October 16, 2011 - October 22, 2011 Archives

P/A Professional Development Leaves - Spring 2012

Professional development leaves are intended to provide opportunities for academic professional and administrative (P/A) staff to develop and enhance performance and contributions to their unit and its mission.  Applications for P/A Professional Leaves to be taken during spring 2012 are due to the CLA Office of Human Resources (clahr@umn.edu) no later than Friday, November 4, 2011. Applications must be submitted electronically to the CLA HR email account.


Application materials are due to the CLA HR email account (clahr@umn.edu) no later than 4:30 p.m. on the due date. Please submit the application form and all necessary attachments in electronic format. The form and detailed information can be found at: http://cla.umn.edu/intranet/hr/ProfessionalDevelopmentLeaves.php.


Please communicate this information and deadline to eligible P/A employees. 


If you have any questions regarding the P/A professional development leaves, please contact Tihara Chadwick at 4-0098 or chadw025@umn.edu.

Voice Alert

Activation and testing of new campus-wide emergency voice alert system will begin on Monday, October 24th and will be completed by Friday, October 28th.

When tested, speakers on a number of campus buildings will first emit a short alert tone then the following message will be played: "Attention! This is a test of the University of Minnesota Campus-wide Emergency Alert System. This is only a test." The Department of Emergency Management will be issuing a notification to the University as a whole regarding this testing and activation phase. If you have questions or concerns contact Associate Dean Gary Oehlert in the CLA Planning Office at gary@umn.edu or 4-3801.

Did you know you can find out where in the world your department's web traffic is coming from? What about what the most popular pages are in your department's site? View this data, and much more, from your web browser with UMWebstats (aka Urchin).

Google Migration Update

CLA's deadline is 28 working days away and there are 234 employees who still need to migrate to Google. Department administrators, please check your Google Docs for today's spreadsheet outlining those who still need to migrate. Thank you!

** KUDOS KUDOS KUDOS ** to the following department who has migrated all employees:

  • Institute for Global Studies

CLA-OIT System Maintenance Window

Saturday
November 5, 2011
8 a.m. - 4 p.m.

Services Affected (avoid these during the window)

  • Research servers
  • Unix-based file servers (clio and thalia)
  • Database servers
  • Web servers

Services Not Affected (common services that users often ask about)

  • Google Apps (Gmail, Docs, Sites)
  • Active Directory File storage (Home, Shared, Project folders)
  • CLA Terminal Server

Specific Details

  • Database Upgrades:
    • upgrade all MySQL databases to version 5.5 for audit compliance
  • Security Patching:
    • physically moving servers
    • perform routine maintenance tasks which will require rebooting most Unix servers

FAQ

What is a "system maintenance window"?

In order to correct a technical issue, install a security patch, or upgrade server hardware, CLA-OIT must occasionally disrupt normal networked services. Whenever possible, we plan such service outages in advance during times that minimize the disruption to our users.

Can I work during the maintenance window?

In general, CLA-OIT recommends that you avoid using the affected services during the maintenance window. Systems may be available during the maintenance window, but they can and will be shut down without warning and may be unavailable for hours at a time. So, use only at your own risk.

Can't this be done without disrupting service?

Certain tasks require server reboots and/or physically unplugging electricity. We do our best to group these tasks together to minimize the number of outages we schedule each year--which is generally less than five.

Can you reschedule this window to a more convenient time?

CLA-OIT strives to select times that minimize disruption. It isn't possible to pick a time that will not affect somebody. We also have to consider the availability of our staff and central OIT staff who run the data centers and networks. We try to soften the impact by announcing maintenance windows well in advance.

Why wasn't this work performed during the recent University-wide data center outage?

Since the previous maintenance affected such a large number of systems and users, significant efforts were made to minimize the amount of downtime--extra projects like this database work was discouraged. In addition, all the servers were powered off during the window and unavailable for additional maintenance.

How do I find out more?

If you have any questions or concerns contact us at 612-624-4357 (4-help) or 4help@umn.edu.

CLA-OIT System Maintenance Windows Google Calendar

Subscribe at: http://z.umn.edu/maintenance

About this Archive

This page is an archive of entries from October 2011 listed from newest to oldest.

October 9, 2011 - October 15, 2011 is the previous archive.

October 23, 2011 - October 29, 2011 is the next archive.

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