• Two Border Router reboots will affect all inbound and outbound UM traffic. All internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. This also affects USFS Internet 2 access.
• The WAN router that connects all UM remote locations to the main campus in Missoula will be rebooted concurrently with the Border Router reboots. All remote campus locations will lose connectivity during this outage. These include: UM-MTech Butte, UM-Western, UM-Helena, UM-MSO-COTE, UM-MSO-COTW, Rural Institute, Palmer, FLBS, FMRC, Bitterroot College Program.

Friday, June 1, midnight – Monday morning, June 4, 8:00 a.m.:  UM Banner upgrade

• IT will upgrade the Banner Oracle databases from Oracle 10g to Oracle 11g.  During this time the following UM Banner services/systems will be unavailable: ADMN, HCADMN, CyberBear, MyUMH, GrizMart

Other activities

 Friday, June 1, all day: IT-TSS annual staff retreat

• On Friday, June 1, all IT Technology Support Services staff members will be out of the office attending the annual all-day TSS retreat and will be unavailable. However, IT Central (SS 120; 243-HELP) will remain open and staffed with student employees to cover minimal services.  NOTE: TSS includes the following groups: Web Technologies, Presentation Technologies, and Client Support Services.  We appreciate your patience as we participate in this essential activity.

Specific services and entities affected include: 

All voice or data circuits provided by Blackfoot or CenturyLINK: This will affect all the independent businesses in the UC, including the UM Bookstore.

Telephone and voicemail service: This will affect the main campus, COT East Campus, COT West campus, Rural Institute (SW Higgins), Mansfield Center at the Palmer Complex, the research center at Fort Missoula and University Villages Rental Office at #1 Elkhorn Court.

ONLY Public Safety, emergency phones, fire alarm dialers, and elevator phones will work during the outage. Point of Rescue telephones located within campus buildings will not be operational during this outage.

During the outage, emergency calls can be made to UM Campus Police from emergency phones located across campus, or alternately in the case of a life threatening emergency, use a cell phone to call 911.

• · Banner maintenance: Banner will be down Tuesday, May 1, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance. The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, UMDW, REPORT, TESTRED, HCADMN, HLNRED, MyUMH, AUADMN, AUDW, AUTST8 and ALUMRED. Banner users should limit batch jobs and log off by 5:00 pm. CyberBear and MyUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.

 Tuesday, May 1, 5:15 p.m. – until completed

• ftp.umt.edu: Routine maintenance on the anonymous ftp server. During this time access to ftp.umt.edu will be unavailable. Downtime is expected for one to two hours.

 Wednesday, May 2, 6:00 a.m. until complete (approx. 10 minutes)

• Network router reboots: IT network engineers will reboot three of the UM core network routers at 6:00 a.m. Wednesday May 2^nd, 2012.  All network connectivity on the UM network will be lost for approximately 10 minutes while this occurs.  This includes all UM campuses and locations. 

 Wednesday, May 2, 5:00 - 7:00 p.m.

• Cascade server migration: IT web administrators will perform Cascade migration to a new server. During this time access to Cascade will be unavailable.

Thursday, May 3, 3:00 a.m.

• Internet outage:  There will be an outage on UM's link in Minneapolis on Thursday 5/3/12 at 3:00am MDT that will be under 15 minutes.  This will disrupt UM's primary commodity internet connection (Cogent).  We will failover to our backup link to Visionnet in Missoula but there will be a short interruption in service of about one minute when the failover occurs.  Traffic will automatically fail back over to our primary link afterwards and there will be no other interruptions after the first minute or so. This will affect all campuses.  Traffic affected will only be part of our commodity traffic as our link to Seattle will still be working.  The effect will be a partial one minute outage on campus.
• 

Thank you for your cooperation.

Wiki.umt.edu: All UM wikis at wiki.umt.edu will be unavailable during this time due to necessary maintenance.

Thursday, April 12, midnight - 4:00 a.m.

Optimum will perform fiber work in Missoula during this time. We will lose connectivity to Seattle, Minneapolis, and Billings during this downtime. We will failover to our backup connection to Vision Net. There will be a short outage of a few minutes while the failover occurs around midnight. There should be no outage when the work is completed. Most of our internet connectivity should be working during the outage except for:

• DCC (Dawson Community College) will lose all connectivity to Missoula and some internet access.
• FMRC (Fort Missoula Research Center) at UM will lose all connectivity during this outage.
•  UM Commercial Network (UM Bookstore and Adams Center ticket system) will lose all internet connectivity during this outage (including Paciolan VPN) but communication between the UM network and the commercial network with not be affected.

Thank you for your cooperation.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue caused. Questions may be directed to IT Central, 243-HELP (4357).

We will need to reboot the router that had the problem tomorrow morning at 5:50 a.m., which will result in internet downtime for about 10 minutes.

If you continue to experience internet connectivity issues, please let us know at IT Central, 243-HELP. Thank you for your patience this morning while we resolved this unexpected issue.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may cause.

• Banner maintenance: Banner will be down Monday, April 2, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance. The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, UMDW, REPORT, TESTRED, HCADMN, HLNRED, MyUMH, AUADMN, AUDW, AUTST8 and ALUMRED. Banner users should limit batch jobs and log off by 5:00 pm. CyberBear and MyUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.

Tuesday, April 3, 5:50 a.m. for approximately 10 minutes: Three routers will be rebooted

• Two Border Router reboots will affect all inbound and outbound UM traffic. All internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. This also affects USFS Internet 2 access as well as Dawson Community College (DCC).
• The WAN router that connects all UM remote locations to the main campus in Missoula will be rebooted concurrently with the Border Router reboots. All remote campus locations will lose connectivity during this outage. These include: UM-MTech Butte, UM-Western, UM-Helena, UM-MSO-COTE, UM-MSO-COTW, Rural Institute, FLBS, FMRC, Bitterroot College Program.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Questions about this activity may be directed to italk@umontana.edu.

Thank you.

NOTE: Originally UM telephone and voice mail services were scheduled to be impacted by this activity. However, due to unforeseen circumstances, the telephone and voice mail service outage has been cancelled and will be rescheduled at a later date.

Computing systems outage

Computing systems, including Banner, employee email and all services that use the NetID for authentication (Moodle, CyberBear, UMConnect, et. al) will be unavailable beginning at 7 a.m. on March 31. The outage is expected to last 5-6 hours. The purpose of this outage is for facilities personnel to perform work on the electrical transformer located in the Liberal Arts building, which houses one of the central IT server rooms.

March 31 is the first day of spring break. The date was selected for the electrical work to minimize impact on campus operations.

Questions may be directed to italk@umontana.edu.

We apologize for any inconvenience this unplanned outage caused.

Commodity internet connectivity. Our Commodity internet provider with perform fiber work in North Dakota that will cause loss of connectivity to Minneapolis. While the link fails over to our local provider, some commodity internet access will be unavailable for approximately one minute.

Tuesday, March 27, 5:30 p.m. until complete

Telephone and voice mail software upgrade. Tomorrow evening, Tuesday, March 27, beginning at 5:30 p.m. until complete, technicians will upgrade the University’s phone and voice mail systems. During this time there will be two brief phone outages (5-10 minutes each) and one 1-2 hour Call Pilot voice mail outage.  In addition, the IP phones at the Palmer Street location will be down an additional 2 hours. Work is expected to be completed by late evening. This activity needs to be completed prior to Saturday’s scheduled downtime (see below).

 Saturday, March 31, beginning at 6:00 a.m.

Campus electrical work that will affect IT services. Work on electrical equipment in the Liberal Arts and Social Sciences buildings will result in service disruptions to campus telephone and computing systems. For more information, visit umt.edu/it/announcements

The Password Reset feature on the CAS login page (login.umt.edu) is now available.

***************

We are currently experiencing an issue with the password reset feature on the CAS login page (login.umt.edu). Users are unable to change their NetID passwords and see a “CAS is unavailable” screen when attempting to do so. IT administrators are researching the issue for a solution to this problem.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you. We will provide updates as soon as they are available.

Telephone outage

Telephone and voice mail service will be unavailable to the mountain and COT campus as well as extended University entities beginning at 6 a.m. on March 31st. The telephone outage is expected to last 8-10 hours. The purpose of this outage is to replace the aging backup power supply system for the campus telephone system.

Specific services and entities affected include:

• All voice or data circuits provided by Blackfoot or CenturyLINK:  This will affect all the independent businesses in the UC, including the UM Bookstore.
• Telephone and voicemail service:  This will affect the main campus, COT East Campus, COT West campus, Rural Institute (SW Higgins), Mansfield Center at the Palmer Complex, the research center at Fort Missoula and University Villages Rental Office at #1 Elkhorn Court. Provisions are being made for emergency telephone service only on the main campus. Public Safety, emergency phones, fire alarm dialers, and elevator phones only will work during the outage.

During the outage, emergency calls can be made from emergency phones located across campus, or by using a cell phone to call 911.

Computing systems outage

Computing systems, including Banner, employee email and all services that use the NetID for authentication (Moodle, CyberBear, UMConnect, et. al) will be unavailable beginning at 7 a.m. on March 31. The outage is expected to last 5-6 hours. The purpose of this outage is for facilities personnel to perform work on the electrical transformer located in the Liberal Arts building, which houses one of the central IT server rooms.

 March 31 is the first day of spring break. The date was selected for the electrical work to minimize impact on campus operations.

Questions may be directed to italk@umontana.edu.

• Lists.umt.edu. IT administrators need to relocate the LISTSERV application to a different server. Access to the LISTSERV web interface and posting messages will be unavailable during this activity.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Thank you for your patience.

We will update you on this issue as information becomes available.

• Banner maintenance:  Banner will be down Monday, March 12, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance. The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, UMDW, REPORT, TESTRED, HCADMN, HLNRED, MyUMH, AUADMN, AUDW, AUTST8 and ALUMRED. Banner users should limit batch jobs and log off by 5:00 pm. CyberBear and MyUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.
• Java plug-in: Also tonight the Java plug-in will be upgraded on the Banner servers to Java Version 6 Update 31 so please check with your users to make sure their PCs are upgraded by the end of the day today (…more info about Java).

Monday, March 12, 5:00 p.m. – 5:30 p.m.

• IT server maintenance: During this time, the following services will be unavailable.
  • lists.umt.edu (Mailing lists hosted on IT's listserv (lists.umt.edu) won’t be able to send out messages and the list web interface will be unavailable.)
  • sloth.umt.edu (sftp server)
  • avarice.umt.edu (anonymous ftp server)

Thank you for your cooperation.

• IT web administrators will perform the final migration steps (old to new hardware) of the database for the Events calendar and Wikis (wikis.umt.edu). These services will be unavailable during this activity.

