ISG News has posted a new item, 'Server room migration on Wed, Aug 23'
Some months ago, we were informed by Informatikdienste that we would have to
migrate our two water cooled racks in the HIT server room due to upcoming
remodeling. This move will take place on
Wednesday, August 23, starting at 16:00
and last for several hours. During this time, all our IT services will be
unavailable, including login, e-mail, storage and ISG-hosted websites. Incoming
e-mail will be kept back and delivered afterwards. We will give our best to have
login and e-mail back up within the first two hours, but group drives will take
a bit longer due to the sheer amount of hardware we have to move.
We apologize for any inconvenience. Unfortunately, this migration cannot be
performed on a weekend as we might have to interact with our colleagues at
Informatikdienste, but it will ensure secure and enduring operation of our
servers in the future.
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2017/07/25/server-room-migration-on-wed-aug-2…
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Christian Herzog
daduke(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, 'Expiration of D-PHYS accounts'
As announced previously, about a year ago ISG was tasked by the department board
to devise a workflow to expire D-PHYS accounts which so far had a life
expectancy of ∞. In summer we started blocking accounts that were virtually
unused, which almost by definition went very smoothly. Now we will start
addressing accounts of users who are still using our services but do no longer
have an affiliation with D-PHYS. They will receive an email informing them of a
1 month grace period before the account gets blocked. This posting is meant to
serve as a reminder to everybody that this process is underway and questions may
arise.
The project is explained in more detail in our readme.
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2017/02/10/expiration-of-d-phys-accounts/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Christian Herzog
daduke(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, 'Web server upgrade on Jan 19'
On Thursday, January 19, starting at 08:00, we will OS upgrade the main D-PHYS
web server. All websites hosted on zwoelfi*.ethz.ch will be down for several
hours and will gradually come back as we progress. This does not affect the
department website, the institutes and many of the group websites. However our
groupware, the wikis and many special interest sites will be inaccessible. Note
that if you're using the ActiveSync connector via groupware to sync email to
your cell phone or Outlook, this won't work either. Temporarily use webmail
while we bring back groupware as one of the first services.
We will post an update once the web server is back.
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2017/01/12/web-server-upgrade-on-jan-19/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Christian Herzog
daduke(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, 'Access to Windows Remote Desktop blocked from
outside ETH'
In the last few weeks we discovered some attempted attacks on the Windows
Remote Desktop feature from sources outside of ETH.
In order to protect both your machines and our network, we decided to block RDP
access from ETH-external networks. If you still need access from outside the ETH
network (e.g. from home) you have to first open a VPN connection to ETH and then
start the Remote Desktop client.
More information about installing the VPN client is available here.
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2017/01/03/access-to-windows-remote-desktop-b…
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Patrick Frei
frei(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, '2016 in review'
This post is meant to give you a short overview of what has been accomplished in
D-PHYS IT by ISG this year. We’ve been hard at work to further improve and
extend our services for you, our customers. Some highlights of 2016:
New team member: Sven Mäder joined ISG this year to replace Axel in our Linux
server team.
Account expiry: you might have heard that D-PHYS decided to phase out old
accounts in the future. We spent the last year laying the technical groundwork
for a smooth and painless implementation of this policy change. One first
visible result is our new account portal.
Printing: in summer we integrated student printing into the pia printing system
which means that we now have a comprehensive printing solution for the whole
department. The D-PHYS print server will be shut down in early 2017.
Storage: in 2016 the disk space occupied by data and backup grew from 929 TiB
to 1.3 PiB, again increasing the yearly growth rate. We are now using 60-disk
toploader chassis to maximize storage space-per-volume.
Outages: we scheduled two maintenance windows, on April 14 and September 5, in
order to perform hardware and system upgrades. Together with a network upgrade
by Informatikdienste on September 15, these were the only noteworthy downtimes
in 2016.
Docking network: in fall 2016 we migrated most of the department's network
sockets to the 802.1x-enabled docking network. While there is little immediate
benefit for most of us, this is a prerequisite for future network projects like
the upcoming Unified Collaboration & Communication (UCC) project.
