On Thursday, July 21, starting at 0700 we will upgrade our groupware solution. The update is expected to take approximately one hour. As this upgrade will be a major one (version 14.3 to 16.1), you might notice a few changes. In particular:

• if you didn't log out before we start the upgrade, your browser might be in an inconsistent state and the new version might refuse to work. Just log out manually in this case.
• if you're using the ActiveSync/eSync/Exchange protocol for calendar synchronization, you will have to recreate your sync account on your (mobile) device. Just delete your existing account on the device (your groupware data will still be on our server) and add it again (see documentation). We're sorry for the inconvenience, but the synchronization code was rewritten to be faster and more stable and is not compatible to existing accounts. We have tried to identify all current ActiveSync users and will inform them via email.
• the web interface will get a new look (see screenshot)

We have thoroughly tested the new version internally. If you find any problems after the upgrade, please get in touch. Thanks.

Update Thursday 08:00: Upgrade complete. Please let us know if you find any issues in the new version.

This post is meant to give you a short overview of what has been accomplished in D-PHYS IT by ISG this year. We’ve been hard at work to further improve and extend our services for you, our customers. Some highlights of 2015:

• new team members: both Christian Ringger and Christian Schneider joined ISG this year and have already made significant contributions to our setup.
• new D-PHYS website: the department website moved from the self-hosted Zope system into the ETH-wide AEM/CQ5 content management system. While the hard work of migrating all the content was done by Andreas Trabesinger, we had to sort out a lot of technical details to ensure a smooth transition and to keep D-PHYS's various web services operational.
• Printing: the majority of the department's printers have been migrated to the new pia printing system. We are now waiting for Informatikdienste to support student printing in order to complete the project.
• Storage: in 2015 the disk space occupied by data and backup grew from 685 TiB to 929 TiB, further increasing the yearly growth rate. We are also preparing to keep an off-site disaster recovery copy of D-PHYS data on tape.
• Outages: apart from a hardware failure of our mail server on December 2nd and a short interruption on July 2nd our system have been very stable this year.
• System upgrades: 2015 brought OS upgrades for almost every system: Debian Jessie on many servers, OS X 10.11 for the Macs, Ubuntu 14.04 on the Linux workstations and the first pilot installations of our new Windows 10 setup.
• Core services: a lot of infrastructure work has happened in the background to ensure smooth operation and seamless growth of our services in the future. Examples are: more IPv6 work, 802.1x / NAC in our network, a new network zone in the server rooms, an upgrade of our iPXE boot screen and enhanced monitoring.
• IT security: we participate in and support the ETH-wide IT security initiative.

Happy Holidays and see you in 2016!

Thank you to all of you who participated in our IT services survey in late October. More than one third of you completed the questionnaire and the feedback has been extremely positive. The Department Head and ISG have evaluated the results and would like to say thanks to everybody involved.
We have received many helpful comments that deserve an answer. Since the survey was anonymous, we have no way of getting back to each responder individually, so we compiled the questions, answers and comments on a nifty website that we invite you to visit:

https://isg.phys.ethz.ch/static/it-survey/

You can browse the results, read the comments and click on the little speech bubbles to read our answers. There are a couple of topics that are sufficiently common and generic that we would like to address them here:

• WiFi: yes we know it's not great, but we cannot immediately fix it as it is a service of Informatikdienste. We are working together with our colleagues of ID to resolve the problems and improve WiFi service on the campus.
• many of the wishes and problems raised in your comments actually have already been solved by us. Also,
• there seems to be a positive correlation between how often people contact us and their satisfaction with our services.

So:

Please talk to us! We can only help you if you tell us about your problem, and we hate unsolved problems. So we're going to try hard to fix them.

Thanks for you attention and we're looking forward to serving you in the future.

ISG sits on a pile of older hardware that for various reasons cannot be used in our setup any more but that various people have expressed interest in and that still might be useful for certain scenarios (e.g. lab use or tinkering at home). We will therefore host two grab-your-used-piece-of-hardware sessions:

• Window 1: hardware outside of the ETH live cycle, mainly old computers (PowerPC-Macs and PCs) and TFT monitors, free of charge for both ETH-internal and private use: Wed Apr 22 - Fri Apr 24 in HPT H floor
• Window 2: not-quite-as-old hardware, mostly TFT monitors and printers, free of charge for ETH-internal use, prices for private use according to the rules: Wed Apr 29 and Thu Fri 30 in HPT H floor

