The Curative Analysis team in IT is tasked with finding the causes of significant IT issues that affect campus. In this news update, we draw your attention to some of the problems being investigated or issues handled recently.
Windows OS computer slowness: Reports were received from Faculty and Staff working on WCU computers running the Windows OS of continued slowness in logging into the systems. These reports started shortly after the System Center Endpoint Protection (SCEP) software was updated with recently released patches from Microsoft. This update increased the amount of information that SCEP stores when the application scans the computer, which normally occurs on startup. This scan along with the Symantec Endpoint Protection (SEP) scan being performed was responsible for the decrease in computer performance.
A group of IT analysts and technicians was created to investigate the issue and charged to find a solution. The team made the decision to adopt SCEP as the standard, supported anti-virus solution for WCU and to retire SEP. The Division of IT is currently working to install SCEP on all Windows computers as well as Macs and to uninstall any remaining instances of SEP. For work-at-home and personal use, Avira anti-virus is provided at no cost to all active faculty, staff, and students of WCU.
Single Sign-on Access: On several occasions, faculty, staff, and students reported an error when attempting to log into applications which use Shibboleth application for single sign-on access. These applications include, but are not limited to OU Campus, AlcoholEdu, PeopleAdmin, and UNC Online. The error message: SSO profile is not configured for relying party was displayed when a login attempt was made.
Microsoft plans to release a new version of the single sign-on application, ADFS in July which will offer new features that allow connectivity of ADFS to InCommon and the UNC federation. Only a few WCU systems continue to use the Shibboleth application, and most of our systems use Microsoft’s ADFS. The Division of IT plans to move the remaining systems which use Shibboleth to ADFS shortly.
SQL Server and Reporting Services: We received several reports from clients who were unable to access the Banner Report Portal on https://boulder. Clients received the error message: An error occurred within the report server database. This issue may be due to a connection failure, timeout or low disk condition within the database. (RS report server database error). As a workaround, the SQL Server Services are being restarted each workday, Monday through Friday, at 6:00 AM while the SQL team is investigating the cause of the error.
July 1 – July 31, 2016
Global Problems: (Total 9)
Business Systems: 4
PAW Print: 3
Application Maintenance: 1
Guest Wireless: 1
The Division of IT is committed to adopting a proactive, process-oriented approach to prevent problems before they arise. We will continue to keep you informed on our progress.