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

Status:

On February 21, 2008, Vice Provost Pete Siegel issued a memo to the UC Davis community thanking the Email Review Committee led by Dean Enrique Lavernia for their report and recommendations. The committee was charged last September to review the early Fall 2007 email outages and to provide Vice Provost Siegel with findings and recommendations that could assist to improve methodology, processes, and procedures. See charge letter – 9/28/07 (pdf). The committee held its kick-off meeting October 10th, and presented its final report with findings and recommendations in early February. The memo from Vice Provost Siegel was accompanied by a preliminary management response from IET. Morna Mellor, Director, IET-Data Center and Client Services, will oversee the implementation of the IET response to committee's recommendations. Questions and comments can be sent to her directly at mwmellor@ucdavis.edu.

Rationale/Background:

On September 10, 2007 Data Center & Client Services system administrators began receiving reports that email clients were having problems connecting to and receiving email from one of the two campus email servers (MS1).  Over the course of the next four days, email problems continued at unprecedented levels for clients on MS1, meanwhile system administrators worked diligently to detect and resolve the issues.  On September 13th a solution to the email servers was developed and system administrators began deploying additional servers to lessen the load of email accounts on MS1.  By 5pm on September 14th the email servers resumed functioning properly, and clients were consistently able to connect to and receive email from the campus servers.

Email Review Goals:

• Review the planning and execution of the implementation of the community-source Cyrus email architecture as the foundation for the campus email system.
• Assess the performance of the systems implemented by IET to monitor email system performance.
• Assess the communications sent by IET to technical and non-technical campus audiences.
• Provide findings and recommendations that could assist IET to improve methodology, processes, and procedures.

Committee Membership:

• Chair, Enrique Laverina, College of Engineering
• Jean Pierre Delplanque, Mechanical and Aeronautical Engineering
• Tom Fortis, College of Engineering
• Bruce Hartsough, Biological and Agricultural Engineering
• Mike Kleeman, Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Greg Loge, College of Biological Sciences
• Dave Shelby (ex-officio), Information and Educational Technology
• Felix Wu, Department of Computer Science

Groups to be consulted:

• Technology Infrastructure Forum
• Deans’ Technology Council

Primary Feedback to Date
Pending