As usual, some rules apply:

• this goes to all D-PHYS members
• no registration necessary. Just come by and take whatever is left.
• all items come as they are. We do not have any details or specifications
• there’s no warranty or service whatsoever. All devices have successfully been turned on, but that’s it
• if your item doesn’t turn on, you can bring it back within 5 days and get a full refund (if it wasn't free in the first place)
• no OS, no software, no manual, no keyboard, often no cables. You get one piece of hardware. All HDs are blank
• all proceeds go to the D-PHYS funds, not ISG
• if you have no use for a computer without OS or software, don’t come shopping
• bring cash
• note that the printers are not meant to undermine the migration to the new printing system! We will not connect those printers to our old print server

It is my pleasure to welcome Christian Schneider into our group. He joins us to replace Elmar Heeb in the Linux team.

Welcome Christian!

That's just enough Christians for now.

UPDATE 23:00 - maintenance finished, queued mails have been delivered.

As a probable aftermath of last week's power outage we are experiencing some issues with the file system on our home directory server which can only be repaired offline. We therefore schedule a maintenance window

Today, Monday Feb 2, 2015, starting at 22:00

The duration of the downtime cannot be estimated but should not exceed two hours. During this time you will not be able to access your home folder or receive new D-PHYS email. All incoming mail will be queued for later processing.

Thank you for your understanding.

It is my pleasure to welcome Christian Ringger into our group. He joins us to replace Thomas Berchtold in the Windows team.

Welcome Christian!

This post is meant to give you a short overview of what has been accomplished in D-PHYS IT by ISG this year. We’ve been hard at work to further improve and extend our services for you, our customers. Some highlights of 2014:

• eXile: in order to be able to keep Windows XP machines that cannot be upgraded connected to the network, we have created the exile system of dedicated virtual firewalls. Currently there are 57 computers safely hidden in this network.
• Security flaws: 2014 saw the disclosure of three rather severe and widespread security problems in quick succession: Heartbleed, Shellshock and Poodle. We patched all affected systems within hours of the announcements and also scanned the network for hosts that had been overlooked. If you're managing any networked machines (not just servers!) yourself, please make sure those are not vulnerable.
• Outages: we had a major incident on August 27 due to a failure of the server room cooling system. Fortunately we were able to repair the damage within hours. Other than that, our systems have been very stable in 2014 and we only had minor issues.
• Storage: in 2014 the disk space occupied by data and backup grew from 535 TiB to 685 TiB, further increasing the yearly growth rate. Another 120 TiB are already in the pipeline.
• Printing: in cooperation with Informatikdienste we prepared and introduced the new ETH printing system in D-PHYS. Several groups have migrated already, the rest of D-PHYS will follow in 2015.
• IPv6: during the last 12 months we prepared the D-PHYS network for dual stack (IPv4 + IPv6) operation. The biggest step towards a working IPv6 infrastructure was the deployment of an IPv6-ready DHCP server. Beginning next January we will incrementally hand out IPv6 addresses in the D-PHYS network. Later on, we'll make our services IPv6-ready.
• Brain drain: two ISG group members decided to take on new challenges this year. In November, Thomas Berchtold left us after 3 successful years to become the new Head of IT of D-BAUG, and Elmar Heeb, the founding father of ISG D-PHYS, will start his new job in Informatikdienste in February. We thank both Thomas and Elmar for their dedicated work and contribution to the team and hope to stay in regular contact with them in the future. Christian Ringger will replace Thomas in January, while Elmar's succession is still work in progress.

Happy Holidays and see you in 2015!

Together with our colleagues at Informatikdienste we have adopted the new ETH printing system in our department. Read about the many advantages of the project in our documentation. On October 15 we have migrated the first Institute (ITP) where people now can benefit from various features like pull printing and automatic toner supply.

So who's next to join us? We have printers in stock, so if your group is interested, we can accommodate you on very short notice. Just get in contact.

UPDATE Thu 09:30 - all systems should be back to normal. Please let us know if you still encounter problems. Thanks to Axel and Paddy for their commitment and the incredible Dalco service for fixing it within 6h (at 8am, mind you).

UPDATE Thu 00:50 - a broken valve blocked the cooling water in the HIT D 13 server room and all 14 water cooled racks severely overheated (not just D-PHYS). We managed to revive almost all services with the exception of the GGL file shares (this server is dead). We'll post updates later today when we have more information.

complete loss of cooling in the server room. We have yet to assess the damage.