Cal Poly Pomona I&IT Alerts and Status

The issue with authorization has been corrected.

Students attempting to access the BroncoDirect Student Center are getting authorization errors. There may be other errors as well. Staff from I&IT and Student Affairs are working to correct the issue.

Blackboard, the university's learning management system that handles online classes, will be unavailable for 20 minutes between 10:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. on Thursday evening, Jan. 14, 2010. This is required because I&IT needs to stabilize a process that affects the backup of Blackboard content. Both Blackboard version 7 and version 9 will be unavailable during this maintenance. A few departmental file shares will also be down during this period. This is occurring during I&IT's regular weekly maintenance window, which is between 9:30 p.m. to 11:59 p.m. every Thursday. During the weekly maintenance window, centralized information technology services may be taken down for maintenance.

Our Blackboard 9 Pilot environment has been intermittently experiencing sluggishness with certain processes. This problem began with the start of this (winter 2010) quarter. These problems were undetectable during the limited pilot testing phase in the fall 2009 quarter and did not surface until we experienced higher usage levels at the beginning of the winter quarter. We are not alone, as many other universities are also experiencing the same problem with this new Blackboard release as they also shift from limited pilots to broader use.

The Blackboard support group in I&IT has been monitoring closely, day and night, and responding as promptly as possible when issues recur and require a restart. Some users may have experienced system inaccessibility or slowness while the system was being restarted. We have confirmed with Blackboard’s customer support team that the problems we are encountering are the result of a software bug that they are actively working to correct. We have taken additional mitigating steps and hope the chance of recurrence has been lessened until a permanent fix is available.

We are communicating closely with Blackboard technical support group. Blackboard is anticipating making a permanent solution available by the end of the week. I&IT will still need to test the solution before applying it to the live environment. In the meantime, I&IT will continue to monitor the situation, responding as promptly as possible in the event of a recurrence.

Blackboard 9 required a brief outage around 8 pm today, and may require additional outages. I&IT Systems staff are in communication with Blackboard technical support and are working toward a permanent fix. We apologize for the inconvenience.

I&IT has corrected the performance issues with Blackboard. Technicians are continuing to closely monitor Blackboard during this busy start of the winter 2010 quarter.

Blackboard is currently experiencing performance issues. I&IT technical systems administration and data base management staff members are working to remedy the problems as quickly as possible.

The CalPoly Home Page was inaccessible from off campus today from approximately 11:00-12:30pm.

On Friday, August 14, 2009, Facilities will be performing power maintenance in Building 5, which will take down some I&IT services for a number of buildings on campus while the maintenance activities are being performed. Below is a summary of the impact.

When:
Friday August 14, 2009 – 6:00AM – 11:00AM

Impact:
Loss of ALL network connectivity to/from the following buildings :

Bldg 4, Bldg 5, Bldg 7, Bldg 24, Bldg 24e, Bldg 25, Bldg 30, Bldg 32, Bldg34, Bldg 55, Bldg 76, Bldg79a and 193

When: Friday August 14 – 11:00AM – 3:00PM

Impact:
Campus cable TV service will be down across the entire campus.


Not affected:
Voice services will continue to remain available.

Network connectivity for all other buildings will not be impacted.

If you have any questions or concerns, please call the Cal Poly Pomona Help Desk at 909.869.6776.

Connectivity has been restored.

The campus has lost internet connectivity with the outside world. Staff are working to resolve the issue.

BroncoDirect and PeopleSoft will be down for an upgrade beginning at 5:00 p.m. on Friday May 29 2009 until Sunday May 31 2009 at 5:00 p.m. During this time, functions such as adding and dropping of classes, student fee payments and class schedule queries will be unavailable.

On Thursday, May 14, beginning at 9:30, maintenance of the campus network will cause a brief interruption of campus services, including access of campus services from off-campus. Among those services affected are BroncoDirect, Blackboard, email, and the Cal Poly Pomona web.

To improve our campus network connectivity, I&IT will need to perform network maintenance during the scheduled times below:

• March 12 (Thursday) from 10:00 p.m. to 11:00 p.m.
• March 22 (Sunday) from 10:00 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.

Users from off campus may experience outages while accessing campus Internet services, including Blackboard, during these times. Users from on campus (including those in classrooms and on-campus housing during those times) will not be affected by either outage.

March 22 was selected to minimize the impact on students and faculty. The March 12 maintenance is expected to be brief (10 minutes) and is scheduled during I&IT’s weekly maintenance window, a time we have designated to perform regular maintenance on any of our services. However, knowing that use of Blackboard and other services is especially high during the 10th week of the quarter, we wanted to alert you to this important network maintenance.

BroncoDirect functionality was restored around 11:00 a.m. today. I&IT apologizes for any inconvenience.

BroncoDirect, the university's front end for students, faculty and staff for a variety of tasks, is not directing properly. Users can successfully log in. However, when they select an area to update or add information, users are receiving a "Your PeopleSoft connection has expired" message.

I&IT is aware of the issue and is working on a solution. More information will be published when it becomes available.

Internet connectivity to and from the campus has been restored.

The network connection between Cal Poly Pomona and the internet is effectively down: off-campus sites are not available from on campus, and vice-versa. Personnel are working to resolve the issue.

Like the rest of Cal Poly Pomona, I&IT closes Christmas Eve, December 24, at noon and reopens at 7:30 a.m. on Monday, January 5, 2009.

During the holiday vacation, I&IT will respond to interruptions of these critical services only:

- BroncoDirect
- Campus Electronic Mail
- Internet Connectivity through the campus network
- Blackboard.

If you suspect outages of the above services during the holiday break and do not see your issue noted here within two hours, contact Public Safety at 909-869-3070 to report the problem. Public Safety will then contact the appropriate I&IT staff member who can rectify the disruption.

I&IT will respond as soon as possible. Exceptions will be:

- From 6:00 p.m. Christmas Eve (Dec. 24) through 8:00 a.m. December 26.
- From 6:00 p.m. New Year's Eve (Dec. 31) through noon New Year's Day (Jan. 1). This is so our staff can enjoy the holidays with their families and friends.

Please note that we will respond only to SYSTEM issues with the above services and not end-user desktop/laptop, user Internet Service Provider or other local problems.

All other issues will be addressed on 01/05/09 when the Cal Poly Pomona Help Desk re-opens. Contact: 909.869.6776 or helpdesk@csupomona.edu.

The university's Internet Service Provider (ISP), CENIC, has reported it has fixed the connectivity issues with Charter Communications. Anyone using charter.net as their ISP should no longer experience problems connecting to campus computing services such as BroncoDirect, Blackboard and Outlook Web Access.