Technology@Wooster

At 6:00 Tuesday morning we began a routine process to add disk space to the Faculty and Staff storage area. While adding the space we encountered a bug within IBM’s software on the storage server. This bug caused the existing space to become unreadable. We worked for several hours with support personnel from both IBM’s support partner and Novell’s support team to recover the data.

Late in the day Tuesday it became clear we would not be able to recover the existing data and initiated the process to restore the data from backup tapes. The total amount of information being pulled from the tapes and the recreation of the virtual server structure went well but was very time consuming.

The Student space was returned to operation on Tuesday, March 6th at 8:00 pm. There was no data loss on the student volume.

Faculty Space returned to full operation on Wednesday, March 7th at 8:00am. All files updated on the faculty volume between 2:00AM and 6:00AM Tuesday, March 6th are not in the restore.

Staff Space returned to full operation on Thursday, March 8th at 8:00am. All files updated on the straff volume between 2:00AM and 6:00AM Tuesday, March 6th are not in the restore.

Any data saved or modified on the Faculty and Staff volumes between 2:00AM and 6:00AM Tuesday, March 6th has been lost.

We will continue working with IBM over the next weeks to completely isolate the portion of the software that created the issue, and we will be updating the software on our storage server with the patched version.

Thanks for your patience and understanding during this service outage.

Vince Di Scipio
Director Networks, Telecommunications and Systems

Over the holidays, IT increased the bandwidth of the College’s internet connection. Prior to the increase, available bandwidth was 24 megabits per second (Mbps), 12 Mbps, and 6 Mbps for commodity internet traffic, intra-Ohio commodity internet traffic, and internet2 traffic, respectively. Available bandwidth for general commodity internet traffic is now 36 Mbps, and available bandwidth for intra-Ohio traffic is 18 Mbps. Internet2 bandwidth is unchanged. Changes instituted by OARnet, our service provider, allowed us to make these increases without increased cost.

The College also made structural changes to our internet connection. We now have “last mile” connectivity to the Third Frontier Network. This direct fiber optic connection to OARnet amply provides for future increases and allows the College greater flexibility in managing bandwidth acquisition. These structural changes have the added benefit of lowering the cost to the College of providing internet access.

We in IT are very happy to be able to provide these service enhancements.

In the summer of 2007, IT will implement a network access control (NAC) solution in all student residential spaces. The NAC is designed to prevent computers that are infected with viruses or worms, and computers that are vulnerable to infection, from connecting to the campus network. This will prevent the spread of infection and help to ensure that the campus network and other IT resources operate effectively.

When students arrive on campus for next academic year and plug a computer into a network jack, the NAC will require that they authenticate. Following authentication the computer will be scanned for infection and vulnerabilities. If infections or vulnerabilities are detected, the computer will be denied network access and the student will be provided with information as to the nature of the problem, the steps required to remedy the problem, and where to obtain assistance.

To test the NAC and to gain experience with it, IT will implement this new service within our own offices prior to deployment in the residential spaces. This will help to ensure a smooth implementation for students. The NAC will replace the computer registration process that went into effect at the beginning of this academic year.

Additional information about the NAC and its implementation will be published on the IT blog as it becomes available.