Showing posts with label infrastructure. Show all posts

CI Virtual Labs Modifications - May 29, 2020

by in , , , , ,

Dear Campus Community:

In an effort to provide a more stable and robust virtual work and learning environment, Information Technology Services (ITS) will be making the following modifications to the CSUCI Virtual Labs (CIVL) at 11:00 p.m. on Friday, May 29, 2020:

  1. The virtual environment for the "Art Lab" will be shutdown. Art-related applications, such as the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, will be accessible from the “Student Lab”.
  2. The "Student Lab" will be re-sized to better suit the needs of Students during the Summer session.
The "Staff VDI" will remain unmodified as we continue to work remotely.

If you have any issues or concerns, please feel free to contact the Shared Services Solution Center at 805-437-8552 between the hours of 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday, or to submit an ITS Service Request.

Campus events calendar - new release coming on 7/26

by Anonymous in , , , ,

Information Technology Services, in partnership with Communication & Marketing and Conferences & Events, pleased to announce that we will be launching a redesigned campus events calendar on Friday, July 26, 2019.

The Web Services team has partnering with calendar service Trumba to improve the ease-of-use and personalization of the campus events calendar experience for students, faculty, staff and the CSUCI community.  Highlights of this new release include:

  • Ability to receive email and SMS/text reminders about calendar events
  • Ability to subscribe to calendars and add them to your personal calendar
  • Table, list and month views for the calendar
  • Sign in and save events of interest using your CSUCI student or employee email account. 
To access a preview of the upcoming release, please visit: https://www.csuci.edu/events/. You can also review the list of new calendar features.

We encourage you to share your impressions or to let us know about any bugs that you find, please use the Events Calendar feedback form. We’re always looking for ideas for how to make the events calendar better.

Please contact the Solution Center at 805-437-8552 with any questions about these forthcoming changes. 

Up to $250,000 in Amazon Web Services credits available - deadline 5/3

by Anonymous in , , , , , ,

This message is sent on behalf of Jim August, Associate Vice President for Information Technology Services and Chief Information Officer:

Dear colleagues,

The CSU Innovate program through the Chancellor's Office is pleased to offer another round of Amazon Web Services (AWS) credits to faculty, staff and campus organizations in support of technology pilot projects. (If you're unfamiliar with AWS, it's a powerful cloud-based platform for research computing. You can learn more about CSUCI's AWS offering here)

AWS Project proposals may request up to $50,000 in credits for a single allocation to a single campus, and projects serving multiple campuses or the entire system may request up to $250,000.

To apply:

  1. Carefully review the AWS Credits Governance document in PDF format (myCI login required) 
  2. Fill out the application here to submit your ideas for consideration. You will need a description (no more than 250 word per field) of the project, high-level project plan, assessment plan, sustainability plan, and dissemination plan.
All proposals must be submitted at http://go.csuci.edu/awscredits by 5:00PM on Friday, May 3, 2019.

Please share this opportunity with your colleagues, and feel free to contact me at jim.august@csuci.edu with any questions. I look forward to reviewing your proposals!

ITS Department Tech-E Trophies Awarded

by Mike Long @ ITS in , , , , , , , , , ,


ITS Department Tech-E Trophies Awarded

Recognizing Excellence in Service and Profession since 2011

In 2011 the ITS department sought a means to recognize and celebrate the people who keep all the technological plates spinning at CI.  The men and women of ITS work hard on many fronts, making sure that all the programs, applications, devices and connections that the campus depends on to meet our common mission are working at all times.  The ITS Tech-E award (a take on a common term for tech people--“techie” and the E for excellence)  was born out of this desire to recognize their hard work.  A committee of ITS peers was selected who worked together to identify and describe the traits that mark an EXCELLENT worker and these traits are included on the semi-annual nomination forms to help people identify those ITS personnel who best exemplify those traits.  In recognition of the fact that many ITS personnel do not get much face time outside of the department, eventually two separate but similar awards were created.  The Tech-E for Excellence in Profession is voted on by the ITS group only and is presented to that person who voters felt most exemplifies the traits of a positive attitude, dependability, approach-ability, innovation, and unselfishness.  The Tech-E for Excellence in Service recognizes those same traits but is voted on by the entire campus community of Faculty and Staff.  

