Iowa State University

ITInformation Technology

Critical Event Log

Current Events

Thursday, May 10, 2012
9:47 pm Blackboard Learn upgrade Completed
Blackboard Learn will be out of service on Thursday, May 10, from 6:00am to approximately 10:00am. During this time the Learn software will be upgraded from version SP7 to SP8.
SP8 info can be fount at
http://www.celt.iastate.edu/elearning/?page_id=6896

Update is finished, but there is a major background update process running in the database server that is slowing down access.
2:47 pm ISU Mac SUS upgrade Completed
The ISU Mac SUS server will be upgraded to Mac OS X Server 10.6.8 and configured to host Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) software updates.

Currently, the ISU Mac SUS server only hosts software up to Mac OS X 10.6.8 (Snow Leopard). Apple has released a knowledge based article that shows how to configure a Mac OS X 10.6 Server to also host Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) software updates. Do do this, it is required that the SUS server run Mac OS X Server 10.6.8.

On Thursday, May 10, between 2pm to 4pm, the ISU Mac SUS server will be upgraded to Mac OS X Server 10.6.8 and configured to host Mac OS X 10.7 (Lion) software updates. The ISU Mac SUS server will be unavailable during this period.

It is not expected that the full 2 hours will be needed.
6:59 am Name Server Maintenance Completed
Maintenance work will be done on all the name servers on Thursday, May 10, from 6:00am to 7:00am. No downtime is expected on any of the servers.
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
11:53 pm Storage maintenance Completed
Storage maintenance will be performed the evening of Tuesday May 8th. There may be a degradation of performance associated with the maintenance, but no interruptions are expected.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
2:59 pm NetID account creation and password changing temporarily unavailable Completed
Due to a hardware issue with one of the authentication servers, NetID account creation and password changing will be temporarily unavailable. All other authentication services will fail over to other servers and continue to work as expected.

This issue will last up to 30 minutes while we perform diagnostics.
Tuesday, Apr 24, 2012
10:25 am Storage Maintenance Completed
The hardware issue that prevented the previous maintenance from finishing has been resolved. Maintenance will be finished this evening.
Wednesday, Apr 25, 2012
9:06 am Partial Network Disruption in Beardshear Resolved
As of 8:00 a.m. Wednesday, April 25, Beardshear Hall had an unexpected network disruption. While ITS Networks and Communications staff are looking into the issue, an estimated time to restoration of networking service is unknown.
Monday, Apr 23, 2012
6:43 am Multiple-building power outage affecting parts of the campus network Resolved
As of 8:50pm Monday, April 23rd, multiple buildings on the north part of main campus have lost electrical service and remain without power.

To our knowledge, the power outage includes, but may not be limited to, the following locations:

Gilman Hall
Hach Hall
TASF
Zaffrano Hall
Science II
Industrial Ed II
Communications Building
Molecular Biology
Carver Co-Lab
Armory
Printing and Publications Building
Genetics Lab
Seed Science
Soil Tilth
Swine Research Center
Insectory


While IT Services Networks and Communications is in contact with FP&M electrical utilities staff, estimated time to restoration of electrical power is unknown.

While the majority of networking equipment in the listed buildings are operating from emergency generators, other network equipment locations have battery-only UPS power equipped for several more hours of operation. Once battery power is depleted, networking services will be lost until building power can be restored.

IT Services will continue to monitor the situation and provide updates as available.
Thursday, Apr 19, 2012
6:41 am Virtual Server Maintenance Completed
Network connections will be moved to allow for maintenance to the VM infrastructure. No outages are expected based on previous experience, however, a sub-second network disruption is possible for VMs during this time. Individual server owners have been contacted.
Wednesday, Apr 18, 2012
3:08 pm Storage Maintenance part 2 Completed
Maintenance will be performed to resolve a hardware issue with a storage device. This will be done in three parts and is not expected to impact any production storage services.

The maintenance will be performed at the following times:
Part 1 Tuesday 4/17/2012 at 5:30pm
Part 2 Wednesday 4/18/2012 at 3:00am
Part 3 Thursday 4/19/2012 at 3:00am
1:34 pm CyFiles DFS Permission Update Completed
Permissions on the CyFiles DFS namespace will be updated to reflect standard CyFiles server permissions. No user impact is expected.
Tuesday, Apr 17, 2012
1:39 am Storage Maintenance part 1 Completed
Maintenance will be performed to resolve a hardware issue with a storage device. This will be done in three parts and is not expected to impact any production storage services.

