executive summary: you only need to read this if you run a service or tool that uses our LDAP server

A surprisingly large number of people at D-PHYS run services or use tools that connect to our LDAP server to obtain user information. If you are among those, this post is meant to inform you that our LDAP infrastructure is about to change and you need to take action in order to keep your service up and running. You can read about the details and technical background here. The situation right now is:

• The new servers are running and sync with the current master.
• We have started migrating services from the old server to the new ones.
• The old server will be turned off in 2018.
• You can now start to migrate your service / tool to the new LDAP infrastructure.
• In early 2018 we will start searching for clients that still use the old server and address them individually.

So if you're affected, please change your LDAP connection according to the documentation or get in touch if you have any questions.

As announced previously, about a year ago ISG was tasked by the department board to devise a workflow to expire D-PHYS accounts which so far had a life expectancy of ∞. In summer we started blocking accounts that were virtually unused, which almost by definition went very smoothly. Now we will start addressing accounts of users who are still using our services but do no longer have an affiliation with D-PHYS. They will receive an email informing them of a 1 month grace period before the account gets blocked. This posting is meant to serve as a reminder to everybody that this process is underway and questions may arise.
The project is explained in more detail in our readme.

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.

Update Thursday 07:15 - all systems back to normal. whew.

Update Wednesday 11:00 - first rack back to normal. The picture shows how it looked during the remodeling.

Update Wednesday 07:00 - the most difficult part is over and the first rack is being retrofitted as we speak

All of D-PHYS's important servers (and services: mail, homes, SAN, web) reside in two water-cooled racks in HIT D 13. On Wednesday, August 20 those racks will have to be retrofitted by our colleagues of Informatikdienste since certain spare parts are no longer available. We have an elaborate plan how to externally power the servers while the racks are offline that schedules a 5-minute downtime that most of you won't even notice. However, there is a small chance that this external power supply does not work as expected which would lead to a longer interruption. Unfortunately we have no influence on the date, time and procedure of this modification and can only try our best to minimize potential consequences. So if something should go wrong next Wednesday, please don't panic, we'll be hard at work to fix it ASAP.
Thank you for your cooperation.