Office of Information Services

News/IT Alerts

9/3/09:  Scheduled Emergency Outage 

Information Services has been notified that Facilities Management needs to make urgent repairs to the Emergency Power in Howard Hall on Thursday, September 3, 2009.  In preparation for this work, IS will shut down most resources beginning at 3:30 a.m.   We expect to be fully operational by 7:00 a.m.    

SOM Email and the Internet connection will remain operational.   

Unavailable resources include:  CICERO, BRAAN, SOM Web Server, file storage (user and department folders), GPILS, GCRC web site and applications, ITWorks (application and web reports), network printers, networked copiers/scanners.

Customers in Howard Hall, 3rd - 5th floors, will have no network connectivity during this period. 

8/31/09: Summary of Upgrade

Three problems arose after installation of new firewall equipment. Each occurred due to incomplete documentation from our vendors. Working with our vendors, however, we resolved slow Internet and web application access Monday morning. Outbound email delivery resumed by early afternoon. We apologize for the inconvenience that followed the equipment upgrade.

8/28/09: Scheduled Outage

On Friday, August 28th between 7:30 pm and 9:30 pm. the Office of Information Services will upgrade portions of the School of Medicine's network. Network engineers will replace old firewall devices with new ones. During this time, the School of Medicine's network will not be available from outside locations. Network traffic to and from external resources, including the Internet, will be interrupted. Inbound and outbound email will be queued and delivered once the network is back in operation. On-site computers will be able to access internal resources such as file servers, printers, and local email accounts.

05/25/09: Unscheduled Outage

Around 1:00 a.m. on Monday, May 25, a server room in Howard Hall overheated causing the SAN to shut down taking several production file, email, and database servers off line. Facilities responded to the problem and equipment was back in operation by 1:30 p.m.

5/18 - 5/19/09: Unscheduled Email access problem for customers with large mailboxes

Approximately 20 customers with unusually large mailboxes were unable to access email accounts. The problem presented on 5/18/08 while technicians were working to restore the SAN. Technicians resolved this problem and email accounts were available for customers by 7:30 a.m. on 5/19.

5/18/09: Extension of Unscheduled Outage

Technicians and the Vendor were able to resume troubleshooting the SAN failure when the network was available again on the 17th. Two SAN modules were removed and re-added. Affected services were restored by 11:00 a.m. on the 18th.

5/16/09 - 5/17/09: Scheduled Outage

Information Services shut down the SOM network due to a facilities management upgrade project that shut off the air conditioning in two buildings housing network and server equipment. The outage lasted four hours longer than scheduled. Most equipment was returned to service by 1:30 p.m. on 5/17/09.

5/15/09: Unscheduled Outage

On Friday, May 15th, at 2:30 p.m. 2 volumes on the SAN became unavailable affecting access to email, file servers, application servers, and database servers. Technicians worked with the Vendor but were not able to resolve the problem before the scheduled outage on 5/16/09.

3/12/09: Unscheduled Outage

A circuit breaker blew during repair of the Storage Area Network (SAN) delaying repair and preventing automatic restart of the storage manager software. The outage impacted email, VPN and internet access from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

3/07/09: Interrupted Connectivity during Core Network Upgrade

On Saturday, March 7th, Information Services will be working on a network upgrade. Connectivity will be intermittent between the hours of 9:00 a.m. and Noon as various segments of the network are upgraded. Services impacted include: email, access to file servers (user folders), networked printers, the Internet, and connectivity to UPI and UMMS.

1/5/09: New VPN policy for SOM Affiliates

Effective immediately, VPN account requests for SOM affiliates must be submitted by the department/program/center/institute’s account requestor and accompanied with a photo copy of the affiliate's driver's license or other official photo ID. The VPN account will be created and set to expire on the one year anniversary. Access can be renewed once Information Services is notified by the account requestor that access is required for another year.

11/12/08: Update

The problem of email headers being restored but not the text of the message or the attachment has been solved. We are going through the list of customers who reported this problem and recovering full email messages.

If you are experiencing this problem and have not reported it to the help desk, please call 6-3998 or send an email to Help@som.umaryland.edu.

November 5, 2008

SOM email is delivered by two systems. The disk storage system on one of those systems failed on October 27th, interrupting email service to some 700 SOM employees. Efforts to repair the failed components were not successful. A replacement server and storage system were put in place. Email delivery resumed and the contents of Inboxes have been restored to most of the people affected.

Shared resources (calendars, folders, etc.) and messages in Sent Items folders are in the process of being restored now. If you are still experiencing problems with your email service, please call the SOM IS Help Desk (6-3998) to request assistance.

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