09-Mar-2020

ScreenConnect Upgrade: Tuesday, 10-Mar-2020 @ 11:30 AM

On Tuesday, 10-Mar-2020, starting at 11:30 AM, the ScreenConnect service will be unavailable for up to one hour for a server upgrade. During this time, you will be disconnected from remote sessions and will not be able to start new remote sessions. The ScreenConnect client software on end-user computers will be upgraded next week.

Electronics File System Reboot: Tuesday, 10-Mar-2020 @ 10:00 AM

On Tuesday, 10-Mar-2020, at 10:00 AM, the main CLASSE Electronics file system will be reconfigured to improve performance, availability, and compatibility with specific Windows applications. If you have trouble accessing \\samba\electronics after 10:00 AM, please reboot your computer before trying again.

Legacy Windows Personal Devices To Be Blocked: Tuesday, 31-Mar-2020

Starting Tuesday, 31-Mar-2020, all personal devices running Windows versions earlier than Windows 10 will be blocked from accessing CLASSE networks. Microsoft has ended support for these legacy Windows operating systems. We are also no longer accepting new network connection requests for legacy Windows personal devices.

CLASSE Central Storage Vs. Cornell Box

Almost everyone at CLASSE stores their data using one of two options — CLASSE central storage (a.k.a. samba) and Cornell Box — and it's worth understanding the difference between the two.

Cornell Box is great for sharing files, even with non-Cornell collaborators. Box's web interface is user-friendly, and file permissions are easy to assign. However, files stored on Box are not backed up, just like files stored locally on your CLASSE computers. Therefore, it is impossible to retrieve any files that are permanently deleted from Box.

On the other hand, most filesystems on CLASSE central storage are backed up nightly. We keep the nightly backups for one month, and we also archive full monthly backups indefinitely. Therefore, we can easily restore files that were deleted yesterday or even ten years ago (as long as the files were on disk at the time of a backup). Files on samba are sharable with others at CLASSE, directly accessible from Windows, Linux, and Mac OS, and remotely accessible via Globus, SFTP and SCP. For these reasons, we recommend that important files (especially experimental data) be stored on CLASSE central storage.

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General network and server maintenance will occur every Tuesday from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM. The CLASSE-IT group will always announce any expected disruptions in our NewsLetter and via CLASSE-IT-NEWS-L, but with the size and complexity of our network there is always the potential for something to go wrong. We will do our best to contain all network maintenance and planned outages to Tuesdays from 12:00 noon to 2:00 PM.

Unless other arrangements have been made, CLASSE-managed Windows systems may be updated and rebooted on Tuesday morning at 2:00 AM, so please avoid critical or lengthy operations at that time. For more details, please see SystemExpectations.

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Questions or problems? Submit a service request.

Other resources:

• CLASSE IT Home Page
• Previous newsletters

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