail. That announcement will include a link to a webpage showing the new features. Also, the myWPI Help and Support Site (http://www.wpi.edu/+Collaboratory/HowTo/MyWPI/) is being updated to reflect the changes in the upgrade. Additionally, training sessions will be offered near the beginning of E-term and the myHelp team will be happy to provide one-on-one assistance if you contact them at myhelp@wpi.edu.

Details
Following the weekend maintenance to the primary file server (enterprise.wpi.edu), there were reports of problems mapping drive letters to \\admin file shares. Services were restored at around 10 am this morning.

If drive mapping problems persist, the drive mapping may need to be disconnected and then remapped to restore connectivity. Please be sure to map shares to \\admin\fc (for on campus users), and \\admin.wpi.edu (for off campus users). More information about drive mapping can be found via: http://www.wpi.edu/+Helpdesk/Network/Mapping/

Note: the use of \\enterprise and \\enterprise.wpi.edu has been discontinued. Please replace existing enterprise drive mappings with \\admin paths mentioned above.

If you continue to experience trouble connecting, or require any assistance with using \\admin files shares please contact the Helpdesk for assistance.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused and thank you for your understanding as we worked to restore full functionality to the business file shares.

Details
All file shares should remain accessible during the maintenance.

Over the course of the past week, Helpdesk has been fielding reports of issues with the file share servers that have caused intermittent disruptions such lag times when opening ‘My Computer’, unresponsive applications and the inability to connect to shared drives. These disruptions typically have been cleared within 10-15 minutes once discovered. The maintenance planned for this weekend should resolve the situation.

In order to make sure all files are available we are making changes to how some Windows users and all Macintosh users access business file shares. These changes will take effect immediately and should be used going forward.

Macintosh Users:
When connecting to a business file share please replace “ENTERPRISE” with “SHARES” in the connection path (e.g. “smb://enterprise.wpi.edu/fc_ccc” becomes “smb://shares.wpi.edu/fc_ccc”. Users should begin making this change immediately. For assistance please visit:http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/CCC/Help/Network/Mapping/onosx.html

Windows Users:
Users connecting to file shares using the \\admin.wpi.edu or \\students.admin.wpi.edu path require no change.
Off-campus VPN users mapping shares with \\enterprise.wpi.edu should map shares using \\admin.wpi.edu or \\student.admin.wpi.edu as appropriate from now on.
For more information about mapping drives visit: http://www.wpi.edu/Academics/CCC/Help/Network/Mapping/

We apologize for the disruptions that have been caused. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation as we work to restore the stability of these services.

Details
Over the past week the CMS has been experiencing intermittent slow response times. We are working with RedDot Support to resolve this issue. Prior known resolutions have proved unsuccessful.

We will continue to work with RedDot to get this issue resolved as soon as possible.

We will notify RedDot editors and approvers once editing and approval capabilities have been restored.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation while we work to restore these services.

Details
We are scheduling a down time in order to swap out the hardware on our primary domain name server this Friday 01/25/2008 at 6:00 A.M.

The down time should only last a few minutes, and additional name servers are in place. Computers connected to the WPI network may experience network name resolution slowness or failure.

Should you have any questions, or, notice residual issues after the down time please contact the Helpdesk.

Thank you for your understanding as we work to improve the systems and services we provide to the WPI community.

Details
An upgrade of the IEEE Xplore Digital Library is scheduled for Saturday, January 26, 2008. During this deployment, the system will be unavailable for up to up to eight hours beginning at approximately 9:00 AM ET. As a result of this new release, the IEEE Xplore digital library will be enhanced with: Support of OpenURL images and custom text will enable customers to post their logo or text in their OpenURL links. Conference Proceedings weekly update alerts will allow a user to receive weekly update alerts for every conference title via either email or RSS whenever a new conference proceeding title is added to IEEE Xplore. Scitopia.org search from the IEEE Xplore home page will enable users to easily search scitopia.org, the free federated search portal to the digital libraries of leading science and technology societies. Draft standards search will let users limit their search to IEEE draft standards only from the Advanced Search page in IEEE Xplore.

We apologize in advance for any inconvenience. Please contact the library if you have any questions.

Details
As a result of poor weather, the Helpdesk is closed today. Please email the helpdesk should you require computer assistance.

If your issue is urgent, please email the Helpdesk with a high importance flag. We will do our best to get back to you as quickly as possible.

Thank you for your understanding.

Details
Before classes resume, we will deploy the Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) upgrade to all windows systems (ADMIN and STUDENT domains). IE7 provides many security updates that make using the browser safer.

This upgrade was released last year, at which time we began testing. We have verified that it works properly with all of our web services. Over the summer we deployed IE7 on all new PCs as well as the public computer labs, electronic classrooms, and ATC loaner laptops.

