Update on IT connectivity issues, from the Director of IT
16 Jan 2014
Source of the problem identified and tests due to take place to confirm a working solution.
As you may be aware, the University's storage system encountered problems on the mornings of Monday 13th and Tuesday 14th January (between 10am and 1pm) resulting in some people temporarily losing access to a number of services such as personal storage (P: Drive), shared network areas, student printing and SharePoint. As the storage area supports the staff and PC cluster Windows 7 PC Desktop, problems were also experienced with this running slowly.
Some PC-based examinations were also affected as a result of the intermittent connectivity. The vast majority of these were completed successfully. Unfortunately, one exam could not go ahead as planned and is being rescheduled.
After identifying patterns of behaviour, we are confident that the source of the problem lies between a process which is run to support examinations and the storage system itself. There appears to be an issue in how the two are ‘talking to each other’.
It should be stressed at this point that this is not an issue with BlackBoard, which has been operational throughout the week.
Following the exam incidents, we have been working to ensure the successful completion of the remaining PC-based examinations on Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning. These were all completed successfully, and no more PC-based examinations are planned this week.
With regards to the reliability of the storage system as a whole; the Windows 7 Desktop and other services that our storage supports, the issues encountered are highly unusual and are not due to fault with the storage system itself which has operated since 2011 with only one significant problem during that time.
We are currently investigating the most suitable working solution with the support of on-site engineers from the suppliers of the storage system (EMC).
To do this we will be performing tests on the morning of Friday 17 January between 6am and 9am. These tests will be across Barnes Wallis, Simon Building and Stopford 2 PC clusters. Other than requiring exclusive use of these clusters for that time, the tests will not impact the normal running of other services.
It is anticipated that the next set of PC-based examinations, beginning on Monday 20 January should be able to take place in an uninterrupted manner and that all other connectivity to PC desktops and network storage areas will continue to operate as normal. We will be monitoring the situation closely.
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Gerry Pennell
Director of IT.