November 2013

Both of the CS LDAP authentication servers went down this morning due to hardware failure. The LDAP servers provide authentication for e-mail, SSH access to public CS servers, and the CS file system. We are working to restore the servers. We currently don\’t have a time when the service will be restored. Updates will be posted to this site as we make progress repairing the servers.

8:30 AM Update – The servers are now booting again and we are working to restore the LDAP software and the LDAP database.

9:20 AM Update – The LDAP software is now working and we are working on restoring the LDAP database.

10:20 AM Update – The LDAP database has been restored from an older version dating back to September. We are trying to update to the latest backup from last night.

11:11 AM Update – We were unsuccessful in restoring to a later version of the LDAP database. If you created a CS account or changed your password after September 24, 2013, you will need to contact CS Staff to update your password.

Due to a failure of our LDAP servers, the work announced below has been postponed to Tuesday, December 10, 2013, from 7:30am-8:00am (10 Gb/sec link) and Thursday, December 19, 2013, from 6:30am-8:30am (switch updates).

Who is affected:
All users of CS Department wired networks, including network users in the CS Building, 221 Nassau St, Sherrerd Hall, Friend Center, and 151 Forrestal Road (the HPCRC).

This outage will also affect the OIT wireless network ONLY in the CS Building.

What is happening:
During this time, the Department\’s network uplink (to the main campus, and onward to the greater internet) will be upgraded from its current 1Gbps link to a 10Gbps link.

Also during this downtime, several network switches will be updated to newer versions of their operating systems.

Actual outages are expected to be much shorter than the full window, but outages local to any particular location will occur at various times throughout the window for 5 to 10 minutes at a time.

Why is it happening:
The campus uplink upgrade will enable greater opportunities for collaboration by increasing the rate at which data can be moved across the network. This will enable high-speed data transfer between CS Department systems and systems in other departments on campus and, in some circumstances, other remote locations.

The switch software updates will address a few minor bugs which have come up lately.