Update 21:00 - IGP shares are back. Welcome to igp-data!
Update 19:30 - the D-PHYS shares are back. IGP will take a little more time.

In order to guarantee sustained performance and availability of our storage system, we need to schedule a few storage maintenance windows. The first one will take place on Wednesday, 12.12.2018 at 16:00 and affect all D-PHYS and IGP group shares, but not IPA or galaxy (technically: windata/macdata, but not astrogate or ipa-data). The relevant shares will be offline for at least 3 hours.

For emergency cases, there will be read-only access to last night's backup as described here.

Please note that these migrations will bring some overall changes to the D-PHYS storage setup:

• the SMBv1 protocol will be disabled on all file servers. It has a long history of security issues and we've migrated all clients to newer versions, so this should not affect anyone. However, there's a small chance that we didn't catch all connections, so please contact us if you experience any issues after the migration.
• all SMB protocol versions will be restricted to ETH-internal access. This step has been long overdue and since most ISPs block the necessary ports anyway, it shouldn't affect too many users. What it means however: in the future, file server access from outside ETH requires VPN.
• IGP/D-BAUG will get their own front-end server igp-data. If you're with IGP and have already switched your file server mounts from windata to igp-data, you're good and don't have to do anything. If you haven't, you should do so before Dec 12 in order to get a seamless migration experience.

We'll update this post as the migration progresses and as soon as the systems are back.

On Tuesday, October 2, starting at 07:00, we will migrate our groupware instance to another server. For about 1 hour you won't have access to your calendar. If you're one of the few people who also sync their email via groupware, mail will be offline too (you can always use webmail). After the migration your clients should just reconnect and resume syncing. If you notice any issues after we're done, please get in touch.

Update Wed 07:45: migration completed, please let us know if you experience any problems.

As already described in this past posting, we have recreated our LDAP server infrastructure and will now retire the old server. For the last 4 weeks we've been sniffing for LDAP queries that still use the old server and we've addressed each of those requests individually. Since we can't guarantee to detect each and every single network packet, now is your last chance to migrate to the new servers in case you haven't done so already. The old server will go offline on

Friday, March 16

Please let us know if you have any questions.

In collaboration with our colleagues in Informatikdienste we will use the upcoming months to upgrade the D-PHYS network in order to make it ready for the future. In particular, we will enable the IEEE 802.1x protocol in our network that will allow us to virtually patch any VLAN to each individual client. This will also pave the way for the upcoming VoIP telephony deployment in D-PHYS. The migration will be a step-by-step process and we will visit each building and floor individually to address potential questions during the migration. The typical desktop or laptop computer will not notice the change except for a short interruption of < 1 min. Certain macOS clients will need a bit of persuasion however, the required steps are described here.
Things will look a bit different for new clients that connect to the D-PHYS network for the first time only after the migration: they will not display the well-known ISG D-PHYS landing page, but an OS popup or a generic ETH page. This works the same way as the ETH wifi. You either supply your n.ethz credentials in the popup or you log in via the landing page. Your machine will then be patched into the ETH docking network. If you have a specific reason to have your machine in the D-PHYS network (HPx::745 for the technically inclined), please let us know and we will register your MAC address in our database - just like you did in the past. All existing machines at D-PHYS have been preregistered for HPx::745 in order to avoid any confusion.
So please be ready when Alex shows up in your group and announces the migration date.

UPDATE Thu 12.09. 07:30 If you're trying to connect to a SMB share from an unmanaged Windows machine, you have to use "ad\USERNAME" instead of just "USERNAME" from now on.

UPDATE 21:15 apart from the IGP group shares (which will be back in a few hours) all systems are back to normal. Please let us know if you experience any problems.

In order to upgrade the operating system on several core infrastructure servers of the Department, we schedule a general maintenance downtime on

Wednesday September 11, starting at 17:00, lasting for several hours.

Most services will be affected and unavailable during that time, as they require an authentication with your D-PHYS account (email, file server, print server, managed workstations). Note that, even though you will not be able to check your emails or send new ones, all incoming mails will be received and safely delivered to your inbox afterwards.

Please make sure to save all open documents before 17:00 on that day.

Since we will also change the way file server mounts are authenticated, users who haven't updated their passwords in a very long time might not be able to mount their home directories or group shares after the migration. If you run into this problem on Thursday morning, please first change your password. If the issue persists, contact us.

We will post an update when things are back to normal.

In order to restructure the filesystem of the home directories, we schedule a migration on

Wednesday, 28. March 2012, starting at 17:00 and lasting for several hours.

During this time the home directories (winhome, machome, unixhome), the mail services and some websites will not be available.

To protect you from losing or corrupting any of your files, we strongly recommend you close all open files on the home directories before the migration.

Since we have switched to generic names for our services, the home directories will still be accessible the same way as before after the migration is over, so you don't have to change anything.

Update 19:40 Migration completed. Every test we could think of passed. Please let us know if you find any remaining issues. Thanks for your patience.

In order to solve our recent file server problems, we schedule another migration on

Wednesday, January 25, starting at 17:00 and lasting for several hours.

During this time, you will not have access to your home or group directories, and also email will only work intermittently. Please stop all running jobs and log out prior to the migration.

Update 20:30 Migration completed. Every test we could think of passed. Please let us know if you find any remaining issues. Thanks for your patience.

On Jan 5, after weeks of thorough planning and rigorous testing, we performed a migration of the home directories and group shares to our new SAN system. Soon afterwards, the first phone calls started coming in. The initial problem was very exotic and affected very few people (that's why we had no chance to detect it during the testing period), but the action we took to address it unfortunately caused a cascade of consecutive faults that led to the instabilities you had to endure for one week now and for which we are truly sorry. We now know how to fix the underlying problem, but we cannot operate on the running server. That's why we have to schedule an

emergency file server migration on Sat, Jan 14, starting at 07:00 and lasting well into the afternoon probably.

During this time, you will not have access to your home or group directories, and also email will only work intermittently. Please stop all running jobs and log out before Saturday morning.

We apologize for the suboptimal performance since Jan 5. You have every right to expect better, but this caught us completely off guard. Thank you for your understanding.

Update, Sat 14:15: mounts and email are up and running again. The problem on 32bit machines still persists, but we have an idea how to fix it on Monday.

Update Fri 20.01: we (hence you) are still suffering from severe stability problems on the file server. We are very hard at work and now have a plan that we really really hope will solve the problems. There will be another migration sometime next week. We're truly sorry for the inconvenience you have to endure.

On Tuesday, the 2nd of December 2008, beginning at 6pm, we will migrate the services on our current authentication server to our high-availability cluster. During the migration you will not be able to login on any of our managed workstations, home and group drives or web services. Existing login sessions on workstations should survive the downtime, but it is usually better if you log out before migration. Additionally, *.dhcp.phys.ethz.ch dynamic hostnames will not work either.

Update, 22:30: Migration done. Everything should be back to normal.

Update, Wed Dec 03, 09:30: We found and corrected a problem with the web browser proxy.pac.