Future activities:

Java update to Banner Support website: March 12

• During the March 12 Banner maintenance activity, IT will update the Banner Support website and Banner server to the recently released version: 1.6.31. Please continue to work with your Banner users to update their Java version by March 12. Additional information and download steps are available on the Banner Support website.
• 

UM Home page complex conversion (umt.edu): Spring break

• As was announced earlier this semester, we have a new version of umt.edu (available at: beta.umt.edu) that will be released to campus during Spring break. We thank you for your valuable feedback about the new site. If you haven’t had a chance to check out the site, we encourage you to do so before the conversion occurs. Click here to view a complete list of new features . After the conversion, there will be differences and possibly some broken links, and we will want to hear from you. Prior to Spring break we will share with you the process for communicating issues and/or concerns. Stay tuned!

Thank you.

• IT web administrators will be migrating the database systems for the Events calendar and Wikis (wikis.umt.edu). These services will be unavailable during this activity.

Tuesday, February 28, 5:55 a.m. for approximately 15 minutes: Three routers will be rebooted

1. Two Border Router reboots will affect all inbound and outbound traffic. Internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. This also affects USFS Internet 2 access.
2. The WAN router that connects all UM remote locations to the main campus in Missoula will be rebooted concurrently with the Border Router reboots. All remote campus locations will lose connectivity during this outage. These include: UM-MTech Butte, UM-Western, UM-Helena, UM-COTE, UM-COTW, Rural Institute, Palmer, CRMW (railroad station location), FLBS, FMRC, Bitterroot College Program. Total downtime for these concurrent reboots should be about 8 minutes.

Tuesday, February 28: 7:00 – 8:00 a.m. : Select Survey /Crystal reports downtime

• Access to Select Survey and Crystal reports will be unavailable during this downtime.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Thank you for your cooperation. We apologize for this short notice of this communication. Our third party ISP informed us of this necessary work today.

Please work with your Banner users to update their Java versions by March 12. Updating to this new version won’t affect current Banner access. Additional information and download steps are available on the Banner Support website.

A message will be sent directly to Banner users tomorrow, February 16, alerting them to this upgrade.  They will be directed to contact their IT departmental administrator if they are unable to perform the update themselves. 

For questions or concerns, please contact Kathy Garramone or Diane Norem.

Thank you for your assistance with this process.

Select Survey will be unavailable for approximately 20 minutes for hardware maintenance. Select Survey access and surveys will be unavailable during this down time.

Miscellaneous items:

Beta.umt.edu – seeking your input

We have released the beta version of The University of Montana’s new home page complex. This new version offers new and improved tools as well as enhanced speed and availability. We are seeking feedback on the changes. To help the effort, visit beta.umt.edu, use the tools (check them…see if you can break them) and click on the feedback tab on the left side of the screen to report your experiences.  …more about the changes

 Community Hub

Community Hub is a new searchable directory of UM-related social media channels that can be used to find UM content on Facebook, Twitter, Flickr and YouTube. It also catalogs UM blogs and email listservs. Sites are searchable by keywords and categorized by subject and social media platform. Visit Community Hub at umt.edu/communityhub.

Java Plug-in update - rescheduled

Last week we informed you that we plan to update the Banner servers to Java 1.6.30 on February 15. After further Java research, we are rescheduling the update for the next release. If your users have already upgraded  to 1.6.30, they are fine. As soon as details are available for the next release, we will be in touch. Stay tuned…

These links affect our backup Internet 2 traffic and our primary commodity internet service to Minneapolis. We will failover to our backup Internet provider in Missoula. The failover process could take a couple of minutes to stabilize so there will be short outages during the activity.

The maintenance is necessary to replace failing hardware in the Northern Tier.

Each semester we offer a variety of Banner, Business Services, MS Office, web, and miscellaneous training classes.

All classes are free of charge to University faculty, staff and students. Banner classes are typically restricted to faculty and staff. However, if a department employs a student and the job duties require Banner access, we will allow registration upon supervisor approval. 

Course registration is available by logging into the system with your NetID. The first time you log in you will set up your user profile. After that, you can: 

• Register for courses
• View current courses registered for
• Cancel courses you have registered for but cannot attend

Here is the IT Short Course website: www.umt.edu/it/training

For additional IT support resources, visit the Information Technology website. Banner support is available at the Banner Support website.

• IT network engineers will perform necessary network equipment maintenance this week in several buildings across UM’s network. This activity involves updates to network switches and requires restarting the switches to complete the process. During the restart process, network service is impacted, and downtime lasts a couple of minutes and is limited to the area involved with the particular switch being restarted. This is a regular campus-wide activity which occurs as updates are released, and is scheduled early in the mornings for minimal impact to the UM campus community.  

Future activity: Java Plug-in update to Banner server on February 15

• As new versions of Java are released, IT updates the Java Plug-in on the Banner Support website. In January Java released version 1.6.30. IT will update the Banner Support website and Banner server to this new release on February 15.  Please work with your Banner users to update their Java versions by February 15. A message will be sent directly to Banner users this week, alerting them to this upgrade.  They will be directed to contact their IT departmental administrator if they are unable to perform the update themselves.  We want to give you some lead time first.

• Banner maintenance: Banner will be down tonight, Jan. 9th, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance.  The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, UMDW, REPORT, TESTRED, HCADMN, HLNRED, MyUMH, AUADMN, AUDW, and AUTST8.  Please limit your batch jobs and be logged off by 5:00 tonight.  CyberBear and MyUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.

Tuesday, January 10, 7:30 – 8:00 a.m.

• WTS services: The following WTS services will be down for approximately 30 minutes for planned maintenance: Student Jobs, Select Survey, Ask-an-Alum application, Crystal Reports server, Notification Dashboard, Beta.umt.edu (test servers), Source code repositories

 Marketing filter: UPDATE

• Last week we began testing a marketing feature of UM’s IronPort Spam filter. Our intent was to observe the filter’s behavior, evaluate its effectiveness, and then possibly move forward with implementation. During this testing phase, we invited you, our Tech Partners community, to provide feedback about your experience with this filter. After one week, based on your input and our experience, we have decided not to implement this particular filter at this time. This marketing piece is somewhat of a “big hammer” approach that doesn’t look to do what we were hoping. We officially turned off the filter this afternoon, so [MARKETING] tags will no longer display in email subject lines. We greatly appreciate your input.  It helped significantly in our determination. Thank you. We will continue to pursue improvements with our spam/virus filtering appliance and may call upon the Tech Partners community for your valuable feedback in the future.

The data center design team will present a status report that will address the current situation, plans for moving forward, how campus departments can benefit and next steps.

The forum is open to anyone on campus who would like to attend.

• IronPort spam filter – new marketing filter activated: IT administrators activated a new email spam filter feature this morning. We need your feedback on how well it works. Read our initial announcement for details.

Wednesday, January 4, 5:55 a.m. until complete

• Network router reboots: IT network engineers will be rebooting the UM core network routers at 5:55 a.m. tomorrow (Wednesday 1/4/12).  All network connectivity on the UM network will be lost for approximately 10 minutes while this occurs.  This includes all UM campuses and locations. 

The filter can be setup in two ways: simply banning or removing the messages before they reach the recipient the same way it does with spam, or tag all messages being filtered as [Marketing] but go ahead and deliver the message to the recipient.

As an intermediary step, we will begin with the second option, which will allow us to observe the filter’s behavior and evaluate its effectiveness. During this initial phase, please let us know your experience. The filter will place a [Marketing] label in the subject line of messages that meet certain criteria. You can help us by letting us know what types of messages are being tagged and if messages you want to receive are being tagged.

After we begin filtering on January 3, send your feedback to: italk@umontana.edu. Once we review your feedback and evaluate the filter, we will determine the next step – whether to turn on the full filter or leave it as it is.

 Thank you in advance for your assistance.

Current status:  The service pack has been reinstalled, and MSO email service is back to full working order. As you may have noticed, https://messaging.umt.edu (OWA) was also unavailable this morning. The service pack also caused a problem with access to OWA. This has also been corrected and OWA is again working normally ( or should be – let us know if you have any problems accessing it).

Thank you for your patience while we worked through this unexpected Exchange issue.

We are currently experiencing intermittent issues with one of the Exchange servers this morning. IT administrators are working on the issue. During this work, our administrators will be rebooting the server and installing a new service pack. Unfortunately, a bad service pack was released last week which has caused the server problems.

What this means is that users whose accounts are located on this server will experience either the inability to access their account, or they may be prompted to enter their credentials to re-access their account. This behavior will be intermittent and will continue until the service pack is installed and in working order.

The issue doesn’t impact all Exchange users, only those whose accounts are on this particular server.

We apologize for this inconvenience.

During this time, emergencies may be directed to 406-243-2525.

Offices will reopen tomorrow morning at 8:00 a.m.

We wish you all the best this Holiday season and in 2012.

• Central web server maintenance: IT web personnel will perform necessary maintenance on UM’s central web server Tuesday, December 20, between 7:00 and 7:30 a.m. The UM home page and associated web sites and applications will be unavailable during this time. Expected downtime is less than 30 minutes.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

• Banner maintenance: Banner will be down Monday, December 12, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance. The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, UMDW, REPORT, TESTRED, HCADMN, HLNRED, MyUMH, AUADMN, AUDW, and AUTST8. Banner users should limit batch jobs and log off by 5:00 pm. CyberBear and MyUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.

Tuesday and Wednesday, December 13 and 14, 6:00 a.m. – 6:45 a.m.

• Network switch reboots: IT network engineers will perform necessary network equipment maintenance this week in several buildings across UM’s network. This activity involves downloading and installing Cisco updates to network switches and requires restarting the switches to complete the process. During the restart process, network service is impacted, and downtime lasts a couple of minutes and is limited to the area involved with the particular switch being restarted. This is a regular campus-wide activity which occurs as updates are released, and is scheduled early in the mornings for minimal impact to the UM campus community.

 Thank you for your cooperation,

IT Exchange administrators identified that problem that was causing issues with mail delivery this afternoon. It was related to correcting damage that occurred during the Thanksgiving brown-out.  Full Exchange email service should now be performing as normal.

Let us know if you are experiencing any additional Exchange issues today. Thank you, again for your patience during this unexpected service downtime.

12/7/11, 2:14 p.m.

We are currently experience issues with the Exchange environment. Exchange administrators are investigating the problem. Please check back for updates to this situation. Thank you for your patience.

