Sponsor: Peter M. Siegel, Vice Provost for Information and Educational Technology

Status:

August 28, 2007: The Cyrus migration project is now complete. To learn more about the migration, read the Directive.

Cyrus Migration Resources:

• To check to see if you've been migrated, or to see which server your email account is on, use the Mail ID Detective tool.
• If your email was recently migrated and you can no longer see some of your folders, please read "Changing your IMAP setting for Cyrus."
• If you experience any problems with email, contact the IT Express Computing Help Desk at (530) 754-HELP, Monday through Friday, 7 a.m. to 9 p.m.

Description:

UC Davis provides email services to over 50,000 users, delivering over 2.5 million email messages daily. The existing email architecture is aging and enhancements are necessary to provide the scalability and functionality necessary to meet the service demands for the next several years. This project will use Cyrus to provide a new and improved "behind the scenes" storage and e-mail routing environment to process campus e-mails.

Cyrus is a highly scalable enterprise mail system designed for use in large environments using standards-based technologies. It manages the delivery and storage of mail messages according to accepted internet standards, allowing user to access their mail with almost any standards-compliant mail program such as Pine, Outlook, Thunderbird, or Apple Mail.

The Cyrus email system was developed at Carnegie-Mellon University and was first deployed there in 1998. It has been implemented at many of our peer institutions, including UC Berkeley, CMU, the University of Michigan, Stanford, Columbia University, Indiana University, and the University of Texas.

Goals:

• Improve email performance and end user response time
• Enable faster access to mailboxes by Web-based email programs (will not need to read an entire mailbox before displaying the requested mail message or mail message list)
• Make larger end user mail storage quotas feasible
• Reduce storage requirements via shared message storage (i.e., if 100 copies of the same message are being delivered, only one copy needs to be stored)

Process:

• The migration will be performed “live.” Users will be moved off selected servers one at a time.
• Each user will experience from one to five minutes of downtime (depending on the size of their mailbox).
• All email users—staff, faculty, and students—will be migrated.
• Migrations will be performed weekdays between 6 p.m. and 7 a.m., and on weekends from Friday at 6 p.m. through Monday at 7 a.m.

Service Impacts

• The previously announced problem of double downloads for POP clients has been solved using a patch from UC Berkeley.
• Except for approximately 1,100 users with a specific IMAP root folder setting the transition to Cyrus is expected to be transparent for UC Davis’ email accounts.
• For users with the specific IMAP root folder setting mentioned above, detailed communications will be sent to them and to their technical support staff prior to migration to mitigate this issue.  
• Email delivery will be locked for a short period of time (1 to 5 minutes depending on the size of the users mailbox) while the individual email account is transferred to the new system. A message will be delivered to the INBOX when the migration is complete.
• A new feature is being added to the Mail ID Detective tool (http://email.ucdavis.edu/) that will allow technical support staff to check to see if their users have been migrated to the new system or not.

Groups Consulted:

• UC Davis Email Workgroup (incl. campus technology representatives) – ongoing
• Technology Infrastructure Forum (TIF) Steering Committee (01/08/07)
• TIF Client Services Issues (CSI) Subcommittee (01/08/07)
• Technology Support Program Update meeting (01/11/07) – see TSP directory
• Technology Infrastructure Forum meeting (01/27/07) – see membership
• Campus Council for Information Technology (02/12/07) – see membership
• Technology Infrastructure Forum meeting (04/25/07) (see agenda)
• Technology Support Program (05/03/07) (see directory)

Reference Documents for Additional Information

• Overview of Email Storage Upgrade (Word, 287KB)
• Upgrade of UC Davis' Email Architecture Begins May 23 (May 10, 2007)
• Changing your IMAP Settings for Cyrus

Primary Feedback to Date

• Discussed and endorsed by the Technology Infrastructure Forum on 01/31/07.