Tech Updates

I utilize an outside free service called Site Uptime to check our system periodically for availability of various email services running our system. For each month that passes, they generate a month end report which gives me a really good indication on the availability of our email services. In laymen’s terms, how healthy our system is and are there any periods of time when the system was down, at or above capacity, or un-available for any reason.

For the last two complete months of April and May 2009, the SCE email system has experienced 100% uptime! This is a major milestone for SCE’s email system as well as the virtual server project. I don’t recall us ever reaching 100% uptime prior to running our system as a virtual server. This is truly a testament to both the consistency and operational continuity of our system. Keep those emails rolling through the system, and stay tuned for the IMail server 11 upgrade!

Today, we started the process to virtualize the current fleet of SCE Server systems. The first two systems transitioned to the virtual server environment include the SCE Email system, and the Anaheim campus staff file and print server.

The virtualization processes to bring both of these systems online in VMWare are complete.

For those interested, the product we are using is VMWare:

http://www.vmware.com

I have been testing the email system using various methods this afternoon both onsite at the Anaheim campus, as well as offsite from Cypress and Wilshire via Remote Desktop. I’ve also done testing from my home and everything is working great.

I have noticed that with the SCE Email system running as a virtual server that it is very responsive. Server systems tend to run better in a managed VMWare environment, and through our collaboration and partnership with District IS we will be able to provide redundancy for their virtual servers, and they will provide redundancy for our virtual servers.

We will continue with server conversion to virtual machines on Sunday February 22, 2009. The next systems slated for virtualization include the SCE applications server for the website, and the DSPS Database server.