Tuesday, December 6, beginning at 5:55 a.m. for approximately 15 minutes: Three routers will be rebooted

1. Two Border Router reboots will affect all inbound and outbound traffic. Internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. This also affects USFS Internet 2 access.
2. The WAN router that connects all UM remote locations to the main campus in Missoula will be rebooted concurrently with the Border Router reboots. All remote campus locations will lose connectivity during this outage. These include: UM-MTech Butte, UM-Western, UM-Helena, UM-MSO-COTE, UM-MSO-COTW, Rural Institute, Palmer, CRMW (railroad station location), FLBS, FMRC, Bitterroot College Program. Total downtime for these concurrent reboots should be about 8 minutes.

Tuesday, December 6, 5:00 p.m. until complete: UM web server maintenance

The IT web team will perform brief maintenance on the UM web server. Service downtime is not anticipated during this maintenance activity.

Thursday, December 8, between 3:00 a.m. and 5:00 a.m.: Optimum fiber work in Missoula

Optimum (formerly Bresnan) will be performing fiber upgrade work in Missoula during this time. This outage will affect the UM commercial network (UC Bookstore commercial network and the ticket system). UM commercial network personnel have been notified of this outage.

Thank you for your cooperation,

During the outage, network connectivity will be unavailable for the following: 

• External  VPN (off campus access to UM network)
• Lubrecht Forest
• Montana Tech location at MSU-Billings (will not affect Montana Tech in Butte)
• Campus wireless on UM campus (using Cisco VPN clients)

Thank you for your cooperation.

On Wednesday evening, November 23, at approximately 10:20 p.m., an electrical problem originating in the Bitterroot Valley, caused a significant brown-out and subsequent power outage to UM and Missoula.  The event caused the LA building basement fire alarm to trip, which is the location of one of our core data centers. In response to the alarm, the air conditioning to the area was turned off.

Facilities, CAS, UM Foundation, and IT staff arrived on campus to find a server room nearing 107 degrees, a very damaging scenario for servers.  The IT staff powered down equipment and spent the rest of the night trying to restore services.  We appreciate all of the help from the various organizations in restoring services as quickly as possible.

Although several  network switches had been repaired and many applications were back online by Thursday morning, some work remained for the crew on Friday. At approximately 4:00 p.m. on Friday, most of the services that were affected by Wednesday’s events were restored.

On Sunday, the IT crew was called out when the web server which hosts the UM Homepage failed due to damage from the Wednesday event. Service was restored at approximately 5:00 p.m.

At this time, while the majority of services are available, we are still working to resolve residual issues.  Thank you for your patience during this period. If you have any questions or have issues to report, please contact IT Central, 243-HELP or ITCentral@umontana.edu.

• Banner maintenance: Banner will be down Monday, November 14, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance.  The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, SPTST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, MyUMH, UMDW, AUADMN, AUDW, and AUTST8.  Banner users should limit batch jobs and log off by 5:00 pm.  CyberBear and MyUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.
• Java plug-in: Also tonight the JAVA plug-in will be upgraded on the Banner servers to Java Version 6 Update 29 so please check with your users to make sure their PCs are upgraded by the end of the day today (…more info about Java).

 Monday, November 14, 5:00 p.m. until completed

• Lists.umt.edu: Routine maintenance. During this time mailing lists hosted on IT's listserv (lists.umt.edu) won’t be able to send out messages and the list web interface will be unavailable.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Services affected include:

•  Banner services: ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, HCADMN, MyUMH,
• Web services: Academic Planner, Course Search, GrizMart, InfoGriz , Notification Dashboard, OneStop

We thank you in advance for your cooperation during this necessary service downtime, and appreciate your support of IT-related activities. Please direct questions or comments to IT Central, 243-HELP (4357).

Tuesday, October 25, 5:55 a.m. – 6:10 a.m.: Three routers will be rebooted:

1. Two Border Router reboots will affect all inbound and outbound traffic. Internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. This also affects USFS Internet 2 access.
2. The WAN router that connects all UM remote locations to the main campus in Missoula will  be rebooted concurrently with the Border Router reboots.  All remote campus locations will lose connectivity during this outage. These include: UM-MTech Butte, UM-Western, UM-Helena, UM-MSO-COTE, UM-MSO-COTW, Rural Institute, Palmer, CRMW (railroad station location), FLBS, FMRC, Bitterroot College Program. Total downtime for these concurrent reboots should be about 8 minutes.

Saturday, November 5, early a.m. – Monday,  November 7, 7:00 a.m.: Banner downtime due to hardware conversion

Beginning very early Saturday morning, November 5, 2011 (after the Friday night Banner batch processes) until 7:00 a.m., Monday, November 7, some UM services that utilize Banner data will be unavailable. IT is performing a hardware conversion that requires this downtime.

Services affected include:

• Banner services: ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, HCADMN, MyUMH,
• Web services: Academic Planner, Course Search, GrizMart, InfoGriz , Notification Dashboard, OneStop

Monday, November 14, 5:00 p.m. – midnight: Java Plug-in update to servers during Banner maintenance

During regular Banner maintenance, IT database administrators will update the Banner servers to version 1.6.29, the recently released version. Please work with your Banner users to update their Java versions by November 14. Additional information and download steps are available on the Banner Support website.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Tuesday, October 18, 5:00 until completed: Select Survey server maintenance

IT web administrators will perform necessary maintenance on the server that houses Select Survey. Select Survey access and surveys will be unavailable during this downtime. Expected downtime is less than 30 minutes.

Thursday, October 20, 11:00 a.m. until completed: LISTSERV maintenance

IT administrators will perform necessary maintenance on the LISTSERV email list application. Email list owners will be unable to post messages to their lists during this downtime. Additionally, the LISTSERV web interface will be unavailable. Expected downtime is less than one hour.

Thank you for your cooperation,

This activity means that UM may see an outage of our primary commodity internet service (commercial web site access) at some point during these hours. Our circuits should failover to a backup provider, although we could experience a short delay during the maintenance switchover including a brief outage of commodity service.

Note that the scheduling and actual activity is organized by our commodity internet service provider. We have no control over any aspects of the activity.

Thank you for your cooperation,

Banner maintenance: Monday, September 26, 5:00 - midnight

Banner will be down tonight for regular maintenance.  The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, TESTRED, SPTST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, myUMH, UMDW, AUADMN, AUDW and AUTST8.  Please limit your batch jobs and be logged off by 5:00 pm tonight.  CyberBear and myUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.

New data storage added to central IT web storage array: Tuesday, September 27, 5:00 – until completed

Tomorrow WTS staff will add more space to the data storage array. This process involves turning off and restarting the storage array. The following web applications will be unavailable during this time: Student Jobs, Ask an alum, Notification Dashboard, Emergency Notification and Faculty senate.

Network switch reboots: Tuesday and Wednesday morning from 5:55-6:30 a.m.

IT network engineers will perform necessary network equipment maintenance this week in several buildings across UM’s Network. This activity involves downloading and installing Cisco updates to network switches and requires restarting the switches to complete the process.  During the restart process,  network service is impacted, and downtime lasts  a couple of minutes and is limited to the area involved with the particular switch being restarted. This is a regular campus-wide activity which occurs as updates are released,  and is scheduled early in the mornings for minimal impact to the UM campus community.

VPN router replacement:  This week

IT network engineers are planning to replace a router that is used for VPN and some wireless access. More information about this activity will be provided as soon as the details are finalized.

Please direct your questions about IT maintenance to IT Central, 243-HELP.

Three routers need to be rebooted:

1. Two Border Router reboots will affect all inbound and outbound traffic. Internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. This also affects USFS Internet 2 access.
2. The WAN router that connects all UM remote locations to the main campus in Missoula will  be rebooted concurrently with the Border Router reboots.  All remote campus locations will lose connectivity during this outage. These include: UM-MTech Butte, UM-Western, UM-Helena, UM-MSO-COTE, UM-MSO-COTW, Rural Institute, Palmer, CRMW, FLBS, FMRC, Bitterroot College Program. Total downtime for these concurrent reboots should be about 8 minutes.

Thank you for your cooperation,

UM’s ISP for commodity internet service (Cogent)

When: Sunday, September 18, 12:00 midnight – 2:00 a.m. (expected downtime is 1 hour)

Activity: Purpose of the outage is a code upgrade on a core device. UM will lose service, however, as is the normal procedure, we will failover to our Atlanta backup and no downtime is expected.

Pacific Northwest Gigapop: Northern Tier circuit

1.  When: September 16, 10:00 p.m. PDT – September 17, 4:00 a.m. PDT (This is the only potential service interruption to UM.)

Activity: PNWGP will re-grooming it’s backbone and transport services between Seattle and Spokane. The actual outage is expected to be approximately 4 hours during the entire event window. FYI during this maintenance activity UM should failover to the Minneapolis links, as is the normal procedure.

2.  When: September 20, 10:00 p.m. PDT – September 21, 4:00 a.m. PDT

Activity: non-service impacting software upgrade being performed by CenturyLink on optical equipment on this evening beginning at 22:00 PDT.

3. When: September 23, 10:00 p.m. PDT – September 24, 4:00 a.m. PDT

Activity: PNWGP with assistance of Infinera technicians will be re-grooming a single circuit (Yakima to Spokane span).

Optimum

When: September 22, between 3:00 a.m. – 5:00 a.m.

Activity: Optimum will perform part two of a two part switch upgrade early Thursday morning in Helena. This activity should NOT affect UM network service. However, if it does, UM will lose connectivity to the State of Montana network, MSU-Billings (MT Tech employees located there), and UM-Helena.

Service was restored at approximately 4:10 p.m. yesterday. More information about the issue is available at: http://www.kpax.com/news/cut-fiber-optic-line-knocks-out-ravalli-co-phones/. Questions may be directed to IT Central, 406-243-HELP (4357).

 Thank you for your patience during this unanticipated network issue.

The network and systems staff are working around-the-clock with the manufacturers of the power supply to solve this problem as quickly as possible. They are closely monitoring the situation to restore services and applications as quickly as possible.  Please continue to check our announcements page for updates to this situation.

During the next few days IT administrators will retire the Exchange 2003 environment. Once this happens, email service will fail for users who have not redirected their outgoing server addresses to:  messaging.umt.edu  OR  smtp.umt.edu.

The primary users who will be impacted by this change are Mac users who have not redirected their clients to either of these server addresses.

Please help your users as soon as possible to make sure their outgoing server addresses are correct. If you do not have departmental IT support, please contact IT Central, 243-HELP or Social Science 120, for assistance.

Please contact IT Central, 243-HELP (4357) or at Social Science 120, if you continue to experience service interruptions or service unavailability. We apologize for any issues this weekend's network and UM website may have caused you. Thank you.

While most services have been restored, IT staff continue to work to ensure all services are up and running.

