On Saturday, October 29, 2011, OIT will have a scheduled network outage from 5:00am to 11:00am EDT.

OIT will be replacing a core component of the campus network infrastructure the morning of Saturday, October 29, 2011, from 5:00am to 11:00am. This is the first Saturday of fall recess.

During the work, the CS network will be disconnected from the outside world. If you are in the CS building during this time, you will be able to access local CS resources. E-mail in or out of the department will be queued and delivered when connectivity is restored.

For details, see the OIT posting.

On Tuesday, November 1, 2011, we will have a scheduled downtime from 4:00am to 8:00am EDT.

This downtime affects all users of the department\’s computing and networking infrastructure.

Scheduled work includes:

• Security/bug-fix updates to Zimbra E-mail systems
• Security/bug-fix/configuration updates to Apache/PHP web servers
• Minor configuration update to support connection to new HPCRC facility
• Minor configuration update to facilitate ongoing transition to new file server

During some of the 4am-8am window, most of the services (e.g., E-mail, web, cycle servers) will be unavailable. E-mail destined to the department will be queued and then delivered at the end of the maintenance window.

Due to a hardware problem with our VMWare Infrastructure, the IMAP and Webmail service for the department is currently offline. We are actively working to remedy the situation, but do not presently have an ETA for a fix. More information will be posted as we have it.

Update (23:54): The broken host has been successfully removed from operation, and things should be working on another host now. IMAP and Webmail service should be restored in the next few minutes.

Update (00:00): IMAP and Webmail service have been restored. It may take a short while for queued e-mails to be delivered, but no messages should be lost.

The University as a whole is having network connectivity problems. More details are here.

On Thursday, March 31, 2011, we will have a scheduled downtime from 4:00am to 8:00am EDT.

This downtime affects all users of the department\’s computing and networking infrastructure.

Scheduled work includes:

• Final work to replace core network switch/router
• Updates to web server provisioning and configuration

During some of the 4am-8am window, most of the services (e.g., E-mail, web, cycle servers) will be unavailable. E-mail destined to the department will be queued and then delivered at the end of the maintenance window.

As of 11:30 PM on Thursday, January 20, the virtual web server, virtweb, is unavailable due to memory problems. This issue impacts all project-related web sites within the CS Department. Correcting the problem requires on-site access to the host and will be addressed on Friday morning.

We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause.

UPDATE: 1/21/2011 – One or more processes on the virtweb server had a problem with run-away memory allocation requests. The server was rebooted this morning and all of the web sites hosted on it are now available.

On Saturday, January 22, 2011, from 6:00am to 9:00am EST, there will be a power shutdown in the CS Building. The shutdown will include the electrical panels that supply most of the power to the building including lighting and power to all the offices, hallways, and lab spaces, as well as the elevator.

Please note that this means that all office and lab computers need to be cleanly shutdown before the start of work early Saturday morning. For most users, we expect that you will shutdown your machine(s) when you leave Friday afternoon/evening.

Also note that the power to the main machine room (room 218) is on a separate electrical feed and will remain operational. Therefore, services such as e-mail, web sites, cycle servers (including the c2 cluster), and remote access will not be interrupted.

This work is part of an ongoing project to increase the power and cooling capacity of our basement machine room (room 002).

On Thursday, January 20, 2011, we will have a scheduled downtime from 4:00am to 8:00am EST.

This downtime affects all users of the department\’s computing and networking infrastructure.

Scheduled work includes:

• Upgrade of penguins, cycles, and other systems to CentOS 5.5
• Updates to Zimbra
• Upgrade the print server
• Maintenance/re-configuration of some of our networking infrastructure

During some of the 4am-8am window, most of the services (e.g., E-mail, web, cycle servers) will be unavailable. E-mail destined to the department will be queued and then delivered at the end of the maintenance window.

The other work is part of the normal maintenance of the department infrastructure.

12/21, 7:30am: The database server that feeds the main department web pages is having trouble. We are investigating.

12/21, 8:00am: The database server is back up and the web pages are operating normally.

12/22, 1:15pm: We have identified the root cause and are implementing a fix. The main department website may operate in a degraded mode from time to time today.

2:20pm: Our e-mail service is currently down. We are working with the vendor to correct the problem.

2:30pm: E-mail is operating again.

2:45pm: The ProofPoint server is currently not blocking Spam e-mail we are working with the vendor to correct the issue.

3:30pm: The ProofPoint server is now blocking Spam e-mail again.

3:30pm: E-mail is operating normally.