March 5, 2022 Power Outage, Maintenance, and Nuvera Transition Recap

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Greetings!

It has been nearly a week since March 5 rolled around and we completed the power outage, maintenance, and Nuvera transition. Here is a quick recap of where we are today:

  • The campus has completely transitioned to Nuvera as our internet service provider along with the new pair of firewalls. This transition will help eliminate some specific issues we have had in the evenings when internet usage was at its highest. Now, a single dorm will not be able to use so much bandwidth that it affects the other dorms. This change will not eliminate all issues, and it may even surface some new ones, but it should help eliminate a class of issues plaguing campus during certain times of day.
  • The other maintenance we had planned during the power outage has been completed as well. Needed updates to our virtual server infrastructure and network switches were completed in a timely fashion and without incident.
  • Issues with the Archive server which came to light after the power outage have been mitigated. We will be rolling out similar fixes for some additional servers (not affected in the same way, but trying to stay ahead of future issues) will be rolled out in the near future.
  • An unintended network outage which cause some corruption on a database server (affecting MLC’s Moodle instance) has been mitigated for the time being. Additional work will need to take place to protect against future issues. Moodle should be working as designed now, but please be on the lookout for issues and report them.

Please keep watch for future maintenance window announcements as we continue to work through additional changes and updates. If you have any questions at all, please do not hesitate to reach out. Thank you!

March 5, 2022 Power Outage, Maintenance, and Nuvera Transition

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As already announced, on Saturday morning, March 5, 2022, power will be shut off in the WCC (classroom building) in order to facilitate changes needed to support the chiller project work. This power outage will take place between 8 and 10 am on March 5. To support this work, Network Services will need to shut down all of our equipment in our server room which will, effectively, render the entire campus network inoperable.

This outage will mean network connectivity, phones, and internet access on campus will not work. Also, no campus-hosted services (e.g. Moodle, Portal, Filr, Vibe, etc.) will be available either on, or off, campus. Everything will be down for the duration of the work and some time after power is restored as we take advantage of this opportunity to take care of some maintenance needs.

Right now the plan is to take care of the following:

  • Update the firmware on our core switches both in Network Services and in the Chapel of the Christ
  • Upgrade the virtualization host servers to the latest release of the host system (if time permits)
  • Clean up the power situation in our server room
  • Cut over from XFINITY/Comcast to Nuvera for the campus internet connection

Yes, you did not misread that final bullet point, right now the plan is to complete our transition from XFINITY/Comcast to Nuvera on the morning of March 5. This means that all campus-hosted services and internet connectivity will be making the switch that day. This will mean that if you are accessing Moodle, Portal, and other hosted services, it may take longer than just the morning for your DNS to resolve to the proper IP address.

If you have any questions about the work or transitions coming up, please reach out to Network Services. Thanks, and God bless your work!

Filr 4.2 Upgrade Coming June 3

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Greetings!

Micro Focus Filr enables those who are working away from campus to have access to campus file services through a web browser, desktop application, or mobile application. Micro Focus recently released an updated version of Filr and we are planning on upgrading to that version on June 3, 2020.

The upgrade should not take long, and if you normally utilize Filr through the desktop or web application, the differences should be minimal. However, one major update is that the web interface for Filr has been completely revamped, as soon in the screenshot here:

Functionality should all be present, but navigation to different areas may be changed. You can see that some links are along the left side and different areas may also have different tabs located in the main area. It will be an adjustment, but overall it should be a cleaner and more modern look and provide a more modern framework to add features and introduce improvements in the future.

If you have any questions after the upgrade, please reach out to MLC Network Services and we will do the best we can to help you. Thank you!

Update 6/3/2020: The upgrade is now complete and you can find a video tour of the new web client online now as well.

ISP Scheduled Maintenance: September 24, 2019

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Our internet service provider (ISP) will be undergoing scheduled maintenance on September 24, 2019 from 12 – 3 am. During this time there may be outages to services both on and off campus but the outages should be temporary.

If you have any specific questions, comments, or concerns, please contact MLC Network Services. Thank you!

June 4, 2019 Scheduled Maintenance: Internet

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On Tuesday, June 4, 2019, from midnight to 6 pm our internet service provider will be completing maintenance. This maintenance may take up to 3 hours. This scheduled maintenance will affect internet access here on campus and access to our hosted services from outside of the campus.

Please contact our office if you have any questions.

Comcast/XFINITY Scheduled Maintenance for Oct 20, 2017

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Announced today, Comcast/XFINITY will be performance maintenance on the internet connections for the campus Thursday morning, October 20, 2017, between 12 and 2 am. Total downtime should be no more than 10 minutes. Please be aware that access to the internet from campus will be impacted and access to services hosted on campus (Portal, Moodle, Filr, etc.) will not be available off campus.

This maintenance window is in addition to the announced maintenance on Oct 5, 2017 between 1 to 5 am.

Make accommodations if this will impact any work you need to do. Thank you.

Comcast/XFINITY Scheduled Maintenance for Oct 5, 2017

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Announced today, Comcast/XFINITY will be performance maintenance on the internet connections for the campus Thursday morning, October 5, 2017, between 1 and 5 am. Total downtime should be no more than 1 hour. Please be aware that access to the internet from campus will be impacted and access to services hosted on campus (Portal, Moodle, Filr, etc.) will not be available off campus.

Make accommodations if this will impact any work you need to do. Thank you.