Each semester we offer a variety of Banner, Business Services, MS Office, web, and miscellaneous training classes.

All classes are free of charge to University faculty, staff and students. Banner classes are typically restricted to faculty and staff. However, if a department employs a student and the job duties require Banner access, we will allow registration upon supervisor approval. 

 New registration process:

This semester we are rolling out a new short course management system. Course registration is now available by logging into the system with your NetID. The first time you log in you will set up your user profile. After that, you can:

• Register for courses
• View current courses registered for
• Cancel courses you have registered for but cannot attend

For additional IT support resources, visit the Information Technology website. Banner support is available at the Banner Support website.

8/17/11 - 3:30 p.m.

Student email service is still unavailable. Microsoft first reported the issue as being a large-scale connectivity issue at 2:10 p.m. At 3:11 p.m. they reported that the connectivity issue is with the North American Data Centers. The problem is affecting email services and administrator management of existing accounts and provisioning of new accounts. They will provide updates as soon as they can and they apologize for any inconvenience this downtime is causing customers.

The issue is quite widespread impacting many US universities including but not limited to: University of Cincinnati, University of Toledo, Berkley, Drake, Taft College, Iowa.

As we receive reports, we will post them here. Thank you.

8/17/11 - 4:10 p.m.

Service has been restored. We have received reports from users that performance is slow - but it is working.

Three routers need to be rebooted:

1. Two Border Router reboots will affect all inbound and outbound traffic. Internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. This also affects USFS Internet 2 access.
2. The WAN router that connects all UM remote locations to the main campus in Missoula will  be rebooted concurrently with the Border Router reboots.  All remote campus locations will lose connectivity during this outage. These include: UM-MTech Butte, UM-Western, UM-Helena, UM-MSO-COTE, UM-MSO-COTW, Rural Institute, Palmer, CRMW, FLBS, FMRC, Bitterroot College Program. Total downtime for these concurrent reboots should be about 8 minutes.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Please note that while you may install this new software on UM machines at your discretion, there are applications that will not work with this operating system. See our Macintosh support web page for further information.

If any of your systems are currently sending email through hermes.umt.edu (10.10.7.32) or cug2.umt.edu (10.10.11.5), you will need to change your configuration before August 8 or you will no longer be able to send email. The proper SMTP gateway is: smtp.umt.edu. It is an alias pointing to multiple systems which allows for the best protection against a server failure on our end.

NOTE: The Butte campus gateway address is: smtpb.umt.edu.

If you manage devices that cannot accept smtp.umt.edu as an SMTP gateway such as simple printers, scanners, etc. and you are required to configure them with an IP address, then please use either 10.249.8.16 or 10.249.8.17.

Please check your systems/devices at your earlier convenience. Visit our SMTP gateway changes web page for further helpful information. If you have questions about this activity, please contact your departmental IT support personnel or IT Central at 243-HELP (4357).

Thank you for your cooperation.

Three routers need to be rebooted:

1. Border router reboot will affect all inbound and outbound traffic. Internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. Total downtime should be about 8 minutes.
2. Liberal Arts router reboot will affect access to many campus servers.
3. Social Sciences core router reboot will affect all buildings north of the Oval as well as some campus network services, including Exchange (mso) email.

Thank you for your cooperation.

As a reminder, as new versions of Java are released, IT updates the Java Plug-in on the Banner Support website and Banner server on a quarterly basis. This new update will be installed on the Banner server on July 14.

Regarding Mac computers, every version of Mac OSX comes with Java installed. No download, installation, or setup is necessary. New Java releases are made available through Software Update on Mac computers.

Please update your Java versions as soon as possible but by July 13th. Note the following regarding the update process:

•  UPDATE THE JAVA PLUG-IN: Banner users should update their versions of the Java Plug-in to 1.6.26 (aka Version 6 Update 26) as soon as possible, but no later than July 13. If users already have this version installed, they do not need to reinstall it.
• MUST HAVE ADMIN PRIVS: Only users who have administrative privileges on their computers will be able to perform the install. If you are an IT departmental administrator, please assist your users. Users who have not been updated will be unable to access Banner after July 13, 2011 until you login to their computers and perform the install process.
• GO TO JAVA.COM: Users should go to the Java website and download the current version, Version 6 Update 26. Steps for the process are available on the Banner support website. This is an easy install and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes.
• JAVA UPDATES: For new users with administrative privileges, the default settings in Java will cause automatic updates to occur as new updates are released.  However, for users who already had Java installed (and who have administrative privileges), you should check the Java settings and make sure automatic updates are enabled.
• JULY 14: Banner users who have not updated will be prompted to download Version 6 Update 26 (but only if they have administrative privileges on their computers). As mentioned above, users without administrative privileges who have an outdated version of Java will be unable to run Banner. They will need to have their departmental IT administrator login to their computers and download the most current version.

We don’t expect any disruption of email service during the upgrade, and users do not need to take any action.

Internet outage: Friday, June 10, between 3:00-5:00 a.m.

Bresnan has scheduled an internet outage at most University of Montana locations on Friday, June 10, between 3:00-5:00 a.m., for approximately 15 minutes. Internet service between the following sites and UM-Missoula main campus will be unavailable (*except as noted). UM-Missoula internet service to external sites will not be impacted by this outage :

• UM-Western
• UM-Helena
• UM-Bitterroot College Program Hamilton
• UM-Missoula COT East
• UM-Missoula Rural Institute
• UM-Missoula O’Connor Center (CRMW)
• UM-Missoula Palmer Building
• UM-Missoula Fort Missoula Research Center
• UM-MTech at Billings MSU Campus location
• Traffic between UM and the State of Montana Network will also be affected.
• *UM-Bookstore UM Commercial Network (Internet access will be lost, not access between campus and commercial network)
• *UM-Ticket System UC Commercial Network (Internet access will be lost, not access between campus and commercial network)

Note:  UM-MTech in Butte will not be affected

Exchange 2010 upgrade: Blackberry Enterprise Server users

IT windows administrators have moved all MSO mailboxes to Exchange 2010 except for Blackberry Enterprise Server (BES) users. Thank you for your cooperation and patience with this process. If you have any questions about your email account or are experiencing any recent problems, please let us know by calling or visiting IT Central (243-HELP, SS120). Once we are ready to begin the process of moving the UM BES users, we will post the schedule here.

Thank you for your cooperation.

We apologize for any inconvenience you may experience and thank you for your patience during this transition process. 

UPDATE

(6/6/11) UM Exchange administrators will work with technical support contacts today to resolve the intermittent connection issues Blackberry users may be currently experiencing. Once the issues are resolved, we will begin moving Blackberry users to Exchange 2010. As we move forward with this process, we will keep you informed of the schedule. The accounts will be moved one at a time. While an account is being moved, that specific user will be unable to access his/her email account.

Thank you for your cooperation. Please check back for updates.

Three routers need to be rebooted because of network issues over the past few days.

1. Border router reboot will affect all inbound and outbound traffic. Internet access at all UM locations will be lost during this time as well as home VPN users. Total downtime should be about 8 minutes.
2. Liberal Arts router reboot will affect access to many campus servers.
3. Social Sciences core router reboot will affect all buildings north of the Oval as well as some campus network services, including exchange email.

For transition progress as well as email client configuration documentation, see our Exchange 2010 upgrade web page.

Mailboxes will be moved in alphabetical order by last name. Employees who use UM’s Blackberry server will be moved last. We expect it to take several weeks to move all employee mailboxes. You can visit our Exchange 2010 upgrade page for progress reports.

We expect mailboxes to move with minimal disruption in service.
 
After your mailbox is moved

If you are currently using Outlook 2007 or Outlook 2010 as your email client, you shouldn’t need to change any configurations after your mailbox is moved. If you are using Outlook 2003 as your email client, we recommend that you upgrade to a current version.

If you are using another email client, your configuration will need to be changed to access the new server. Visit the Exchange 2010 upgrade page for more information.

We are working with tech support people across campus so they are prepared to help employees configure email clients other than Outlook 2007 and 2010. If you experience issues with email after the move, you can seek help from the technical support person in your area, or contact IT Central at 243-HELP (4357).

Please check back for updates on this situation.

Thank you for your patience at this time.

• Logging in to your mso email account via the web (messaging.umt.edu)?
  • Be sure to enter your domain before your user name (example: um\sally.sample)
• Using an IMAP or Pop client?
  • Change your outgoing server to messaging03.umt.edu (NOTE: This will need to be changed back to messaging.umt.edu after your mailbox is moved to the new server)

 Please note the following:

• The messaging.umt.edu login screen is now the new Exchange 2010 OWA login page
• Users must include the domain when entering their login name (example: UM\sally.sample)
• Once users log out of OWA, they will either see the old Exchange 2003 screen or the new Exchange 2010 screen, depending on which server their mailbox is located on. Once all accounts/servers are upgraded, all users will see the new Exchange 2010 screen upon logging out.
• During the remainder of the transition to Exchange 2010, users with POP or IMAP client configurations may experience service issues.  To resolve these issues they will need to change their outgoing & incoming servers to: messaging03.umt.edu. However, once their mailbox has been moved to the new server, they will need to change the servers back to: messaging.umt.edu. Note: This is a good time to encourage your users to move to an email client that supports an Exchange configuration. Please suggest this to your departmental staff and feel free to contact IT Central to discuss the options if you need further information.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation this morning. We will be back in touch as the process continues.

Earlier this week, we had a minor glitch with some configuration steps. However, we are ready to move forward. The next step in this process is to upgrade the OWA (messaging.umt.edu) component. This step is scheduled to occur tomorrow, Friday, May 6, beginning at 6:00 a.m. until no later than 8:00 a.m.

During this activity, OWA (messaging.umt.edu)  and users whose devices (such as computers, smart phones) that are setup as POP or IMAP clients may experience intermittent email outages. Campus personnel using an Exchange connection to their desktop client (e.g. Outlook) shouldn’t be affected by this activity.

Once this configuration change occurs, all users logging in to messaging.umt.edu will see a new white Microsoft OWA login screen (Outlook Web App.) Security options have not changed. As a reminder:

• selecting public computer sets the account to timeout after 15 minutes of inactivity and is recommended when using a public computer
• selecting private computer does not set the timeout feature
• selecting the light version reduces OWA’s features, but is most useful for vision impaired users

As always, we appreciate your support and cooperation as we perform necessary upgrades to central campus systems and services.

Let us know if you have questions or concerns.

Exchange maintenance: Saturday, April 9, 8:00 a.m. – 2:00 p.m.

