Recently in Network Manager's Monthly Meeting Category
Items discussed included the following:
1. Mike Gerst and Philip Hurley attended the Novell Brainshare 2005 conference in Salt Lake City on March 21-25. Mike took a hardware issue regarding the Weslaco server to Novell. He had tried several times to install Netware 6.5.2 on the server put when the installation reached the stage for installing the license, it failed. He checked this issue with Novell, and they said this was an intermittent problem that occurs and the only way to install the license is by using NWAdmin. Weslaco can now be put on the list to upgrade their server.
We did receive 5 file servers last week. Mike will move the most "at risk" PO of Agents and County-Agents to one new server. We will consolidate Agents and County-Agents into one server. We are still awaiting some mounting racks for one of the servers. The other 4 servers are for the Beaumont Research Center, Corpus Christi, Dallas and Stephenville centers.
We received today software for the Blackberry Enterprise System (SQL server standard edition and Windows Server Standard) that will support Groupwise synchronization on the Blackberry. This BES software supports only the Blackberry PDA. Philip asked if anyone at the district centers has been pressured to support Groupwise synchronization on PDAs. No one responded other than Rory who said he has a user who is very interested in synchronization on his PDA.
2. Mike informed the group that the NLM version of Groupwise that should be running on your server is the GW 6.5.4 client. The web installation for the Client is on our web site. You can run the lower versions of GW, but the 6.5 version and higher is better. The newest version, 6.5.4, will print some backgrounds in color for calendar items. You have to be running 6.5.4 in order to run in color. Get with your network administrator about this upgrade if the NLM’s on your server aren’t the latest and to help you with pushing out the newest client.
3. At Brainshare, Novell recommended that we run nightly checks (daily GW structural checks). This clears up old disk space. Don’t ignore the reports, but open them up and look at the end for uncorrectable problems.
Contact Mike if there are any uncorrectable problems to see if it is necessary to correct them. Robert reported that he received 2 content checks, and Mike said it’s because of daylight saving time. You may not see all of the checks because of the time change. Don’t ignore the system checks. Contact Mike Gerst if you encounter problems.
4. On campus, there is a lot of interest in the Blackberry system. Mike said it may be because Blackberry bought a company that already had a Groupwise synchronization solution called GW Mobile. Nexic is available, too, and will be able to perform over the air (OTA)synchronization soon.
Rory Harper asked if anyone else was seeing an increase in spyware. Philip said Indre Pemberton forwarded a message to Guinevere that looked like a phishing site. It had something to do with an Oklahoma bank. Philip opened the site with a tool bar called Netcraft Toolbar which uses a server maintained in the UK to block known phishing sites. When Philip opened the page, however, Symantec immediately caught a virus.
Mike advised everyone to check your Symantec anti-virus updates on PC’s and make sure it is managed. Dr. Lippke will be sending out an email about an online survey regarding the Symantec licenses and renewals.
Items discussed included the following:
1. Mike announced that this evening after 10 p.m., he will force the minimum release of GW 6.5.1 for Agents and County-Agents Post Offices. Any county agent or staff member using an older version of GW will not be able to log in. It will give some error like "post office is invalid or unavailable". This will not affect those people connecting through Internet Explorer or any webAccess See our eit.tamu.edu web page and click on "GroupWise WebAccess". However, the "agit.tamu.edu" website will stop working as of tonight for everyone other than our EIT faculty/staff. Agents and County-Agents Post Offices will be available for agents to use. IMAP4 mode will be turned off at some point later on.
Jeffrey had agents who asked why there are so many WebAccess sites (links) to choose from on our eit.tamu.edu website. Mike said that it is better to have a WebAccess server closest to the post office where the user's e-mail resides. Having one, central WebAccess server would create problems for users whose post office is not on that server because we may have to bring the server down for repairs or upgrades making it impossible to get their mail via the web even though their post office is available and working fine.
In addition, links between the post offices and the central server may be lost from time to time. We need these links for reliability and speed and performance issues. There are times when one server may go down, and the others are needed as backups. We may have as many as 300 users or more on one server.
Mike also mentioned that many WebAccess users are not using the Exit icon when they are finished with their e-mail but just close Internet Explorer. This leaves their session active for 20 minutes until that thread is released to make room for another user to connect. This causes unnecessary open but unused connections on the WebAccess server.