(Side note:  Nominations will be sought again in the middle of the Spring Semester; keep an eye out for that email and nominate the ITS individual who represents excellence in Service to you!)

At a departmental Lunch and Learn the week of December 10th, two new winners were identified and were recognized for their contributions.  This semester the ITS Tech-E award for Excellence in Profession was awarded to Pedro Rivas.  Pedro is a member of the ITS Infrastructure Group who is a System Admin and focuses largely on ID Management work and is an innovator in many other areas.  Pedro has the distinction of having worked at CI as a student assistant for the Infrastructure group and eventually graduated not only with a degree in Computer Science but also a full-time job with ITS!  The Tech-E award for Excellence in Service was presented to Anderson Hanchett.  Anderson has been working (and excelling!) as an Information Technology Consultant for the Solution Center for nearly 18 months.  In this role, he handles many issues for users with desktop computers, laptops, wireless, and printing issues and has clearly stood out as a great example of ITS Excellence.  The entire ITS department congratulates these two fantastic hard-working colleagues!


Pedro Rivas receiving the Fall 2018 Tech-E for Excellence in Profession from Interim AVP Peter Mosinskis   ---->






Anderson Hanchett being congratulated by Interim AVP Peter Mosinskis for winning this semester’s Tech-E for Excellence in Service

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Scheduled Maintenance on CI Records and CI Financials this Weekend - 02/03/2018

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On Saturday, Feb. 3, the CSU Chancellor’s Office in concert with Unisys, our CI Records and CI Financials data center hosting provider, will be migrating all of the CSU’s PeopleSoft data center functions to a new, more efficient data center. 


CSUCI Technology & Innovation personnel have been working throughout the development and testing process to verify successful communication between CSUCI and the new data center, and to date all testing has been successful. 

What this means for you:

  • CI Records and CI Financials will be unavailable from midnight on Saturday Feb. 3 to no later than noon on Feb. 4 (36 hours). 
  • This will include ALL CI Records/CI Financials services impacting HR, Student, and Finance systems as well as the CSU System-wide Finance Data Warehouse.
  • Additional information regarding the data center move may be found here:

Please contact T&I Director of Enterprise Services and Security Neal Fisch at neal.fisch@csuci.edu with any questions about maintenance.  Thank you for your cooperation in helping the CSU and CSUCI's technology environment up-to-date!

New monthly technology maintenance plan and schedule announced

by Anonymous in , , , , , , , ,

To provide the best possible service, the Division of Technology & Innovation T&I must regularly update and perform routine maintenance on its systems and networks. Some of these activities require that the affected systems and networks be shut down. While this work is essential, we also recognize that it presents an inconvenience. To enable those who use these systems to better plan for maintenance, we are establishing a new monthly maintenance plan and schedule for performing routine maintenance and upgrades to our services.

The Division of Technology & Innovation (T&I) will perform its scheduled monthly technology maintenance on the second Friday of each month starting at 6:00 PM and ending at 6:00 AM the following morning. The monthly maintenance program is a preventive measure that is essential to providing stable and secure systems to the University.

Visit the T&I Maintenance Schedule page for a complete list of scheduled maintenance dates and additional details about this updated practice. Please contact Deputy CIO Herb Aquino at herb.aquino@csuci.edu with any questions about the schedule or plan.

Email migration to Exchange Online 99% completed - 8/21/2017

by Anonymous in , , , , , ,

I'm pleased to report that the migration from Migration to Exchange Online and Microsoft Azure is nearly complete. 99% of employee & student assistant email accounts have been migrated (over 3400 accounts); any remaining accounts will be completed over the next week.

If you are experiencing problems accessing your mailbox after your account has been migrated, please follow these steps:

  1. You should be able to immediately access your mailbox using the "Webmail" link in myCI, regardless of your migration status. (If you experience problems with this, please clear your web browser cache using these instructions for troubleshooting access to your mailbox, and try again; this resolves most webmail access issues). 
  2. Review the instructions for troubleshooting access to your mailbox for solutions to common post-migration issues and answers to common questions. 
  3. Please report any remaining issues by calling the T&I Solution Center by phone at 805-437-8552 or email helpdesk@csuci.edu 
As a reminder, the latest news, project schedule and answers to frequently asked questions can be found on the Migration to Exchange Online and Microsoft Azure web page.

