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Systems critical for University operations

dboyle
March 4, 2015
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For the past 10 years, more than 50 U of L Facilities’ employees have depended on obtaining their daily work schedules and tasks through TMA, a computerized maintenance management system. And all U of L employees and students have relied on Facilities’ staff to deliver the University’s needs: power, air flow, plumbing, building maintenance, event setups, and cleanliness.webTMA

Users of Facilities’ work request system are blissfully unaware of the many months, weeks, days and hours spent planning, collaborating, testing and finally rolling out the new webTMA in December last year. But ask anyone from the Systems, Applications or Telecom teams in IT Services, or the Facilities’ teams, and they’ll tell you.

“The original TMA work order system had been in place for more than 10 years,” says Wim Chalmet, Facility Operations and Maintenance Director. “As with any software product, desktop versions are costly and require regular upgrades and maintenance. IT Systems has been moving away from desktop installations to web-based solutions for some time now. TMA was able to provide a solution, technical support and the flexibility we needed.”

The hard work of planning, upgrading the database server, applications server and the web component began in earnest. “We needed to know how we were going to move away from the desktop application and how to implement the web-based system quickly and cleanly. If it didn’t work correctly when we switched over, it could jeopardize all of the work orders waiting to be fulfilled. IT Services recommended that a test server be built so that we could play with it and fix any glitches. So we had to stagger all of the work.”

Once the Facilities and IT Services teams were confident it would operate as required, TMA converted the database to the new platform, sent it back to ITS for uploading, and the system went live.

“We had to stop all work at 3:30 pm one day and it was up and running by 9:30 am the next day. Advanced planning with ITS Systems was critical to ensure resources were available. Everything worked really well. We were very happy with all the guidance from the ITS Systems and Telecom teams. It was well planned and executed,” says Chalmet. “Excellent cooperation and collaboration meant that the Facilities’ work order system was up and running without significant downtime, not to mention those waiting for their work orders to be completed.”

The new webTMA interface can be viewed here.

For more information, contact Wim Chalmet at 403-380-1837 or wim.chalmet@uleth.ca.

Managing the U of L’s Buildings through technology

dboyle
June 27, 2014
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The University operates many complex systems on campus which are responsible for managing life safety, internal environments, room scheduling and many others. When any major system needs an upgrade, it can create a cascade effect on other services, and is no small undertaking. Last year, the Building Management System, or BMS, was scheduled for an overhaul.

At any given time, Facilities monitors roughly 35,000 measurements throughout the campus ranging from thermostats, baffles and ventilation equipment, numerous lights and fans, to the University’s boiler plant and its associated pressure and temperature equipment. In addition, approximately 85 rooms on campus are accessed through card swipes by students, faculty and staff. All are controlled by the BMS.BMS HVAC image

Information Technology Services (ITS) was brought in to assist with the software upgrade, and to provide consultation around possible improvements. Wim Chalmet, ITS Application Support Analyst, says the HVAC, or heating, ventilation and air conditioning, was tackled first.

“A big concern Utilities had was a lack of redundancy. Since utility operators are able to manage and monitor the environment on campus from their computers, if a server went down, the software providing status updates on the systems would quit reporting,” says Chalmet. “Operators would be blind to how everything was functioning and consequently would have to physically patrol to monitor the most critical points. During cold snaps in the winter pipes can freeze within hours so staff would have to be on call at all times day and night.”

In addition to consultation, ITS upgraded all affected desktop machines and was able to repurpose two additional servers for the BMS. “This provides failover protection so that if one server goes down, another takes over and continues to provide status updates to operators.”

The Card Access system for the campus was another component of the BMS upgrade. “We have a number of classrooms that can be accessed by card swipe,” says Chalmet. “If a student registers in a course that is scheduled into one of those rooms, they get card access automatically.”

Chalmet adds that in order for this to occur, a custom designed interface is needed which permits the BMS system to automatically talk to our databases, such as Banner in this instance. “ITS has done an analysis of the entire structure to determine exactly how this interface currently works and recommended significant improvements to integrate the tool with the new software of the BMS environment.” Completion of the project is expected before September.

 

Patches, password changes thwart Heartbleed bug

dboyle
April 10, 2014
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A security issue (denoted the ‘Heartbleed bug’) has been identified that affects some University of Lethbridge systems. This issue is serious and compromises a core encryption technology designed to keep your information safe as it crosses the internet. Most often you would see this technology in use when you visit sites that begin with https.heartbleed-bug

A small number of University machines are affected by this issue, most of which are not accessible from the internet.  The two systems representing the greatest risk are the student email system and the mailman (mailing list) administration console.  These systems were fixed on April 9th  and we have no evidence to indicate they were targeted in any attacks.  As a precaution, students and mailing list administrators who are concerned can change their password if they desire.

ITS is working with faculties, departments, and business units to fix the remaining systems.  System Administrators concerned with the integrity of effected systems are encouraged to change administrative/root passwords.  Users inquiring about the integrity of their accounts are advised that changing one’s password is always the best policy.  Instructions to change University of Lethbridge passwords may be found here: https://www.uleth.ca/webtools/account_tools/pswdchng

For more information about the bug go to: http://heartbleed.com/

Technical support personnel outside of ITS are encouraged to contact the Solutions Centre at help@uleth.ca for further information.

Users with questions or concerns can also contact the Solutions Centre at 2490 or help@uleth.ca

 

Systems Management

dboyle
July 12, 2012
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What was once a highly manual process done in the middle of the night by a “team of zombies” will soon be automated. Each month during the night, systems support staff are tasked to install patches, or bug fixes, on as many as 300 University servers which can take up to 15 minutes per server including rebooting.

The University of Lethbridge recently tendered an RFP on systems operations management, which will vastly reduce this labor-intensive work. It also will assist in the development of a strategy of systems management that will allow IT to have greater visibility into the increasing complexity of the U of L’s computing systems.

The successful respondent, LongView Systems, will assist IT Services in the implementation of an enterprise patch management platform, which will fulfill outstanding requirements outlined by the Auditor General.  In addition, ITS and its partner will implement tools that provide reporting and dash-boarding of U of L critical systems. The result will produce increased reliability and efficiency across the computing systems portfolio.