A one-hour outage today of the Lyris server, which stores the all-faculty, all-administrator and all-classified staff and other lists but not the all-student list, has been resolved.

“I want to express my thanks for the IT team in resolving this outage so quickly,” says President Stephen Jordan. “Between Academic and Administrative Computing, they are down nearly 20 employees, so when they respond so quickly, we as a community, should let them know how much they we appreciate their efforts.”

“The Lyris server is not a critical server,” says IT Director Mike Hart, “because it only stores the applications and the addresses for the Lyris lists. No emails were lost during the outage. It was just the ability to send to those lists that was curtailed for one hour.”

IT went to the last back-up, which was on Jan. 6, to restore the lists. Because it isn’t a critical server, it is only backed up once per month, Hart explains, adding that IT has completed all requests for updates that were submitted between Jan. 6 and today.

Administrators of individual lists will need to restore their lists.

“We’re looking at upgrading the application for more stability and functionality by the end of March,” Hart says.

Jordan adds that the IT Strategic Planning Task Force is working to develop a plan to bring the University’s technology in line with the overall Strategic Plan. “I charged the task force to devise a plan that has a set of core themes, among them service reliability and infrastructure, as well as specific systems, services, support and technology initiatives. Their hard work will pay great dividends for the University as we progress through the next five years.”