IS Connection

Novell Outages - Saturday, Dec 06

7:00am-8:30am : All Novell Servers will be OFF-LINE.
7:00am-12:00pm: FSAPPS Novell Server will be OFF-LINE.

EMU has five Novell Servers that provide mission critical network services for the campus. Four of them provide network file services (P:, G:, Z: drives) and printing services and the fifth server performs all the nightly backup services that copy files to disk or tape repositories that are then available for selective restorations. At various times during 2003 each of these servers either needed to be replaced with new hardware or significantly upgraded. This is a long and hard process that Info Systems began about June.

The good news is that we are almost done. The servers most difficult to upgrade have been completed. Only two relatively easy upgrades remain to be done. One will be done this Saturday (12/06) and the other will be done after the close of the fall semester.

The outage on Saturday, December 6, will involve two separate operations:

FIRST: (7:00am-8:30am) A "system image" will be made for ALL Novell servers. This is needed in order to provide the fastest way possible to restore an entire server should there be a catastrophic failure. All the Novell servers will be taken off-line about 7:00am and should be returned to service by 8:30am. During this time all access to Novell services will be unavailable to the entire campus. Novell services include the network drives, email access and logging in to the Windows computers in the computer labs. Details for this outage can be found here.

SECOND: (7:00am-12:00pm) The Novell server that hosts some specialized faculty/staff applications (i.e. Goldmine, TMA, Survey Pro, Past-Perfect Museum) will remain off-line until the hardware upgrade for this server is completed. We expect this server to be back on-line by noon. Details for this outage can be found here.

If you have any questions, please contact the HelpDesk (x4357, 540-432-4357, helpdesk@emu.edu).