UoR IT Services News Feed » 2011 » August

Firewall upgrades 23 August 2011

itsnews — Fri, 19 Aug 2011 14:37:57 +0000

Following on from the work on the 16 August, there will be brief interruptions to Internet connectivity for various areas of the University network as follows:

Greenlands Campus between 07:00 – 07:05

readingConnect network between 10:00 – 10:30

Whiteknights Campus between 18:00 – 18:30

Sorry for any inconvenience this may cause.

0118 378 6262

ITS-Help@reading.ac.uk

For more information www.reading.ac.uk/its/status

National Student Survey results

itsnews — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 11:08:58 +0000

The results of this survey are published today and the University of Reading is rated as in the top 20 nationally.

The whole picture for the University of Reading can be found at http://unistats.direct.gov.uk/ – Use ‘Uni search’ to bring up Reading, click on it and then click on the ‘National Student Survey’ tab. You can drill down to see exactly how the responses are created.

The results of particular interest for IT Services are below and this is a great result, up from 81% last year.

Whiteknights Campus electrical maintenance

itsnews — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 08:00:06 +0000

This is a reminder that FMD Maintenance services have a shutdown of power to the whole of the Whiteknights campus on 27 August.

Currently, IT Services have been informed by FMD that power to University data centres should be safe. Therefore systems running from University data centres are not going to be affected, however, it is possible that services such as email may be subject to interruption and should therefore be considered at risk.

This is to carry out essential maintenance on the sub stations High and Low Voltage switchgear. The proposed work will take approximately 12 hours to complete and would commence at 06.00 hours in the morning until approximately 18.00, but should finish much earlier.

FMD cannot guarantee power to other buildings like the rest of the year but will attempt to keep disruption to a minimum. The buildings definitely affected in this planned shut down are as follows:

Lyle Building Blade Centre

Plant Science

Plant Science Glasshouses

RSSL

Library

Windsor Hall

Windsor Social Building

Park Eat

Greenow

McCombie

Humms

Physics

FMD

Grounds

Old Whiteknights House

If you want more information or have a problem arising from these works, contact its-help@reading.ac.uk

Firewall Upgrades

itsnews — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 08:00:28 +0000

On 16 August, we will be upgrading the main firewalls at Whiteknights. Unfortunately, we are unable to perform this as an ‘in-line’ upgrade, so the internet connection will be subject to a series of interruptions over a period of several hours starting from 6pm.

Due to the importance of these pieces of equipment for internet access from the Whiteknights Campus, this change has been tested thoroughly in our security lab over a number of weeks. We will also have assistance on site from our network infrastructure support contractor, should there be any further issues.

As the new devices do not run the same operating system as our current ones, we will need a few days to migrate the configuration. Unfortunately this means we will not be processing user-requested changes to the border firewall policies between 10 and 16 August, except in the event of a security incident.

As such, please could you ensure any firewall policy changes you need made are submitted before midday on Tuesday 9 August.

This affects the campus border firewall only, so changes to access for corporate applications, BMS, and CCTV systems will still be handled as normal.

If you have any questions about this work, please contact its-help@reading.ac.uk