Thank you for your patience and cooperation during this migration. Moving to Exchange Online from email hosted on-premise is an critical step in making sure that CSUCI's employee email system continues to be available anytime and anywhere, even in the event of a campus emergency.

Email migration update

by Anonymous in , , , , , ,

Last week the Division of Technology & Innovation (T&I) began its migration from Migration to Exchange Online and Microsoft Azure. Moving to Exchange Online is an critical step in making sure that CSUCI's employee email system continues to be available anytime and anywhere, even in the event of a campus emergency.

To date, we have successfully completed migration of 1960 mailboxes, and are currently migrating at a rate of 500 mailboxes every 48 hours. We encourage you to review the migration schedule, which is posted on the Migration to Exchange Online and Microsoft Azure web page, to review the dates of your account migration in advance. During your migration window, you can continue to access your email via the "Webmail" link in myCI in the event that your Outlook desktop client is unavailable (see #2 below).

If you are experiencing problems accessing your mailbox after your account has been migrated, please follow these steps: 

  1. Review the instructions for troubleshooting access to your mailbox for solutions to common post-migration issues and answers to common questions. 
  2. You should be able to immediately access your mailbox using the "Webmail" link in myCI, regardless of your migration status. (If you experience problems, please clear your web browser cache using these instructions for troubleshooting access to your mailbox, and try again; this resolves most webmail access issues). 
  3. Please report any remaining issues by calling the T&I Solution Center at 805-437-8552 or email helpdesk@csuci.edu 

As a reminder, the latest news, project schedule and answers to frequently asked questions can be found on the Migration to Exchange Online and Microsoft Azure web page.

We apologize for any inconvenience, and thank you for your patience and cooperation as we complete the remainder of the migration.

Exchange Online migration begins tonight; Skype for Business update completed successfully on 8/4

by Anonymous in , , , , , , ,

Tonight, the Division of Technology & Innovation begins moving of our campus-based Exchange email infrastructure to Exchange Online, in Microsoft's Azure cloud.

As a reminder, the first group of faculty, staff and student assistant email accounts is scheduled to begin tonight, Monday, August 7, 2017 at 7 p.m., and will occur in batches over the course of eight business days. The group migration schedule has been posted on the Migration to Exchange Online and Microsoft Azure web page (myCI login is required to view the schedule).

Please review the Exchange Online Migration Schedule (myCI login is required to view) to find when your email account is being migrated. If you experience any issues with email after your account has been migrated, please contact the T&I Help Desk at helpdesk@csuci.edu or call 805-437-8552. During the migration, T&I support technicians will be available to help answer questions and resolve issues.

On a related note: on the evening of Friday, August 4th, T&I successfully completed an important pre-requisite migration of all CSUCI Skype for Business (formerly known as Lync) accounts to the new Microsoft Azure infrastructure, in preparation for the Exchange Online migration. If you experience any issues using Skype for Business, please contact the T&I Help Desk at helpdesk@csuci.edu or call 805-437-8552.

We appreciate your patience and support as we complete this important migration. Please direct and project-related questions to project manager Asha Ramachandra at asha.ramachandra@csuci.edu. 

Exchange email migration begins Monday 8/7/2017

by Anonymous in , , , , , ,

As was previously announced, is moving of our campus-based Exchange email infrastructure to Exchange Online, in Microsoft's Azure cloud.

This migration is part of T&I's ongoing commitment to providing rock-solid, reliable and sustainable technology infrastructure for the campus. Moving to Exchange Online is a critical step in making sure that our employee email system continues to be available anytime and anywhere, even in the event of a campus emergency.

With Exchange Online, employees can continue to use Outlook on their desktop and connect to their CSUCI email from their web browser and smartphone. Exchange Online also provides larger mailbox storage, improved security, and a new user-friendly, web-based email interface.