Wifi: in early 2016 we developed and installed a portable wifi probe that
eventually led to the discovery of one of the underlying problems causing ETH's
wifi woes. Since then, wifi has been much more stable.
OS upgrades: 2016 brought new OS versions for almost every system: the Windows
10 rollout picked up steam, Sierra arrived on the Macs and Ubuntu 16.04 on the
Linux workstations.
Cluster: we built and deployed a new high-availability cluster setup for our
virtual servers this year.
Core services: a lot of infrastructure work has happened in the background to
ensure smooth operation and seamless growth of our services in the future.
Examples are: new ActiveDirectory servers for our Windows users, migrating our
webserver certificates to Let's Encrypt, a facelift for most of our websites to
match the AEM design and an upgrade of our iPXE boot screen.
IT security: we participate in and support the ETH-wide IT security initiative
and also worked hard to make the mandated n.ethz password change as humane as
possible.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank my whole team for their hard and
dedicated work all year long.
Happy Holidays and see you in 2017!
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2016/12/16/2016-in-review/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Christian Herzog
daduke(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, 'short maintenance downtime of astrogate on
Monday, Dec 12, starting at 07:00'
We schedule a short (~30 min) maintenance downtime of astrogate on Monday, Dec
12, starting at 07:00 in order to replace a network card. During this time no
access to the astro SAN data will be possible.
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2016/12/09/short-maintenance-downtime-of-astr…
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Christian Herzog
daduke(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, 'new ISG staff member'
It is my pleasure to welcome Sven Mäder into our group. He joins us to replace
Axel Beckert in the Linux team.
Welcome Sven!
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2016/11/01/new-isg-staff-member-5/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Christian Herzog
daduke(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, 'Network upgrade at D-PHYS'
In collaboration with our colleagues in Informatikdienste we will use the
upcoming months to upgrade the D-PHYS network in order to make it ready for the
future. In particular, we will enable the IEEE 802.1x protocol in our network
that will allow us to virtually patch any VLAN to each individual client. This
will also pave the way for the upcoming VoIP telephony deployment in D-PHYS. The
migration will be a step-by-step process and we will visit each building and
floor individually to address potential questions during the migration. The
typical desktop or laptop computer will not notice the change except for a short
interruption of < 1 min. Certain macOS clients will need a bit of persuasion
however, the required steps are described here.
Things will look a bit different for new clients that connect to the D-PHYS
network for the first time only after the migration: they will not display the
well-known ISG D-PHYS landing page, but an OS popup or a generic ETH page. This
works the same way as the ETH wifi. You either supply your n.ethz credentials in
the popup or you log in via the landing page. Your machine will then be patched
into the ETH docking network. If you have a specific reason to have your machine
in the D-PHYS network (HPx::745 for the technically inclined), please let us
know and we will register your MAC address in our database - just like you did
in the past. All existing machines at D-PHYS have been preregistered for
HPx::745 in order to avoid any confusion.
So please be ready when Alex shows up in your group and announces the migration
date.
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2016/09/23/network-upgrade-at-d-phys/
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Christian Herzog
daduke(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, 'Network downtime 15th of September 05:30 -
07:30'
The Informatikdienste are upgrading the routers in our HIT/D/13 server room
causing a downtime of the network of about 1 hour on Thursday morning, 15th
September, between 05:30 and 07:30. Please note that various services will not
be available during that time.
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2016/09/13/network-downtime-15th-of-september…
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Claude Becker
becker(a)phys.ethz.ch
ISG News has posted a new item, 'Maintenance window on Monday, September 5,
17:00'
In order to perform some core service upgrades, we schedule a server maintenance
window on
Monday, September 5, starting at 17:00 and lasting for approximately 3 hours.
Most D-PHYS IT services will be affected by that downtime, including logins,
file servers and e-mail services.
E-mails coming in during the downtime will be held on the sender’s side and
will arrive at D-PHYS with a delay. Sending e-mails won’t be possible during
the window.
We’ll update this posting as soon as things are back to normal.
You may view the latest post at
https://nic.phys.ethz.ch/news/2016/08/30/maintenance-window-on-monday-septe…
You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are
posted.
Best regards,
Christian Herzog
daduke(a)phys.ethz.ch