Mike is moving Plant Pathology and Bexar county from GW 5.5 soon. Some people ask why they can’t continue using GW 5.5, but Mike said it does not work well with Windows XP as GW 6.5 does. You can use the 5.5 even though your server is 6.5, but you’ll see weird problems when using it. Philip warned that he has seen some personal email addresses be corrupted during the upgrade such that email address components are switched as a result....i.e. "com.aol" instead of "aol.com". If you see undeliverable messages after a client upgrade, be on the lookout for this kind of behavior. The fix is to delete the address and re-enter it.
Also, GW 6.5.4 was released only about a month ago, so we do not have much in-house experience with it
2. Philip reminded everyone that he and Mike will be attending the 2005 Brainshare conference in Salt Lake City in about 2 weeks. They plan to take a list of questions to ask the ‘experts’ at Novell. If you have any questions regarding GW, Novell, I-Folder, Iprint, etc, please email Philip or Mike with your questions by March 20th.
3. Steve mentioned that he likes his Treo 650. Everyone is impressed when they see his new Treo. Jaroy likes it. Weldon has not received his 650 yet. The Telecom office is charging $382 for the upgrade. Steve said the 650 is smaller, but the screen is clearer, brighter and amazing.
Items discussed included the following:
1. Mike Gerst reminded the group of the remote control software, "Network Streaming," that is up and running for EIT faculty to use on a trial basis. We have a 5-user license. Greg is using it, and so far, it is working great.
Weldon, Mike, Pete, and Philip have all used it. If anyone (outside EIT) wants to try this remote software, let Dr. Lippke know. Go to our EIT web site (eit.tamu.edu), and click on "EIT Remote PC Assistance" to see the other users. These licenses are available for sharing. After you have experimented with it, then log out so someone else can use it. Weldon requested a login for Jana to use at Stephenville. Kevin Chilek wants to test it out also for 4-H use.
2. Mike discussed IP renumbering of the Jack K. Williams Administration users. The renumbering will be conducted this Tues, Jan. 4. We hope it will go smoothly without email interruptions. Luke Klima will be assisting with the IP number changes.
Items discussed during the December 6, 2004 network managers' meeting included virus detection, the agenda for a network management conference schedule for January 11-12, and the status of providing GroupWise email services to portable communications devices.
Items discussed included the following:
1. Philip opened the discussion about upgrading Symantec on servers and clients. He reminded everyone that upgrading to v9.0 on a client causes the windows security center not to communicate with v 9. There is a patch for SP2 that Symantec can communicate with. Version 9.0.1 of Symantec includes the patch for SP2 to recognize the client. When we update a server to 9.0 or 9.0.1, that server cannot co-exist in a group of servers that is not v8.1.1. Before we can update the servers, any clients using v7.6 should to be brought up to at least
the version that is already on the server before we can update the server to 9.x. Philip asked for volunteers to test out this program. Ag and Environmental Safety might be one to test per Mike’s suggestion. Some individual clients may have to be revisited. After installing SP2 on WinXP, udp port 2967 has to be open. For people who login to the Novell server, this upgrade can be pushed from a login script, but you have to ask for it. Mike indicated that you must let him or Philip know if you are interested in this “push” to the upgrade. Rory asked, “Can GRC.dat files be done this same way?” Philip replied that pushing the client from a server to a managed client keeps that client managed. If the client was unmanaged, it becomes managed.
2. Philip said several things have happened that deploying Zenworks might help us out in individual aspects. There is remote installation and un-installation of applications, remote control, Wake On Lan, remote uninstall, etc. This could prove effective on imaging of workstations and the cost-share computer program where several PC’s could have an image pushed to them to make them ready for the users at the county to plug in and use. It will take some planning and education on the part of users. Zenworks will keep some types of programs from running on PC’s. Phil is looking for clients to help run this system and do testing.
3. For your information, Guinevere has caught over 3200 virus messages this past weekend. This is the W32.Beagle.AV@mm virus discovered last Friday. It is out there. There was no other general discussion. The meeting was adjourned at 10:50 a.m.
Respectfully submitted by,
Melanie Mattil
Administrative Assistant