To date, T&I has successfully migrated several groups of test users with very few issues. Migration of the bulk of faculty, staff and student assistant email accounts is scheduled to begin on Monday, August 7, 2017 at 7 p.m., and will occur in batches over the course of five business days. During the migration, T&I support technicians will be available to help answer questions and resolve issues.

Further details on the migration, including timeline, latest news, batch migration groupings, and other details will be available on the Migration to Exchange Online and Microsoft Azure web page.

We appreciate your patience and support as we complete this important migration. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact project manager Asha Ramachandra, asha.ramachandra@csuci.edu or Director of IT Strategy Peter Mosinskis at peter.mosinskis@csuci.edu.

Migration of employee email to Exchange Online

by Anonymous in , , , , , ,

The Division of Technology & Innovation (T&I) is working on a project to migrate our existing campus-based Exchange email infrastructure to Exchange Online, in Microsoft's Azure cloud.

This migration is a lynchpin in CI's ongoing disaster recovery and business continuity planning efforts, as it will help ensure availability of CI's administrative email system for faculty & staff in the event of damage to our campus data center. Exchange Online also provides greater redundancy and makes email growth easier to manage and afford.

For most users, the migration to Exchange Online will be seamless and transparent. Most users will be able to continue to use with current Microsoft Outlook desktop client (some users of older version of Outlook, Windows or Mac operating systems may be required to upgrade.) Access to campus webmail via myCI will continue to function as normal, and migrated users will be directed to a familiar and updated Microsoft webmail interface. For those of you that use Microsoft Hotmail, the new Outlook Web Access user interface will look very familiar. Visit the Microsoft Outlook Web App support site for more information about the new user interface.

Tonight (6/9/2017), T&I will complete its first migration of a pilot group of 10 pre-selected users to the new Exchange and Azure infrastructure. These pilot users will help debug the initial migration, and provide valuable feedback for planning of the next migration waves. Next, a second group of 10 pilot users will be selected from the campus community for migration to the new infrastructure. If you wish to participate in the second pilot group, please contact Asha Ramachandra at asha.ramachandra@csuci.edu to discuss the details.

Once testing is completed, during the next phase of the project, faculty & staff accounts will be migrated in groups to Exchange Online. We look forward to providing additional information to the campus community in the next few weeks about the timing and groupings. Based on the current project schedule, T&I expects to complete the Exchange migration before the start of fall 2017 classes.

Please contact Asha Ramachandra at asha.ramachandra@csuci.edu with any further questions about this project, and thank you for your patience while we complete this important migration.

Reminder: Major Network and Systems Downtime Scheduled for Tomorrow 5/30/2015

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In order to take the next step in our ongoing network upgrade process, we will need to shut down major services between 8am and 8pm on Saturday, May 30. During that time, all campus telephones as well as wired and wireless on the campus will be completely unavailable. In addition, all faculty and staff email services will be suspended during that time. (Email will be queued and will be delivered to your mailbox in the hours after services are resumed.) MyCI (other than email), CI Learn, CI Records, and other major services will be available, but only from off campus. 


We have scheduled this essential project during a time that we expect will cause as little inconvenience as possible. If, however, you have any concerns regarding this outage please contact Carlos Miranda (carlos.miranda@csuci.edu) or Herb Aquino (herb.aquino@csuci.edu) and we will help you work around the outage if possible.

Thanks for your support as we work hard to improve the speed and reliability of the campus network.

CI network upgrade status - 3/26

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The network upgrade is over 85% complete and on schedule. Work continues on administrative and facilities-related buildings and infrastructure; 10 buildings remain to be migrated.

The current schedule and real-time status updates can be viewed in this Google Sheet.

Any remaining issues encountered after a building has been migrated should be reported to the T&C Help Desk at 805-437-8552 or by email at helpdesk@csuci.edu.


Thanks for your ongoing patience as we continue to improve the speed and reliability of the campus network. 

CI network upgrade update - 3/20

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CI's campus network upgrade is approximately 50% complete and on schedule. This week's work included the upgrade of most academic buildings on the main campus. Next week's work will focus on administrative and facilities-related buildings and infrastructure.