In order to increase mailbox storage space on the Exchange environment, IT Exchange administrators will reconfigure the current server databases on Saturday morning. This activity only impacts individuals who attempt to access their MSO email accounts while work is being performed on the database on which their account resides (i.e. inability to open mailbox, send messages, receive mail, or notice synchronization errors). Otherwise during the maintenance periods MSO email service will function normally.

UPDATE

Due to two compromised email accounts early last week, we were again blacklisted by some entities. Comcast, one of the entities that blacklisted UM, removed us from their blacklist this morning at approximately 11:20 a.m.

Monday, April 4, 5:00 p.m. – midnight

Banner maintenance: Banner will be down tonight April 4, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance.  The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, SPTST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, myUMH, UMDW, AUADMN and AUTST8.  Please limit your batch jobs and be logged off by 5:00 pm tonight.  CyberBear and myUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.

Also, tonight, the Java Plug-in will be upgraded to Java Version 6 Update 24 so please check with your users to make sure their PCs are upgraded by then ( directions ). 

Monday, April 4, 5:00 p.m. until completed

Lists.umt.edu: Routine maintenance. During this time mailing lists hosted on IT's listserv (lists.umt.edu) won’t be able to send out messages.

IT is in the process of upgrading from Exchange 2003 to Exchange 2010 and this is one step in the upgrade process.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Java update: reminder

Next Monday, April 4, during Banner maintenance (5 p.m. – midnight), IT will update the Banner server (https://inb.umt.edu) to Java version 1.6.24, the most current version available.

Please assist your Banner users to update their Java version by April 4. Beginning April 5, users with computers not updated will be unable to access Banner until an administrator logs in and performs the install.

New information: McAfee

Oracle recently began bundling McAfee Security Scan Plus, a security scanning tool, with its Java updates for Windows. The software is installed by default, so unless users notice and uncheck the 'Include Free McAfee Scan Plus ...' box, as they update Java, the McAfee software also downloads. Read more at: http://www.java.com/en/download/faq/mcafee.xml

McAfee software is a free tool that checks and reports if your PC is protected but it may cause interference with any other previously installed security software such as Symantec.  UM offers Symantec Endpoint Protection to faculty, staff and students for work and personal use.

Once downloaded, the McAfee software prompts the user on a daily basis to accept McAfee's licensing terms to complete the installation.  While you can cancel out of this prompt the only way to remove the software is through Windows "Uninstall a Program" feature.

We don't know at this point how many users may have inadvertently downloaded McAfee, but here are some steps to help avoid issues.

During the Java installation process, users may be prompted to install McAfee. In that window, uncheck "Include FREE McAfee Security..."

To check to see if it's on a computer and if it is, to uninstall it:

• Windows XP:
  • Click Start, Settings, Control Panel
  • Double-click Add or Remove Programs
  • Select McAfee Security Scan Plus
  • Click Remove and follow the steps provided
• Windows 7:
  • Click Start, and select Control Panel
  • Double-click Programs and Features
  • Select McAfee Security Scan Plus
  • Click Uninstall and follow the steps provided

Java prompt to remove old versions

On the Java.com website, when you or your users check your Java versions, you may see a message indicating that old or unsupported versions of Java have been detected and a link to removal steps is provided (same process as above). Please help your users remove older versions of Java. If they do not have admin privileges on their computers, they won't be able to perform a uninstall.  Further information at: http://java.com/en/download/faq/remove_olderversions.xml.

Please contact IT Central for further questions. Thank you for your assistance.

You can find your NetID by using the online NetID lookup tool. If you’ve never logged in with your NetID, your initial password is the last six digits of your 790# number.

More information about this change is available at: www.umt.edu/it/cyberbearlogin

For assistance with your NetID and password, please contact IT Central, 243-HELP.

System administrators have been working all morning to clear the queues, so email service should now be as normal. However, we may experience other issues from this event, such as blacklisting. We will update you on this situation if/when more information is available.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation during this time.

Users will see a new login screen following the upgrade.

Thank you for your cooperation.

System maintenance: Monday morning, March 7, 2011 (completed)

Required maintenance was performed and completed this morning on the system known as Mtransfer.gs.umt.edu/Outertrans.umt.edu.  If you encounter any issues with this system,  please notify IT CCS Operations or IT Windows Server Admins.

Banner maintenance: Wednesday, March 9, 5:00 p.m. – midnight

Banner will be down Wednesday, March 9, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance.  The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, SPTST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, MyUMH, UMDW, AUADMN, AUDW, and AUTST8.  Banner users should limit batch jobs and log off by 5:00 pm.  CyberBear and MyUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.

Central login maintenance: Wednesday, March 9, 5-5:30 p.m.
UM’s central login (login.umt.edu) will be unavailable for a short period between 5-5:30 p.m. on Wednesday, March 9 for upgrade and maintenance. Users will see a new login screen following the upgrade.
 
Central login allows students and employees to authenticate to several web systems like Blackboard, Moodle, UMConnect email and OneStop using their NetID and password. Beginning March 15, the central login will also be used to authenticate to CyberBear. More information about that transition is available at umt.edu/it/cyberbearlogin.

NetID lookup and password management
 
If a student or employee doesn’t know their NetID, they can go to login.umt.edu and click on the “What is my NetID” link. The first time a user logs into the central authentication service, they will be guided through a process of changing their password and setting up a security question. That will allow for self-service password management later on if a user forgets their password or needs to reset it.
 
Questions may be directed to italk@umontana.edu.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Please note the following regarding the update process:

• UPDATE THE JAVA PLUG-IN: Banner users should update their versions of the Java Plug-in to 1.6.24 (aka Version 6 Update 24) as soon as possible, but no later than April 4. If users already have this version installed, they do not need to reinstall it. 
• 
  
• MUST HAVE ADMIN PRIVS: Only users who have administrative privileges on their computers will be able to perform the install. If you are an IT departmental administrator, please assist your users. Users who have not been updated will be unable to access Banner beginning April 5, 2011 until you login to their computers and perform the install process.
• 
  
• GO TO JAVA.COM: Users should go to the Java website and download the current version, Version 6 Update 24. Steps for the process will be updated on the Banner support website by this Thursday. Current steps on the site are for Version 6 Update 23. This is an easy install and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes on a computer.
• 
  
• JAVA UPDATES: For new users with administrative privileges, the default settings in Java will cause automatic updates to occur as new updates are released.  However, for users who already had Java installed (and who have administrative privileges), you should check the Java settings and make sure automatic updates are enabled. As long as the updates are of the Java 1.6.x family, SunGard (Banner’s parent company) confirms support.
• 
  
• APRIL 5: Beginning April 5, Banner users who have not updated will be prompted to download Version 6 Update 24 (but only if they have administrative privileges on their computers). As mentioned above, users without administrative privileges who have an outdated version of Java will be unable to run Banner. They will need to have their departmental IT administrator login to their computers and download the most current version.

For questions or concerns, please contact Kathy Garramone or Diane Norem.

2/25/11: A recently compromised UM-Helena employee e-mail account has resulted in partial blacklisting of our domain, including Comcast and Yahoo. IT has taken steps to address the situation, but in the meantime, some of your constituents may experience e-mail bounces due to the blacklisting. We hope the situation will be resolved quickly, but we know from previous experience that a resolution may take a few days.

Messages you send to those who have blacklisted us will be bounced back as they are not queued. You will need to resend them once the issue has been resolved. Please check back for updates on this situation.

From our ISP: ”During this maintenance window, you will experience one or more brief interruptions in service while we complete the maintenance activities; the interruptions are expected to last less than 1 hour and 30 minutes total. However, due to the complexity of the work, your downtime may be longer.”

All University of Montana locations including dorms will lose some to all Internet connectivity during some part of this time window.  As they have stated, we cannot say exactly how many times or for how long but it appears that they will most likely be short in nature each time.

This will affect all incoming and outgoing Internet traffic including home VPN users.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Internet outage: Tuesday, February 22, between 5:30 a.m. and 5:50 a.m.

A brief Internet outage will occur at all University of Montana locations, Tuesday, February 22, between 5:30 a.m. and 5:50 a.m. Service should only be disrupted for about 10 minutes during this time.  This downtime will affect access to and from the Internet at all UM locations including all dorms and VPN home access. Access will also be affected to the Montana State Government network and MSU from UM as well.

Thank you for your cooperation.

We thank you for your patience and cooperation during today’s necessary downtime. These upgrades were essential in achieving key University objectives

We will lose our Internet Connectivity sometime between 5:30am and 6:30am tomorrow, Fri Feb 4^th, 2011 for 3 to 5 minutes. The Northern Lights Gigapop will be rebooting core routers during this time to correct a software problem.  When the routers we are directly connected to are rebooted, we will lose connectivity for approximately 3 to 5 minutes and this will occur sometime between 5:30am and 6:30am.

This will affect all internet connectivity at the University of Montana at all locations (dorms included).  This will not affect communication between campus locations with the exception of Lubrecht Forest and the Montana Tech Billings Location.  This will also affect home VPN users.

Thank you for your cooperation.

This specific upgrade date is a University holiday (President’s Day) and was selected to minimize the impact of this maintenance on the University community.

Following are the services that will be unavailable during the activity:

Banner:

• ADMN
• AUADMN
• AUDW (Foundation Data Warehouse)
• HCADMN
• TEST8
• HCTST8
• AUTST8
• SPTST8
• CyberBear
• MyUMH
• UMDW
• REPORT

Blackboard

UM web services:

• Academic Planner
• iTunes U
• Online Directory
• A to Z Index
• Postcard Gallery
• Web Feature
• Faces
• Shortened URLs (ex: http://www.umt.edu/short instead of http://www.umt.edu:8888/shortened_content)

Thank you in advance for your cooperation during this necessary hardware upgrade activity.

Banner maintenance: Monday, January 10, 5:00 p.m. – midnight

Banner will be down tonight, Jan. 10, from 5:00 pm until midnight for maintenance.  The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, SPTST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, myUMH, UMDW, AUADMN and AUTST8.  Please limit your batch jobs and be logged off by 5:00 pm tonight.  CyberBear and myUMH will go down about 4:45 pm.

Also, tonight, the Java Plug-in will be upgraded to Java Version 6 Update 23 so please check with your users to make sure their PCs are upgraded by then (directions). 

Old SMTP Gateway (cug1.umt.edu): Monday, January 10, early morning

The old SMTP gateway, cug1.umt.edu, was removed from service in November. This morning IT permanently shut down this server. If anyone has configured their accounts to point to cug1.umt.edu instead of smtp.umt.edu, they will notice an issue. They will need to change the configuration to smtp.umt.edu.

