News - The University of Montana

As announced last week, due to decreasing storage space on the Exchange servers causing email service issues, IT Exchange administrators are in the process of compressing all of the database that reside on these servers. The compression process is progressing well – freeing up large amounts of storage space.  

For today only, and in order to move forward more quickly, the process will begin at 2p. There will be no compression activity Thursday, 12/25, or Friday, 12/26, but administrators will continue the process this Saturday, 12/27, and Sunday, 12/28, at 4p, as well as into next week. Recall that during the process you may experience the inability to open your mailbox, send messages, or notice synchronization errors. These issues will clear up once all databases are fully compressed.

Please note the following announcement from Keith Lynip, UM Online Director: 

On 29 December 2008, we will be implementing CAS (Central Authentication Service) with Blackboard. This will require us to take Blackboard down for most of the day on the 29^th. It will be intermittently available through the day, as we test various elements of this implementation, but it’s not possible to specify in advance the exact periods during the day when it will be available.

CAS is an authentication system that will link Blackboard with OneStop, the Mansfield Library, and iTunesU. After it is implemented, when NetID users log into one system they will automatically be logged into all the other systems, thus creating a single sign-on experience. The other primary benefit is that CAS will provide a warning to users when their password is nearing expiration, which is not as trivial a benefit as one may think.

We apologize for any convenience caused by having the system down for a day, but in looking at the calendar, we felt this was likely to be a day of relatively low utilization.

If you have any questions or concerns, please don’t hesitate to contact UMOnline at courseware-support@umt.edu or 406.243.4999.

As the volume of email  stored on the MS Exchange servers increases, space for this storage is decreasing, causing issues with email service. In order to resolve this issue, IT Exchange administrators need to compress the databases that reside on these servers.

At approximately 4pm on Thursday, December 18, administrators began this activity. Since there are multiple databases and in an effort to minimize the impact on work productivity, administrators will compress one database daily (beginning at 4pm) until the process is complete. Given the holiday schedule, this means that the process will extend into early January.  

During this process, you may experience the inability to open your mailbox, send messages, or notice synchronization errors. These issues will clear up once all databases are fully compressed.  

We thank you, again, for your patience and understanding during this necessary activity. Further updates will be posted here.

System administrators will be performing maintenance on the LISTSERV email list software on Tuesday, December 30, 10a-2p. During the maintenance period, the application will be totally unavailable. This means that if you are a list owner or list subscriber you will be unable to post to your list (e.g. techpart@lists.umt.edu, banner-announce@lists.umt.edu, etc.) or access the LISTSERV interface (http://lists.umt.edu) during this time. Please plan accordingly. Thank you for your cooperation.

IT system administrators will be performing minor maintenance work on the Exchange system this Sunday, December 14, at 1:00p and should be completed within an hour. Some faculty, staff, and students may experience intermittent outages during the maintenance.

The GrizMail access issue experienced by some students earlier this afternoon is now resolved. For questions about your GrizMail account, please contact IT Central, 243-HELP. Thank you.

We are currently experiencing a storage issue with the Microsoft Exchange server that is impacting GrizMail access for some students – not all students are being impacted at this time. System administrators are aware of the problem and are working to correct it. We apologize for any inconvenience this issue may cause.

We have received reports that several phishing messages are currently routing through UM’s email system. Phishing is the act of attempting to acquire personal information (user names, passwords) by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in electronic communication. Please keep in mind that UM will never ask employees or students for account information via email, and that if users have a question regarding an email message they should delete it or contact IT Central for assistance (243-4357). Thank you.