Some of the major features of IE7 are the following:
• Tabbed Browsing – allows for multiple web pages to be open in a single window.
• Integrated Search – integrates the ability to access various search engines (Google, Yahoo, Live, Wikipedia, and Amazon) directly from the browser.
• RSS Feeds – Allows you to subscribe to RSS syndicated web pages within Internet Explorer.
• Phishing Filter – Includes an option to check a page against known Phishing sites. Phishing is the process of using fake sites that look like real sites (such as PayPal, eBay, various banks) to acquire identity information.

For more information on IE7 check out: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/products/winfamily/ie/features.mspx

This software will be deployed via the Windows Automatic Updates and will occur overnight without the need for action on the part of our users. If you are using a third party browser then this update should not impact your ability to use that third party browser.

Existing settings such as Favorites, Proxy Settings, Trusted Sites and Pop-up settings will not be affected by the upgrade.

Please address any questions or concerns to the Helpdesk calling x5888, (508)831-5888 or e-mail helpdesk@wpi.edu.

Thank you for your cooperation as we work to ensure the safety and security of WPI information technology resources.

Details
With this upgrade, Outlook Web Access (OWA) functionality is greatly improved. For those using OWA (Not RPC over HTTP), you are now able to utilize many of the powerful features the Outlook client application has available such as:

•Create or edit personal distribution lists and server side rules
•View Office 2007 attachments as a web page
•View a monthly calendar
•Move or copy folders using a command in the right-click menu of the folder list
•Move or copy individual items in message folders by right-clicking inside the item list or by clicking an icon on the toolbar
•Use the Recover Deleted Items feature

Thank you for your understanding while we work to maintain the services we provide to the WPI community!

Details
Emergency maintenance is needed on a battery that powers a storage controller for Banner (Production). All users connected to Banner (INB or Self Service) will lose their connection at 09:00 PM. Users will again be able to access Banner again at approximately 10:00 pm tonight.

Following the downtime, all users should be able to log into Banner Production through the “Banner Production” link on www.admin.wpi.edu.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the Helpdesk at the contact information above.

Thank you for your patience while we worked to resolve this problem.

Details
This morning, users trying to access Banner INB forms received a Forbidden access error. We have corrected the security settings that are causing the problem, but those corrected settings will not take affect until we reboot the server.

All users connected to INB forms through “other banner options” will lose their connection.

Following the reboot, all users should be able to log into Banner Production INB through the “Banner Production” link once again.

Should you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the Helpdesk at the contact information above.

Thank you for your patience while we worked to rectify this problem - we appreciate it!

Details
A reboot is required in order for security updates and patches to take effect. We will reboot our systems on 11/19/2007 at 6:00 A.M. EST. Down time should only last approximately a half hour.

The following services will not be available during the planned down time: www.wpi.edu, webmail.wpi.edu, and webwork.wpi.edu

Should you have questions or concerns, please contact the Helpdesk. They will be happy to be of assistance.

Thank you for your understanding while we work to maintain the services we provide to the WPI community!

Details
The current print server “UNIPRINT” is being phased out. All print requests are being moved to our new print server “PRINTERS”. Beginning on Monday December 3rd, 2007 we will be decommissioning “UNIPRINT” and only supporting printing to “PRINTERS”. Existing printers on all computers in the ADMIN and STUDENT Domain have already been migrated to the new print server. For example, if you had an existing printer named \\uniprint\printername, it was automatically replaced by \\printers\printername.

This is the final notice for users still manually using printers on “UNIPRINT”, to change over to “PRINTERS”. It is encouraged for people who have computers not on the domain to migrate their printers to the new print server. Please utilize the following script to perform this printer change for computers not on the domain.

\\enterprise.wpi.edu\installpoint\printers\

Please follow the instructions in the ReadMe.txt file.

Details
Unfortunately, the newly restored database housing affected mailboxes had not yet had a chance to replicate to the other servers prior to the unexpected server crash. The database store was corrupted again during the crash. For this reason, these users are still unable to access their mailboxes.

Since we have a good recent backup of this data store, restoration will be quicker than it was over the weekend. We anticipate restoration will complete prior to Midnight tonight. We hope it may complete several hours pior to midnight, but we cannot be sure.

We are deeply sorry for the impact this will have on affected students who were just getting back to normal. We could not have forseen this server failure. Server failures do happen, but redundancy usually minimizes the impact. The circumstances of this failure are unique as they came at a time when this particular database store was unusually vulnerable.

Details
Wednesday morning, November 7th, just after 8:00 AM (EST), there was a database failure for a group of users in Exchange. This problem has affected STUDENT Exchange users with last names beginning with the letters D through H plus one additional student.

The database merge is complete, and all mail should be restored to the affected students' mailboxes.

We believe the cause of this failure can be tracked to our virus scanning software, which caused the corruption of the database. We have taken steps to ensure that this issue will not occur again.

We apologize for the inconvenience this outage has caused to both the students affected and the faculty, staff, students and external users who have attempted to contact them via email.

THANK YOU for the patience you have expressed while we worked to rectify this problem – we appreciate it!