Exchange maintenance: Thursday, January 13, 7:00 p.m. – midnight; Friday, January 14, 7:00 p.m. – Monday, January 17

IT Exchange administrators will continue compressing Exchange server databases and relocating mailboxes on Thursday evening, January 13 and Friday evening, January 14, and then continuing throughout the Martin Luther King Day weekend, until completed. This activity impacts individuals who attempt to access their MSO email accounts while work is being performed on the database on which their account resides and also when their individual mailbox is being relocated. During these times, users may not be able to: open their mailbox, send messages, receive mail. Users may notice synchronization errors during these times. Otherwise during the maintenance periods MSO email service will function normally.

UPCOMING

A major hardware upgrade will occur on Monday, February 21, the President’s Day holiday. An announcement detailing the outage will be posted to the IT Announcement blog very soon.

What does this mean for Banner users on campus?

• UPDATE THE JAVA PLUG-IN: Banner users should update their versions of the Java Plug-in to 1.6.23 (aka Version 6 Update 23) as soon as possible, but no later than January 10. If users already have this version installed, they do not need to reinstall it. ... check here 
• MUST HAVE ADMIN PRIVS: Only users who have administrative privileges on their computers will be able to perform the install. If you are an IT departmental administrator, please assist your users. Users who have not been updated will be unable to access Banner beginning January 11 until you login to their computers and perform the install process.
• GO TO JAVA.COM: Users can download the current version, Version 6 Update 23 from the Java website. Steps for the process are available on the Banner support website. This is an easy install and shouldn’t take more than a few minutes on a computer.
• JAVA UPDATES: For new users with administrative privileges, the default settings in Java will cause automatic updates to occur as new updates are released.  However, for users who already had Java installed (and who have administrative privileges) , you should check the Java settings and make sure automatic updates are enabled. As long as the updates are of the Java 1.6.x family, SunGard (Banner’s parent company) confirms support.
• JANUARY 11: Beginning January 11, Banner users who have not updated will be prompted to download Version 6 Update 23 (but only if they have administrative privileges on their computers). As mentioned above, users without administrative privileges who have an outdated version of Java will be unable to run Banner. They will need to have their departmental IT administrator login to their computers and download the most current version.

Questions may be directed to Kathy Garramone or Diane Norem.

Tuesday and Wednesday, December 22 and 23, 7:00 p.m. – midnight

Exchange maintenance: IT Exchange administrators need to reconfigure the server databases this week. This activity only impacts individuals who attempt to access their MSO email accounts while work is being performed on the database on which their account resides (i.e. inability to open mailbox, send messages, receive mail, or notice synchronization errors). Otherwise during the maintenance periods MSO email service will function normally.

Thank you for your cooperation.

In addition to the A to Z index and Directory, other services that will be affected include: Academic Planner, Course Search, TAIT, iTunesU.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Tuesday, December 14, Beginning at 5:00 p.m.

Banner maintenance: The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, SPTST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, MyUMH, UMDW, AUADMN and AUTST8. Please limit your batch jobs and be logged off by 5:00 pm on Tuesday.  CyberBear and myUMH will go down about 4:45 p.m.

Tuesday, December 14, 5:00-5:30 p.m.

Anonymous ftp server maintenance: During this time, access to this server (ftp.umt.edu) will be unavailable.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Tuesday, December 7, 5:25 a.m. –  6:10 a.m.

Network maintenance to upgrade software on network equipment. This outage will affect:

• all internet access to UM
• access to the State of Montana Network from UM
• access to the Commercial Ticket System/Bookstore network from on campus only
• network communication between all UM remote sites and the main UM campus including: MT Tech, UM-Western, UM-Helena COT, Missoula COTE and COTW, FLBS, Bitterroot College Program, Fort Missoula Research Center, O’Conner Center (CRMW), Rural Institute (on SW Higgins), and the Palmer Building in Missoula.

Thank you for your cooperation,

If you have questions, contact  IT Central at 243-HELP.

Thursday, December 2, 11:10 a.m.

Currently campus is experiencing an email spam issue. Users are receiving undeliverable email messages that they did not send. IT is aware of this problem and is taking steps to resolve it. As more information becomes available, we will post it here.

Thank you.

For steps on managing junk mail in UMConnect, go to: www.umt.edu/email/mail.aspx

We apologize for the inconvenience and will let you know as soon as the issue is resolved.

Intermittent Internet outages are expected as this work takes place.  All UM Campuses (Missoula, Butte, Dillon, Helena) will experience short intermittent outages during this time.

Thank you for your cooperation,

Interested in learning more about this program? Visit the TPP website for details, meeting minutes, and upcoming meeting dates.

Tuesday, November 9, 5:00 p.m.- midnight

Banner maintenance: The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, SPTST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, MyUMH, UMDW, AUADMN and AUTST8. Please limit your batch jobs and be logged off by 5:00 pm on Tuesday.  CyberBear and myUMH will go down about 4:45 p.m.

Tuesday, November 9, 5:00 p.m. until completed

Lists.umt.edu: Routine maintenance. During this time mailing lists hosted on IT's listserv (lists.umt.edu) won’t be able to send out messages.

Sunday, November 14, 6:00-8:00 a.m.

UM Website:  The hardware that is responsible for hosting the UM website (www.umt.edu) is being relocated. This will cause a disruption of service to all web content accessed using the www prefix (i.e. www.umt.edu/*).  However, links to web applications and services accessible from the “Resources” section of the UM home page (i.e. CyberBear, OneStop, Academic Planner, Course Search, etc.) will still be accessible from the site during the downtime.

Thank you for your cooperation.

The hardware that is responsible for hosting the UM website (www.umt.edu) is being relocated. This will cause a disruption of service to all web content accessed using the www prefix (i.e. www.umt.edu/*). 

Links to web applications and services accessible from the “Resources” section of the UM home page (i.e. CyberBear, OneStop, Academic Planner, Course Search, etc.) will still be accessible from the site during the downtime.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Wednesday, November 3, 6:00-6:15 a.m.

• UM network maintenance: All services at all UM network sites during this time will be affected including internet access.

Upcoming maintenance:

Sunday, November 14, 6:00-8:00 a.m.

• The hardware responsible for hosting the UM website (www.umt.edu) is being relocated.  This will cause a disruption of service to all web content accessed using the www prefix (i.e. www.umt.edu/*).  Content and applications served from alternate hardware and using alternate prefixes such as cyberbear.umt.edu will remain accessible.

Here is the schedule:

• Friday, October 22, 8:00 p.m. – 12:00 midnight
• Saturday, October 23, 8:00 p.m. – 12:00 midnight
• Sunday, October 24, 8:00 p.m. – 12:00 midnight

This activity only impacts individuals who attempt to access their MSO email accounts while work is being performed on the database on which their account resides (i.e. inability to open mailbox, send messages, receive mail, or notice synchronization errors). Otherwise MSO email service will function normally.

Additional work may need to be performed next week. Please check back for updates.

UPDATE: Oct 21, 2010 9:10 AM

IT system administrators continue to work to resolve the current Exchange issue. At this time we cannot provide an estimated time for a return to service, but as soon as we have more information, we will post it here. Thank you, again, for your patience.

UPDATE: Oct 21, 2010 10:55 AM

The situation remains the same. An update will be posted after the lunch hour, or sooner if new information is available to report.

UPDATE: Oct 21, 2010 12:05 PM

IT Windows administrators have temporarily resolved the Exchange storage issue and mail delivery has resumed. However, to insure that this issue will not occur again, the administrators will be moving individual mailboxes to additional available storage throughout the remainder of the day. What this means is that when an individual mailbox is being moved that particular user will not be able to access their accounts during that time - approximately 10-15 minutes.

UM campus map upgrade: 5:00 p.m.  

UM Campus map (http://map.umt.edu) will be upgraded to include accessibility information.

Wednesday, October 20:

IT data storage unit upgrade: 6:00 – 7:00 a.m.

Campus IT needs to make an important vendor mandated upgrade to one of our data storage units.  This will require taking it off-line to apply the changes.  Banner on the Missoula campus will continue to be available during this upgrade.

• Services impacted include:
  • Blackboard
  • Access to “GS\DFS” file shares (Public folder and campus unit share folders that are located on GS\DFS)
  • Miles City and Dawson Banner services 

Thank you for your cooperation.

Most of the send/receive issues are resolved by unchecking the SSL option in the email client.  However, we have seen continued problems with Mac Mail, Entourage and Mozilla.

 MacMail

• Mac OS 10.6 is now deciphering the certificate correctly in Mac Mail, and mail service is working normally. However, earlier Mac OS versions may still experience issues. Until Apple sends out a patch, users with this problem need to be sure the SSL option is turned off for their client.
• One other issue that we have seen with Mac OS 10.6 and Mac Mail is multiple copies of sent and received items show up in their Drafts folder.  While this is not caused by the new certificates, something in the process of turning on and off the SSL option triggers the Store draft message on server option.   We have found that turning "Store draft message on the server" off option clears up this problem. 

Entourage

Some of these clients are still receiving an error because of a caching issue. To resolve this issue: make sure you check the “DAV Services requires SSL” in the “Advanced” accounts settings of the Exchange user. If you still get the “root certificate error” when starting Entourage, don’t forget to delete the “OfficeSync “prefs” located in the home directory’s Library/Preferences folder and relaunch Entourage.

Mozilla

• Mozilla 2.0.0.4 users need to select TLS (if available) under Security Settings.
• Mozilla 3 users need to select None in order to ensure proper email service.

 If you are experiencing other email issues or have a different client than listed above and need help, please contact IT Central at 243-HELP (4357) for assistance.  As we hear information from vendors regarding their patches we will post it. 

Banner maintenance: The databases that will be down include ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, SPTST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, MyUMH, UMDW, AUADMN and AUTST8. Please limit your batch jobs for tonight and be logged off by 5:00 pm.  CyberBear and myUMH will go down about 4:45 p.m.

Tuesday, October 12, 5:50-6:00 a.m.

Network maintenance to upgrade software on network equipment: This outage will affect:

• all Internet access at UM
• access to the State of Montana network from UM
• access to the Commercial Ticket System/Bookstore Network from on campus only
• network communication between all UM Remote sites and the main UM campus
• network communication between UM main campus and: MT Tech, Western, Helena COT, Missoula COTE and COTW, FLBS, Bitterroot College Program, Fort Missoula Research Center, O’Conner Center (CRMW), Rural Institute (on SW Higgins), Palmer Bldg. in Missoula

**************

UPDATE

Symantec AntiVirus Corporate Edition

As announced in August,  the Symantec Corporate Edition server/managed group would be removed from service in early fall. As of this morning, it is no longer available.  Earlier this year Symantec Endpoint replaced the old Symantec client. Symantec Endpoint is available for download from the IT website at: http://umt.edu/it/antivirus/default.aspx. Questions about Symantec Endpoint may be directed to IT Central, 243-4357.

