We are currently experiencing intermittent performance issues affecting Blackboard, Banner, and logins (single-sign on).

We will update this post regularly as we learn more.

OIT

Office of Information Technology will be performing routine systems maintenance which includes but is not limited to rebooting Windows servers as deemed necessary, installing critical patches and other health checks on Thursday, 10/03/2013 from 3:00 AM to 7:00 AM during OIT maintenance window.  In addition, the following systems will be specifically impacted:

www.fau.edu, Banner, SharePoint, Graduate application, fsaAtlas, SCAC, vCenter, Xitracs, PrivateEye, SCOM,  and SCVMM

When: 12:01AM
Affected Services: None
Affected Systems:  Systems which have SCCM client in OIT
Description of maintenance: OIT will be enforcing SCUP updates for Adobe Reader 10 / 11, Adobe Professional 10 / 11, and Adobe Flash (ActiveX & Plugin) to systems located in the Office of Information Technology.  The updates will be requested by SCCM and installed through Microsoft Update.  These updates will not upgrade the version of the software that is installed, yet rather update for security and functionality patches.
User Impact:  No end-user impact is expected.

When: 5:00 – 6:00AM
Affected services: www.fau.edu
Affected systems: webnet4-7
Description of maintenance:  We are preparing the www.fau.edu systems to introduce new features for FAU webpages.
User impact: No expected end user impact.

When: 3:00am – 7:00am
Affected services: Banner
Affected systems: Banner FAUP
Description of maintenance: The following updates will be installed in Banner production: Financial Aid 8.18.1.1, 8.18.1.2 patch, Mass Data Update Utility 8.1.0 upgrade, Position Control 8.9.0 upgrade, HR/Payroll 8.9.0 upgrade, HR/Payroll 8.9.0.2, 8.9.0.3 patch
User impact: No expected end user impact.

When: 3:00-6:00AM
Affected services: SharePoint, Graduate application, fsaAtlas, SCAC, vCenter, Xitracs, PrivateEye, SCOM, SCVMM
Affected systems: mssql1, mssql2
Description of maintenance: The storage for several Microsoft SQL servers will be migrated to the NetApp. The following services will be interrupted for a short period of time during the window: SharePoint, Graduate application, fsaAtlas, SCAC, vCenter, Xitracs, PrivateEye
User impact: The services listed above will be unavailable for approximately 60 minutes during the maintenance window.

When: 3:00-6:00AM
Affected services: Exchange
Affected systems: Exchange
Description of maintenance: OIT will be configuring our mail servers to support coexistence with Microsoft hosted Exchange on Office 365.
User impact: There is no end-user impact expected

Office of Information Technology will be performing routine systems maintenance which includes but is not limited to rebooting Windows servers as deemed necessary, installing critical patches and other health checks on Thursday, 09/26/2013 from 3:00 AM to 7:00 AM during OIT maintenance window.  In addition, the following systems will be specifically impacted:

Banner Self-Service, Blackboard, Graduate Admissions App, Active Directory, www.fau.edu, SharePoint, PrivateEye, College of Education sites, Owlcard, Housing sites,  and EMS

When: 5:45 AM
Affected services: sso.fau.edu
Affected systems: BigIP (load balancer)
Description of maintenance: We are correcting an issue where iss.fau.edu cannot properly connect to sso.fau.edu. No downtime is expected, but in the event that things did not go right, and the user community is attempting to load a site that depends on sso.fau.edu, please have them try again in 5 minutes.
User impact: No expected end user impact

When: 3:00 – 7:00 AM
Affected services: Banner Self-Service
Affected systems: Banner FAUP
Description of maintenance: The following Banner modules will be installed to the specified version in production FAUP: General 8.6.0 upgrade, General 8.6.0.2 patch, Web Tailor 8.6.0 upgrade, Web Tailor 8.6.0.1 & 8.6.0.2 patches, Web General 8.6.0 upgrade, Web General 8.6.0.1 patch, General 8.6.0.3 patch, General 8.6.1.1 patch
User impact: Banner FAUP will be up and running during the updates. Banner Self-Service may have intermittent outages.