The current schedule and real-time status updates can be viewed in this Google Sheet.

Any remaining issues encountered after a building has been migrated should be reported to the T&C Help Desk at 805-437-8552 or by email at helpdesk@csuci.edu.


Thanks for your ongoing patience as we continue to improve the speed and reliability of the campus network. 

CI network upgrade update

by in , , ,


CI's campus network upgrade has been underway since 5am on Monday morning. T&C infrastructure team members have been working with AT&Ts engineers to complete the upgrade of buildings according to the implementation schedule.

The current schedule and real-time status updates can be viewed in this Google Sheet.

Once T&C infrastructure staff are satisfied that a building has been completed, signs will be posted at the entrances of each building informing users informing users of the completion.

Any remaining issues encountered after a building has been migrated should be reported to the T&C Help Desk at 805-437-8552 or by email at helpdesk@csuci.edu.


Thanks for your ongoing patience as we continue to improve the speed and reliability of the campus network. 

Faster network coming to CI

by in , , , , , , , , , , , ,

After many months of planning, the campus is less than two weeks away from faster, stronger Internet access as the Technology Infrastructure team will be visiting each building over a span of 11 days to upgrade network connectivity.

During the planned upgrades, campus telephones, Internet access, wireless connectivity, and network connectivity for myCI, PeopleSoft, CI Learn, CI Records, CI Financials, CI Docs, CI Sync, etc. will not be available. Additionally, access to the campus wireless network from a different building than your own may not be available due to certain resources being bound to your location/workstation.

The upgrade process begins March 16 at Sage Hall and will continue through March 31. Installation in each building will take approximately four hours. You can review the planned schedule here to verify your building’s planned upgrade.

Ultimately, wireless access speeds will increase by 2 times, while wired access will increase by 10 times.

For more information, go to www.csuci.edu/tc or email questions to Herb Aquino, Manager of Technology Infrastructure at herb.aquino@csuci.edu

Heartbleed Bug Update

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There has been a lot of news recently regarding the Heartbleed Bug, a security threat that was erroneously introduced into the code of OpenSSL back in late 2011. T&C has determined its critical systems have not been affected by this threat and continue to perform evaluations of its other systems.

Additional information about public services such as Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc. may be found here as well as at other sites on the internet:


Additional information on Heartbleed may be found here:

Protect Yourself When Using Cloud Services

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In simplest terms, cloud computing is a subscription-based or free service where you can obtain networked storage space and other computer resources through via the Internet. While these systems may remove the need for owning physical components, they also introduce new risks to your information. Before you float your digital assets to the cloud, make sure you take the appropriate steps to protect yourself.

Know your needs. Before you start, make sure you carefully plan what your security and privacy needs are. This includes knowing what your legal and regulatory requirements are for protecting data.
Read the contracts. End User License Agreements and Service Level Agreements are important because they describe the terms and conditions of the cloud service. If you're not sure of what they do or do not provide, contact the provider to clarify the services.
Protect Your Machine. Enable your firewall, use anti-virus/malware and anti-spyware software.
Protect your data. Don't store unencrypted sensitive information in the cloud. You don't know with whom you're sharing the cloud!

Protecting Your System and Your Network

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In lieu of recent network cleanup activity I wanted to take this time to remind everyone of a couple of items that will help protect your system and your networks from virus attacks.

Attaching External Storage Devices
Before attaching any external storage devices to your computer whether it's a USB thumb drive or a large external hard drive, please run a virus scan on it before making the final connection.  This will save you alot of grief in the long run.

Clicking on Unknown Links in Email
If you receive an email and are asked to click on a link, unless you're expecting to receive an email with a link you may want to contact the person who sent the email before clicking that link.  The email could be a phishing or website spoofing scam that can either load unwanted malware or virus software onto your machine, or try and get you to give up personal information.  In either case, making a short phone call or sending a quick text or email will be worth not having to rebuild you machine.

Network Groupshares Remain Unavailable

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The issue has been researched and the resolution is currently being finalized.  Once resolution finalization has been completed, the group fileshares (G:\, H:\, and Z:\ drives) will be made available.  The next status update will be at 2:00 PM.