Thank you for your cooperation.

We apologize for an inconvenience this issue may be causing you.

UPDATE # 2: 10/8/10, 12:40 p.m.

IT system administrators  are now working with VeriSign technical support to resolve the certificate issue being experienced with Mac computers. Apparently, this issue has also been experienced by other institutions, not just UM. We anticipate that the situation will be resolved by Monday.

In the meantime as a temporary solution, please inform Mac users that they should be able to check their MSO email online at: https://messaging.umt.edu

Please check back Monday for updates. Thank you.

UPDATE # 3: 10/11/10, 11:45 a.m.

We will be taking down the Exchange environment at 12:00 noon today for approximately 15 minutes. All incoming mail will be queued during this process and delivered when the server reboots so no mail will be lost. 

While VeriSign has not found a solution for the issues Macintosh users are experiencing with the new certificate,  we are hoping this reboot will correct the situation.

We appreciate your patience as we work to resolve this problem.

FINAL UPDATE: 10/11/10, 3:00 p.m.

The issue Mac clients were experiencing after last week’s new VeriSign certificate update to the Exchange servers is now resolved. IT windows administrators worked extensively to resolve the issue, including direct contact with VeriSign, and researching and testing different configurations – all of which led to today’s Exchange reboot.

Mac users should again be able to send/receive mail. If, during this issue, you turned off SSL, please turn it back on.

Thank you, again, for your patience during this issue. If you are still experiencing email service issues, please contact IT Central, 243-4357, for assistance.

Please do not hesitate to contact IT Central, 243-4357 (SS 120) if you have questions about your email service or need assistance. Thank you for your patience and cooperation. Check back for updates tomorrow.

In the meantime, for Mac users, there are options for temporarily resolving the problem. Here's an update for three clients:

• Safari – not an issue
• Mac Mail – turn off SSL (Close Mac Mail. Restart in non-SSL. Load mail. Turn SSL back on and use Port 993. NOTE: we are behind the firewall so there is no issue when taking these steps.)
• Entourage – when a user sees the "cannot create a secure connection" error message, click Continue.

If you need assistance with a Mac client, please call IT Central, 243-4357 (or visit us at Social Science 120). Please check back for updates. 

Wednesday, October 6

Tomorrow morning, Thursday, October 7, between 8:00 am and 12:00 noon, IT Exchange administrators will perform necessary maintenance on the central MS Exchange server. During this time, UM faculty and staff members with MSO email accounts (@mso.umt.edu) may potentially experience delays of email access and delivery. Email will not be lost during this time.

We thank you in advance for your cooperation during this activity. This is critical maintenance that calls for immediate action.

Questions may be directed to IT Central, 243-4357.

Web services impacted include: UM home page (www.umt.edu), UM online directory, The Catalog, Academic planner, UMConnect gateway (umt.edu/umconnect), Student jobs application, Griztix, News.umt.edu, UM Foundation, Alumni Association, MIFP, KGBA, A to Z directory, Departmental web pages that exist on umt.edu/, Sites redirected from umt.edu/, Blackboard landing page.

We thank you in advance for your cooperation during this necessary maintenance activity.

During this time all incoming and outgoing phone traffic will be disabled.  Any live calls, including those leaving voice mail messages,  and any calls on hold will be dropped when the initialization starts.

While offices in University Villages will be affected, the individual residences will not be affected.  The COT will experience the same outage as the main campus.

We appreciate your cooperation and patience as we work to avoid major system downtime. Please feel free to share this information with any of your colleagues.

• We experienced an outage last night for all CAS authenticated services.  CAS authenticated services include Blackboard, Onestop, Wireless Access, Electronic Library Resources, MyLabsPlus, iTunesU, Procard Reports and Academic Planner. The outage started at about 9:10 last night (9/20) and lasted until 7:47 this morning.  We don’t know the cause of the outage and are investigating.

  If you have any questions or problems related to this outage, please contact IT Central at 243-HELP (4357).

 Tuesday, September 21, 6:00 am: Cascade CMS login change

• The current login system to the Cascade content management system does not warn a user when their password expires. Tomorrow morning, IT-WTS is moving this process to a system that will improve password management. Users will continue to log in with their NetID and password, but the login page will look different. This system is the same log in mechanism that is used with other services such as: OneStop, Academic Planner, campus wireless, and Blackboard.  Questions may be directed to IT Central, 243-HELP, or at Social Science 120.

Tech Fair will feature presentations and displays from campus departments including:

• Disability Student Services
• Mansfield Library
• Presentation Technology
• Classrooms & Camtasia
• Student Affairs/DirectConnect
• Career Services
• Registrar
• Montana Museum of Art & Culture
• IT Central
• UC Bookstore with Apple, Dell, and Adobe

• Academic Planner
• Passwords & Computer Safety
• Camtasia
• Course Search
• Classroom Technology
• Emergency Notification System
• and much, much more

Tech Fair participants will be able to enter into a drawing for great prizes, including: a Kindle, iPod Touch, smart pens, software packages, two tickets to the President’s box at the Northern Arizona football game, and much, much more.

For more information, visit the Tech Fair website at: umt.edu/it/techfair

Monday, September 13, 5:00 p.m. - midnight: Banner Maintenance. Databases unavailable include: ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, MyUMH, UMDW, AUADMN, AUTST8 and AUTST7. Please limit batch jobs for tonight and be logged off by 5:00 p.m. CyberBear and MyUMH will go down at approximately 4:45 p.m.

Monday, September 13, 5:00 p.m. until completed: Anonymous FTP server (ftp.umt.edu). Routine maintenance. Service unavailable during maintenance.

Thank you.

IT network engineers evaluating the situation. High usage rates are expected to be the primary cause, but they are also checking on potential virus issues.  We have also experienced power fluctuation issues in the past 24 hours that are under investigation. IT will increase the commodity internet bandwidth to address the high traffic levels, but that change will not be in effect until tomorrow.

Thank you for your patience. Additional information will be posted as it becomes available. Please check back.

• All UM to non-UM traffic including the State of Montana network, the Internet and the Internet2.
• The outage will be in both directions: traffic coming to the University as well as traffic routing from the University to the outside. (During this time access to UM servers will be unavailable as well as internet service to the outside world.)

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

However, a separate network connectivity issue (involving Bresnan) at the following sites began this morning at approximately 3:30 a.m: UM-Helena, MT Tech, UM-Dillon, state government connections (Helena). If you are experiencing connectivity issues to these locations, this may be the reason. Bresnan is aware of the issue and is working to resolve it.

Updates will be posted here. Thank you.

This activity has been scheduled by UM’s Commodity internet service provider. The purpose of the outage is for the provider to perform maintenance on their core  network.  This means that UM will lose most internet connectivity during this time frame.  It is also possible that service may come and go during this time. This also means that access from off campus to on-campus web-based services will be unavailable during this time (i.e. Banner, CyberBear, employee mso email: messaging.umt.edu, OneStop, Blackboard).

Commodity internet service includes most internet sites.  Our Internet 2 connection will remain active but this is a very limited set of locations on the internet, primarily for research and educational sites.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Tuesday, August 10, 5:00-5:30 p.m.:  Patches to lists.umt.edu. Impact: Listserv web interface and service will be unavailable during this time (outage is expected to be less than 30 minutes).

Tuesday, August 10, 5:00 p.m. – 12:00 a.m: Banner maintenance. Services unavailable during this time: ADMN, CyberBear, REPORT, TEST8, HCADMN, HCTST8, MyUMH, UMDW, AUADMN, and AUTST7.

Thursday, August 12, 12:00 noon: OID database backup. Impact: OID login services down for approximately 5 minutes.

The campus voice mail system is currently unavailable. Network engineers are investigating the problem. Updates will be posted here as soon as further information is available. Thank you for your patience.

Tuesday, August 3, 2010 between 6:00-6:30 a.m.

• UM network maintenance: All network services at UM including internet access will be affected. Most network access during this time period will be unavailable. The purpose of the outage is to perform needed software upgrades.
• UM IT production web server maintenance: The UM home page will be unavailable during this time as well as departmental sites associated with the UM home page (www.umt.edu/). The purpose of the outage is to apply patches to the server.

July 28 - August 9, 2010

• Exchange maintenance to verify integrity of all data stores on the Exchange environment. MSO email access will be unavailable at some point during the maintenance for each user. Email received during the process will be queued and delivered when the process is complete. Week day work will occur between 9:00 p.m. and 6:00 a.m. Weekend work will occur during the day. Updates will be posted as necessary. More information is available on the Exchange maintenance announcement  (7/28/10).

Following is an explanation.

Due to the volume of some  MSO email mailboxes on the Exchange server, adequate storage space has again become an issue. This week IT windows administrators began relocating some of these mailboxes to space that became available once student email service was moved from GrizMail to UMConnect.

In the midst of this process, it became apparent that these large mailboxes have caused integrity issues on the data stores on which their accounts reside. Before proceeding with relocating mailboxes, all data stores in the Exchange server must be checked for integrity and repaired. This activity means that MSO email access will be unavailable at some point for each user and that email received during this time will be queued and delivered when the process is finished.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation during this necessary activity. Also - any clean up that you can perform on your individual account would be extremely beneficial throughout this entire process.

Updates will be posted as necessary.

(7/14/10; 10:30 a.m.) We are currently experiencing an issue with the UM home page Feature Story section, A – Z directory, and online phone/address directory (www.umt.edu). They are currently unavailable. Our web team is aware of the problem and are working to resolve it as quickly as possible. Updates on the situation will be posted here. Thank you.

Tuesday, July 13, 2010, between 6:00 - 7:00 am: Cascade Content Management System (CMS) / UM Directory

• The Cascade Management System (CMS) will be taken offline to update the system and apply patches. The outage will impact only CMS users who attempt to login to the system during the downtime. UM web sites will be unaffected.
• A new version of the UM Directory will be released that includes lookup of affiliates.

In case you didn't know, with the UM Directory you can search for UM employees and students (who have not requested confidentiality in CyberBear) by name, or browse faculty and staff members by department. The directory is available by clicking on Directory in the upper right corner of most UM web pages.

Thank you for your cooperation.

IT is in the process of obtaining a new internet service for The University of Montana and the process begins/occurs this week. Our internet service is segmented into multiple pieces, so this activity is a multi-step process. While we attempt to ensure that service interruptions do not occur during the transition, it is possible that they may. Transitioning to a new internet provider impacts only internet traffic to and from the University. Since our internet service is segmented, only some service will be impacted. NOTE: This activity does not impact email service or internal campus network traffic.