When: 5:45-6:15 AM
Affected services: Blackboard
Description: Blackboard has released an update to several Building Blocks including SafeAssign, Collaborate, and Blackboard Mobile.  Additionally, publishers McGraw Hill and Cengage have released updated Building Blocks.
User Impact: No expected end-user impact

When: 3:00 – 7:00 AM
Affected services: Graduate Admissions Application
Affected systems: owlapp1, owlapp2
Description of maintenance: The graduate admissions application will be upgraded to support the collection of supplemental applications and letters of recommendation.
User impact: The graduate admissions application will be offline from 3:00am until 6:00am.

When: 3:00 – 4:00AM
Affected services: Active Directory
Affected systems: Active Directory
Description of maintenance: We are installing a new version of the AD password filter which resolves an issue with the current filter that crashes the domain controller if a password change is processed with a password longer than 30 characters. This could cause longer login times although it’s not expected.
User impact: No end-user impact is expected

When: 3:00 – 7:00 AM
Affected Systems: All systems in BOC OU of FAU
Description of Maintenance: We will link new GPO’s to the BOC Organizational Unit in Active Directory to allow signed updates from Microsoft as well as future third party software updates such as Adobe.
User Impact:  No end-user impact is expected.

When: 5:00 – 6:00 AM
Affected services: www.fau.edu
Affected systems: webnet 5-7
Description of maintenance: We are introducing the ability for www.fau.edu to handle secure web pages (i.e. https addresses).
User impact: Significant downtime to the point of discovery and ticket creation is not expected.  However, if there is, please advise the user to try again in 5 to 10 minutes to allow either our failover processes to work or our backout procedure to finish. As a result of this change, users will be able to access any webpage on www.fau.edu via https. 

When: 3:00 – 6:00 AM
Affected services: SharePoint, Graduate application, fsaAtlas, SCAC, vCenter, Xitracs, PrivateEye, SCOM, SCVMM, College of Education sites, Owlcard, Housing sites, EMS
Affected systems: sqlnode01, sqlnode02, mssql1, mssql2
Description of maintenance: The storage for several Microsoft SQL servers will be migrated to the NetApp.
User impact: The following services will be interrupted for a short period of time during the window: SharePoint, Graduate application, fsaAtlas, SCAC, vCenter, Xitracs, PrivateEye, College of Education sites, Owlcard, Housing sites, and EMS

Office of Information Technology will be performing routine systems maintenance which includes but is not limited to rebooting Windows servers as deemed necessary, installing critical patches and other health checks on Thursday,09/17/2013 from 3:00 AM to 7:00 AM during OIT maintenance window.  In addition, the following systems will be specifically impacted:

When: 5:00-6:00AM
Affected services: None
Affected systems: boc22hv[70-74] and boc22fs[1-2]
Description of maintenance: OIT is installing a hotfix from Microsoft in an attempt to resolve an issue with several systems in our VM host environment.
User impact: No end-user impact is expected

When: 5:45-6:15AM
Affected services: Blackboard
Description: Blackboard has released an update to the Software Updates module.
User Impact: Blackboard’s Cloud and Social Profile tools may be inaccessible during this time.

When: 6:00-7:00AM
Affected services: Travel Z# Request Application in MyFAU
Affected systems: Boc22ora03, Diablo, Talonx1
Description of maintenance: OIT is migrating the database schema associated with the Travel Z# Request Application from a test Oracle instance MSOT to the production system MSOP.
User impact: The “Znumber Request” links under Travel in MyFAU will be unavailable during the migration process.

When: 6:00AM
Affected services: smtp.fau.edu
Affected systems: smtp.fau.edu
Description of maintenance: The DNS entry for smtp.fau.edu will be updated to point to Ironport servers. The internal smtp server is no longer required because Ironport antivirus licenses have been acquired and activated.
User impact: We do not expect any end-user impact, but if users have hard-coded the current IP or used the host name instead of smtp they would lose access to the smtp server and not be able to send mail.

When: 3:00-7:00AM
Affected services: Banner FAUP
Affected systems: Banner FAUP
Description of maintenance: The following updates will be installed in Banner production: Financial Aid 8.17.2.2 patch, Financial Aid 8.18.0 upgrade, Financial Aid Self-Service 8.18.0 upgrade, Student 8.5.7 upgrade
User impact: There will be no end-user impact.