Please note that this report pertains to activity during October 2011.
There was an error with Alfresco on 04 Oct that resulted in some users not seeing thumbnails or previews when uploading new documents. Shortly afterwards, the server became unresponsive, necessitating an immediate restart. We took this opportunity to bring forward a planned change to add more RAM to the server.
The web team are further developing the Xibo digital signage solution to consider devolved responsibility to key users to manage content. We are working towards replacing the paper notices.
We upgraded the version of GPFS on the cluster to support cross mounting of all the GPFS filesystems starting with the SCILLS nodes on 13 Oct and WebServices nodes on 25 Oct, during the weekly maintenance period.
After many years of service Paul O'Connor has left us to pursue an exciting new post with a major publishing company. We wish him and his family well for the future. In the meantime we have taken on an experienced contractor, Steven Fellows, to provide Apple support while we recruit a replacement.
Our Windows 7 migration project is progressing division by division. We have completed migration for CAHId, SLSL&T, MMB, CSI, and recently MRC. We are progressing migrations for GRE, BCDD and for support staff. Our parallel activity introducing Windows terminal servers for divisions has completed one for BCDD and GRE divisions, MAJF group and also support staff. We are progressing servers for MMB division and our Finance team.
We have successfully completed our evaluation of Remote Desktop Gateway services for LIFESCI-AD Terminal Servers and planning deployment by the end of Q4 2011. This will mean that SSL-capable RDP clients can connect without first establishing a VPN connection, and so users will be able to use these servers more easily from home and other institutions while travelling.
The Filemaker web server went offline on 20 Oct, while the database server for Filemaker client users was unaffected. We restarted the web service to restore normal operation for web users. We are evaluating performance using Filemaker as a front-end to databases hosted elsewhere, such as the new Alumni capture form.
Between 13 Oct and 28 Oct (and ongoing) we reported updates from ICS regarding the long-standing problems with their eDirectory portal and inconsistent updating of Groupwise email lists. This problem has been ongoing for most of the year and as yet there is no plan forthcoming from ICS regarding the maintenance of email lists for Life Sciences or the University when we migrate to Office 365. The matter has been raised with ICS and with the Information Management Committee.
In addition, there was an incident on 18 Oct where the Groupwise server or post office agent for Life Sciences stopped responding. This was resolved by ICS the following morning. There was also problem where Groupwise email to and from external addresses was delayed for several hours on 24 Oct.
The email migration project, dMail, is now planning to migrate staff and student mail between 6-9 Jan 2012 and "to have the dMail service fully operational by the start of semester 2". More information is available from the project's blog at: http://blog.dundee.ac.uk/dundeemail/.
We intend to ensure that all mail is copied over but it is vital that all Groupwise archived mail is transferred to our central gwarchive server. If you are not sure of the state of your Groupwise archived mail please log a call with Life Sciences Computing. The University also intends to provide a preview of Office 365 to all staff in December. Proxy rights as well as sorting and filtering rules are not transferred so this will give staff time to recreate these before the actual switch over in January.
All Windows machines and Macs running OS X 10.5 and above will be able to access Office 365 Exchange Online via the web application using a web browser. The best way on Windows is to use Outlook 2010, which will only be available on Windows 7 machines. If you have a Windows XP machine at work and wish to use Outlook 2010 please log a call to upgrade to Windows 7 as soon as possible. On Macs with OS X 10.5.8 or higher there is a choice between Outlook 2011 and Apple's Mail/iCal applications. Most modern Linux machines will be able to use the web application and in addition IMAP access is also supported.
We carried out maintenance operations over two consecutive weeks, each during the Tuesday morning maintenance period, and with minimal to zero user disruption. The first was on 11 Oct where security updates were applied to the edge firewall (with no interruption) and to the VPN service with only existing VPN connections disconnected at 07:30, able to reconnect immediately afterwards. The second was on 18 Oct where the fibre optic network links to the rest of the University and Internet were moved back on new connections, re-routed around the new CAHId building works. This restores our multiple network connections using physically divergent paths.
On 24 Oct ICS advised that the staff Cisco IP phones around campus were prematurely set a week early to adhere to GMT. ICS logged a call with their external supplier but were unable to apply a fix until the rest of the UK changed time on 30 Oct.
As part of our Windows 7 project, we have also developed a new password management tool to support the requirement for a new directory, LIFESCI-AD, as well as to help synchronise password changes between UoD and Life Sciences passwords. The best way to change your password is via the Life Sciences Directory website at: https://directory.lifesci.dundee.ac.uk/password/change
There are no issues to report.
There are no issues to report.
On 12 Oct the Mascot search stopped responding to requests. We restarted the service to resolve the problem.
We moved the JRS lab's storage to the new Alloy storage on 11 Oct, and also carried out a major upgrade on Saturday 15 Oct which consisted of upgrading the Storwise v7000 SSD array and the IBM SAN Volume Controller (SVC). We also upgraded the core SAN fabric firmware.
There was an incident with the Alloy storage on 11 Oct which was resolved by restarting the node. In addition we had to reset a number of file permissions which took significant time to process the 2.5 million objects in the NMR data share, but was completed by the end of the day. On 15 Oct one of the storage nodes providing access to the Alloy storage platform crashed overnight and the other nodes in the cluster took over the service, however sensitive applications like Firefox may have needed a restart.
On 17 Oct we planned to upgrade tape capacity by 440 slots and performance by adding a further 2 tape drives to our Ninewells site. Unfortunately had to be postponed until 19 Oct, during which time HSM and backup/restore services were offline.
On 25 Oct we carried out configuration changes to the LMF which now allow us to cross mount GPFS filesystems.
On 28 Oct our links to the offsite copy of our backup in Ninewells were restored to a separate duct, ensuring we have 2 sets of divergent paths from CLS to Ninewells. We are grateful to our colleagues in ICS for managing this change with us.
We are progressing project work to migrate current static sites to the College's Drupal instance and standalone sites to Aegir hosted Drupal sites - approx 20 sites have been migrated so far. We are also investigating the feasibility of providing a self service web deployment tool based on Aegir to standardise functionality wherever possible, and we are evaluating Apache Solr and custom solutions that allow for sharing of content and enhanced search facilities across all sites.
We have obtained development access to the REST APIs and conducted initial trials to integrate the Pure CRIS system with Drupal based sites.
We have improved functionality of LSC/Mantis integration to improve user experience when interacting with the LSC team. We have also received interest from some of our service areas in using this improved design for managing their ticketing activity.
The new Life Sciences Computing website uses this system and we welcome feedback on the design and content. We have integrated the IT support forms and ticket listings into the new website, so that you can report new requests and also follow our progress on your support tickets.
Information in the new website is public by default but there are confidential areas where you need to login, using your Life Sciences password, before you can view this information. Note that the IT reports are now also public, so will be visible when you are off-site without requiring login.
IT incidents and notices of planned maintenance will be posted to the home page, and are also copied to our new Twitter account, @lifescicomp, so please follow us if you want to be kept informed of issues.