The first step in the process is scheduled to begin tomorrow morning, Tuesday, June 29, 6:10 a.m. At this time IT network engineers will perform a test failover to a backup internet service provider.  The test concludes at 12:00 noon tomorrow. At that time we will switch back to our current service provider.  Again, we believe there will be no break in service, but it is possible that we may experience some connectivity issues - primarily during the times of the changes (6:10 a.m. and 12:00 noon).

As we continue the transition to a new UM internet service provider, there will be more changes throughout the week. Updates will be posted here.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

1. Core network devices will be rebooted to perform software upgrades. The outage will impact all UM network sites. Most network access will be unavailable during this time.

Tuesday, June 22, 2010, 8:00 am: OneStop Email Viewer / Academic Planner

1. The OneStop Email Viewer removed from OneStop. Students may continue using UMConnect online services by navigating their browser to http://www.umt.edu/umconnect Faculty and staff can view their Exchange email messages at http://messaging.umt.edu. Instructions to configure various desktop email clients can be found at http://www.umt.edu/it/email/umconnect.

2. The Academic Planner will be refreshed to implement an internal change. A momentary break in service is anticipated.

Thank you for your cooperation,

Tuesday, June 15, 2010, 6:00 a.m. - 6:30 a.m.: Campus network maintenance

• Activity: Core network devices will be rebooted to perform software upgrades and resolve network issues.
• Impact: Outage will impact all UM network sites. Most network access will be unavailable during this time.

Future activity: Tuesday, June 22, 2010: OneStop Email Viewer

Starting June 22, 2010, the OneStop Email Viewer will no longer be available.  Students may continue using UMConnect online services by navigating their browser to http://www.umt.edu/umconnect. Faculty and staff can view their Exchange email messages at http://messaging.umt.edu/.  Instructions to configure various desktop email clients can be found at http://www.umt.edu/it/email/umconnect.

UPDATE: UM PBX telephone and voice mail system upgrade: June 11-12, 2010

Last weekend's UM PBX and voice mail system upgrade was successfully completed. Thank you for your cooperation.

Because UM staff are such a pivotal part of the university environment with students, faculty and staff members often asking for help or information, we want to help! In various combinations we will announce, demonstrate and discuss technology at UM - especially tools available for use by UM faculty, staff and students. 

Come join us for our first installment of the Admin Associates Users Group which will include information about new interactive media and the Academic Planner. Bring your questions and your coffee cup. 

Tea, coffee and cookies will be provided!

Please Note Room Change: The first session will be held on Tuesday, June 29, 3 - 4:30 p.m. in LA 11.

Please let us know if you plan to attend by sending an email message to: IT_CSS_Support@mso.umt.edu

• UM Mountain campus (all locations and includes Public Safety and Residence Life)
• UM-COTE
• UM-COTW
• State of Montana: DNRC and FWP

 The schedule is as follows:

• June 11, 6:00 p.m. - June 12, 8:00 p.m. Voice mail service will be unavailable
• June 12, 8:00 a.m. - 12:00 p.m. Phone service will be unavailable

Other important notes:

• Please encourage your voice mail users to clear out their voice mailboxes as much as possible the week prior to the upgrade to help streamline the upgrade process.
• Existing messages will be archived beginning at 6:00 p.m. on Friday, June 11. During this process (from Friday at 6:00 p.m. until Saturday at 8:00 p.m.), messages that arrive in voice mailboxes will be lost as IT personnel will be using the archive from Friday evening to restore the voice mailboxes after the conversion to the new voice mail system on Saturday.

 We thank you in advance for your cooperation during this planned activity. Questions may be directed to Scott Holgate, IT Network Services.

We invite you to join us at several events on June 2-3.

Events open to the campus community

• Demos of advanced video conferencing systems, including Cisco's Telepresence, Tandberg's H.33/H.264 and Vidyo's desktop system.

Wednesday, June 2
10 -11:30 a.m. and 2-3:30 p.m.
Law School 201

• Infinera Express mobile demo equipped with Infinera's innovative optical networking systems.

Wednesday and Thursday, June 2-3
8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
Adams Center parking lot across from the Law School

• Northern Tier Golden Spike Event - Presenters include Internet2, U.S. Forest Service, Indiana University Global Research Network Operations Center and more.

Thursday, June 3
Reception 8:30-9:30 a.m.; Presentations 9:30 a.m.-noon
Law School 201

For more information, contact:

Gordy Pace, Director of IT Communications
Information Technology
gordy.pace@umontana.edu
243-2371

Visit the Northern Tier Network Consortium website at www.ntnc.org

Monday, May 24, 2010 through Thursday, May 27, 2010: 6:00 a.m. - 6:30 a.m.

• Activity:  Network equipment will be rebooted across the UM network (does not include partner campuses internal networks) in order to upgrade and reset equipment.
• Impact: There will be short interruptions in network services generally affecting one area at a time.

Monday, May 24, 2010, 10:00 a.m.

• Activity: Java Plug-in 1.6.20 in effect on Banner forms server.
• Impact: All Banner users must have this version on their computers in order for Banner to run. Questions may be directed to Diane Norem or Kathy Garramone.

In order to assure the stability of the Blackboard environment, IT will be moving Blackboard to a more robust hardware infrastructure, with better processing and storage capacity. The best opportunity for this move is this weekend, beginning at noon, May 21. We anticipate, if all goes well, that Blackboard service will return on Sunday afternoon, May 23.

Please encourage your faculty members who are teaching courses during first session to prepare their materials prior to the downtime, as they will be impacted during this time.

A temporary solution is in place until tomorrow morning. Beginning at 7:30 a.m. and lasting for approximately 30 minutes a newer hub will be installed. Network service on the second floor of Corbin Hall will be unavailable during this time. We are hopeful that this early schedule will impact as few users as possible.

We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may have caused.

Main campus web server maintenance (www.umt.edu): Thursday, May 20, 6:00 a.m., service unavailable for approximately 30 minutes. During this time, access to the following sites will be unavailable: UM home page, UM online directory, The Catalog, Academic planner, UMConnect gateway (umt.edu/umconnect), the Student Jobs application, Griztix, news.umt.edu, UM Foundation, Alumni Association, MIFP, KGBA, A to Z directory, Departmental web pages that exist on umt.edu/, Sites redirected from umt.edu/, Blackboard landing page.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Local administrative privileges are necessary for the Java Plug-in installation. If users do not have administrative privileges, it will be necessary for their technical support staff to perform the installation. Download instructions are available on the Banner Support website.

 After the upgrade, when users login to Banner, they will see the following security warning: "Java has discovered application components that could indicate a security concern." Users must click NO or Banner will not run correctly. This response is not something users should do for any other programs, but for now it is the only way Banner will run correctly. SunGardHE, Banner's parent company, is developing a patch to address this issue in Banner but it may take a few months before the patch is released.

 The deadline for upgrading to this version is May 24, 2010. On this date the Banner server will convert to Java Plug-in 1.6.20 and will require Banner users' computers to match this version.

Announcements about this conversion were sent to the Banner-announce email list this afternoon and posted to the Banner Support website. If you have questions, please contact Diane Norem (243-2624) or Kathy Garramone (243-5362). We thank you, in advance for your support and cooperation. If you are not IT support, please share this important information with your IT support staff.

Maintaining service as a non-registered student

Students who are not registering for Fall semester but will be associated with UM and need access to their student email account and other NetID-based services may meet requirements for student affiliate status. This process must be completed by Friday, September 17, 2010. More information about student affiliate status.

Email access

Students who do not register for Fall semester, will have access to their UMConnect email account until September 23. The University is exploring the feasibility of allowing former students to retain their UM email account after graduation.  Students will be notified of the policy decision through theirUMConnect email before September 23.

Additional details are available on the IT website. Specific questions may be directed to IT Central, located in Social Science 120, or by phone at 243-HELP (4357).

• Banner maintenance: Wednesday, May 5, 5:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. Databases unavailable during this time: ADMN, CyberBear, TEST8, REPORT, HCADMN, HCTST8, UMDW, AUADMN, AUSTS7.
• Anonymous ftp server maintenance (typically accessed at ftp.umt.edu): Monday, May 3, 5:00 p.m. until complete.
• UM campus map (map.umt.edu): Tuesday, May 4, 8:00 a.m., offline for approximately 30 minutes.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Due to an issue resulting from last night's scheduled Exchange maintenance, MSO email service was interrupted from 8:00 p.m. until approximately midnight. We apologize for any inconvenience this service interruption caused.

To permanently correct the problem, Exchange maintenance will occur again tomorrow, Thursday, April 22, between 5:00 and 6:00 p.m.

We thank you in advance for your cooperation.

Issue 1:  Uptime levels of 99.7 instead of 99.9 as expected

• One reason for the higher levels of downtime is a rapidly increasing number of users (now 10 million) and both a higher percentage of users on the system at a given time and a much higher number of per day email messages than planned. Microsoft is increasing the number of servers and memory to address this part of the problem.
• Another reason is the fact that the Outlook Live team stopped the migration of users to R4 from R3 as that migration requires resources that had to be redirected to solve the capacity problem noted above. R4 migration has been resumed and since R4 accounts require fewer resources this will help solve the overall capacity problem.

Issue 2: Lack of timely and sufficient communication relative to Live@edu status

• In the past the support desk for Live@edu was also responsible for solving the technical issues. Microsoft has now separated the team responsible for customer communication from the technical response team so information on status should be timelier and more descriptive.
• The support team that has been in place is more familiar with Hotmail. A new team has been constructed that will be able to work with Exchange issues at a system administrative level. The new team has also been directed to look at the problems from a customer perspective in order to understand the organizational impact. The intent is to move the support team from a consumer perspective to an enterprise perspective.
• There has been a lack of understanding on the part of the support team of the interdependencies of Exchange with other systems within Microsoft, e.g. networking. Interdependencies are being identified and problems will now be addressed with these in mind.
• Additional monitoring capabilities and system alerts are being put in place.

Issue 3: Lengthy process for problem resolution

• The number of highly skilled Exchange engineers has been limited requiring a lengthy escalation process for serious issues that need immediate resolution. Microsoft is significantly increasing the number of such engineers to cut the escalation process and length of time to resolution down for faster turnaround.

UM home page, UM online directory, The Catalog, Academic planner, UMConnect gateway (umt.edu/umconnect), Student jobs application, Griztix, News.umt.edu, UM Foundation, Alumni Association, MIFP, KGBA, A to Z directory, Departmental web pages that exist on umt.edu/, Sites redirected from umt.edu/, Blackboard landing page

Thank you in advance for your cooperation.