November 2008 News
Welcome to the November IT newsletter. This month we will focus on the changes in our e-mail and calendaring as we move our customers from SendMail Pro for e-mail and Microsoft Exchange 2003 for calendaring to Microsoft Exchange 2007. On November 21, I sent out a detailed Information Technology Annual Work Plan for FY 2009 update which tied our efforts to the Strategic Technology Plan. Click here for the November Update
Sincerely,
Donald L. Steward
Executive Director of Information Technology and CIO
Moving to Microsoft 2007 for Faculty and Staff
This section includes some technical terms which will have a definition in brackets and italics. I am purposely using these terms so that you may better understand the complexity of the services we provide and why these specific choices were made.
Over the past summer IT purchased and installed server hardware to create a robust, reliable e-mail and calendaring system. IT chose a system using 3 sets of two servers in a high-availability cluster to help prevent loss of e-mail services. (High-availability clusters [also known as failover clusters] are implemented primarily for the purpose of improving the availability of services. It operates by having redundant servers, which are then used to provide service when system components fail. The most common size for an HA cluster is two servers. This is the minimum requirement to provide redundancy. HA cluster implementations attempt to manage the redundancy inherent in a cluster to eliminate single points of failure.)
This e-mail system was connected to the new Storage Area Network (SAN). (A Storage Area Network is a network of storage disks. In large enterprises, a SAN connects multiple servers to a centralized pool of disk storage. Compared to managing hundreds of servers, each with their own disks, SANs improve system administration. By treating all the company's storage as a single resource, disk maintenance and routine backups are easier to schedule and control. In some SANs, the disks themselves can copy data to other disks for backup without any processing overhead at the host computers.) The SAN was purchased to provide reliable and secure storage of critical faculty and staff data files. The SAN was installed early this semester and testing began immediately. We hope to begin adding users during the spring semester.
We experienced an unexpected failure of the old Microsoft Exchange 2003 server which was used to support shared calendaring for some administrators on campus. IT had to move these customers to a new Microsoft Exchange 2007 clustered server environment. Due to the failure, IT was forced to make this move two months ahead of schedule before a thorough and complete testing period was completed. To date, we have converted 156 previous Exchange 2003 calendaring accounts and associated Send Mail Pro e-mail to Exchange 2007. We have begun moving the remaining faculty and staff using Send Mail Pro e-mail accounts to Exchange 2007. There are 1,500 total e-mail accounts. Once converted to Exchange 2007, our faculty and staff will be able to use Outlook Web Access (OWA) with any web browser to access their e-mail off-campus. IT is moving quickly to convert everyone to the new e-mail system. This process is a time consuming operation and must be balanced with maintaining our regular day-to-day services.
Getting to know the people behind IT
This month IT highlights Ed Boyd. Ed has been an employee of Georgia College in the area of IT since 1976. He was an active part in the transformation of technology at GC from the old days of "unit record equipment" and "punched card operations" to the latest technologies we currently enjoy and rely upon for the daily operation of the university. He currently serves in the position of Assistant Chief Information Officer. He focuses on ensuring buildings are equipped with necessary technology by working closely with Physical Plant
on construction and renovation projects.