The maintenance will be performed at the following times:
Part 1 Tuesday 4/17/2012 at 5:30pm
Part 2 Wednesday 4/18/2012 at 3:00am
Part 3 Thursday 4/19/2012 at 3:00am
1:18 pm CyMail Disruption Resolved
Iowa State's CyMail service, hosted by Google, is experiencing issues for some users. For the most up to date information, please see the Google App Dashboard located at http://www.google.com/appstatus.
Friday, Apr 13, 2012
2:23 pm Audix VoiceMail Outage Resolved
IT Services is currently working to resolve an outage of the Audix VoiceMail system. Users who attempt to call 6-6245 (6-MAIL) will hear a ring, but the system will be unresponsive.

Support staff is currently looking into the outage, however, an up time is not yet known.
Thursday, Apr 5, 2012
6:37 am Food Sciences Network Equipment Upgrade Completed
ITS Networks & Communications staff will be upgrading ethernet switches in the Food Sciences Building on the morning of Thursday, April 5 starting at approximately 6:00 a.m.

During the upgrade, data service in the building will be temporarily unavailable. Actual downtime for each connection will be much shorter than the specified window, but users should expect limited connectivity at any time during the upgrade.

The upgrade is expected to be complete by 7:00 a.m.
6:14 am Gerdin Network Equipment Upgrade Completed
ITS Networks & Communications staff will be upgrading ethernet switches in the Gerdin Business Building on the morning of Thursday, April 5 starting at approximately 5:30 a.m.

During the upgrade, data service in the building will be temporarily unavailable. Actual downtime for each connection will be much shorter than the specified window, but users should expect limited connectivity at any time during the upgrade.

The upgrade is expected to be complete by 7:00 a.m.
Wednesday, Apr 4, 2012
11:05 pm itsnas1d datamover reboots Completed
The datamovers on itsnas1d will be rebooted for maintenance. Minimal interruptions of access to orgfiles, cyfiles and researchfiles are possible.
11:06 am SecurID Server Software Updates Completed
Software updates will be applied to the RSA SecurID Server rsa-1. During this time authentications will be handled by the replica server, rsa-2, but no database modifications such as assigning users/tokens, PIN/password changes, or provisioning agents will be possible.

Once rsa-1 is updated, the same updates will be applied to rsa-2. Updates to rsa-2 will not impact service availability.
Tuesday, Apr 10, 2012
1:28 pm Brief Moira Downtime Open
The Moira service will be down briefly to install updates to prepare for the upcoming change to how "title" is presented in Active Directory.

The actually outage should be no more than a few minutes.

This will affect many functions access via ASW, for example:
* the Registration of Net-IDs
* the NetReg-istration of Computers
* changes to List Memberships
Friday, Mar 30, 2012
11:21 pm File system maintenance Completed
We will be performing maintenance on Cyfiles, Orgfiles and Researchfiles. There will be a brief outage to the Orgfiles_LAS file system and may be brief outages to other file systems during this maintenance.
Thursday, Mar 29, 2012
9:10 am CyFiles Update Open
Tonight at 9PM IT Services Storage Administrators will be running an update on the CyFiles file service. This update is a follow-up to an earlier update done this month. This update will assure that a user owns all files in their home directory. This change will not affect currently connected users and users will not necessarily see any changes.
Wednesday, Mar 28, 2012
3:46 pm BlackBerry Enterprise Server Outage Resolved
The BlackBerry Enterprise Server is currently not communicating with the Exchange Enterprise Server. Staff are aware of the problem. No uptime is known.
Tuesday, Mar 27, 2012
9:07 am OCS Maintenance Completed
OCS Maintenance will be performed Tuesday (3/27) morning at 5am. Users should not be impacted.
8:45 am DNS updates Completed
A software update will be applied to the anycast DNS servers and an internal configuration change will be applied to all DNS servers. Users shouldn't expect any DNS service outages.
Sunday, Mar 25, 2012
7:49 am Exchange maintenance Completed
I need to apply security updates to the Exchange 2010 environment. No downtime for users is expected.
Saturday, Mar 24, 2012
7:49 am Exchange maintenance Completed
I need to apply security updates to the Exchange 2010 environment. No downtime for users is expected.
Thursday, Mar 22, 2012
3:58 pm Mac Software Update Server Certificate Expiration Completed
The certificate used by Apple to sign many updates for OS X Lion and Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard expires on March 23, 2012.

An Apple KB article about his issue says that we need to remove all updates signed with the expired certificates and redownload the updates from Apple.

There may be some software updates that will not be available today during this process. No time estimate is available when all updates will be available again.