Special Presentation

UNLV/NLN representatives, Wonday Yuhasz and Ron Nollen, presented how Nevada Learning Network moved from a Solaris system to an IBM-Linux (RedHat) environment. Stats: Approx. 3300 live sections had to be moved; backups for 3x number of sections are held inactive but available to faculty (one full year of courses). System upgrade from 5 production nodes and three app servers to 10 nodes and each server is its own node; three nodes not available to public; on the database side: upgraded from a one node data server to a 3 node Oracle RAC. The new system has a total of 20 gig of memory each server has 3 gigs of memory. 1.2 terabytes of data had to be moved.

To move the data, Data Pump was recommended by Oracle, but it crashed four days into the export. Restarting the data transfer without having to start over was critical to completing the data transfer in a timely manner, moving data across a db link from source to target. Ron wrote a script that enabled a concurrent export and import of data from Solaris to IBM. As a result, a full copy of database was completed in one week.

Randy asked about running Rack and using the DataGuard. NLN has a 3 node rack for Oracle as well as DataGuard. Discussion followed about some of the issues of running Rack, getting it certified, and challenges in getting the right support. Ron promised a detailed report, which is attached to these mintues (and also sent to all participants by e-mail; see action item below).

Contact Wonda Yuhasz and Ron Nollen at wonda.yuhasz@unlv.edu and ron.nollen@unlv.edu.



Hot Topics

Mary Holmes asked whether others were having problems with persistent users. They build up on an applicaton node, up to 4700 users. If the build up occurs on node one, then the system shuts down. JMS won't move the persistent users. Randy compared notes, but IaSt doesn't have the problem at the same scale. Changes of the settings on F5 may help and Randy will send the settings to Mary (action item below). Could be a BEA WebLogic problem. (WebLogic is now owned by Oracle.) Randy expressed frustration with the application not kicking the inactive users off.

Cheryl McCann - using Banner 7 and batch synchronizations, 4 / day, for one of Connecticut's client universities to update enrollment. The client dropped its Luminis box and now CT must run batch synchs for the school. Banner extracts are not processing dropped students. She wondered if anyone was doing batch processing and encountered this issue.

Cheryl described the situation in detail in the Chat window: "In Banner it looks as though the students were never there. We are on Vista 8, SP2. We have 4 institutions and all of them have Banner 7. Three of the institutions have Luminis and use event synchronization between Banner and Vista, the 4th recently decided to do batch synchronization instead – 4 times a day ICGORLDI extracts are done from Banner and imported into Vista. At the beginning of this semester we realized that with the Banner extracts we are doing now for the one institution, we are not processing the dropped students/enrollments on the Banner side. Therefore, the dropped students are still in Vista with access rights. We don’t know how to “implement” the dropped students/enrollments xml extracts for the Drop/Delete events. Can any of the universities doing batch synchronization advise on how to handle this situation?"




Round Table

Brett Hardee - upgraded to 8.0.3 before start of term. Persistent user problem appears to have stopped. On a single server.

Bryant Withers - having a problem with shrinking storage problem. With the increase in useage, storage is becoming an issue. Also, with pandemic contingency plans, he anticipates more storage issues. Shrinking 2 gigs per week is the current rate. Bb advised that will need another 500 gigs of storage for the term. 7000 students; 500 sections running right now but could expand out to 1500 or 2000 sections if a pandemic occurs. Asked if anyone is dealing with this. Jack Sharon shared his experience with trying to advice clients, when he was with Bb, about how storage needs grow on a typical system. In the chat window Tracy Tolliver shared her strategy for anticipating storage needs: "I watch overall semester growth trends, there is no good way to judge based on number of course sites/sections. At Illinois, we have seen 50 GB/semester 05-06, 80 GB / semester 06-07, 100 GB 07-08, 150 GB/semester 08-09. As a result, Tracy planned for 175 GB/semester for 09-10. We have 1600+ course sites active this semester. We have 37,000 students. Randy reported that at IaSt they add about 10GB per month, until we remove a semester's worth of sections. We have a 1.2TB now." Discussion followed in chat and voice about how media affects storage.

Cheryl, Jamie Bethel - nothing new.

Jack Sharon - nothing new.

Joe Jacobson - nothing new.

Liam Ferris - nothing new.

Mary Holmes - nothing new

Matt Davis - Hello from an airport.

Nick Dean - still resolving issues with hosting. Just brought on Banner 8. Pins are now hashed.

Paula Lee - asked about Admin Institution level view information of a section and the access information. What does an access after the end date for student s indicate. Probably the Demo Students.

Randy, Pete - nothing new.

Renee Judd - enjoyed hearing about what folks are doing to deal with the growing wealth of media and H1N1 gear up. Expressed concerns about the adequacy of Chat and raised issues about Who's Online: faculty and students are increasing changing their setting to visible but not available. This is a problem because it appears that the system is changing the default of yes to no. Currently using 8.0.2 and moving to 8.0.3 soon. Mary Holmes reported that she experiences the same problem: that the settings are being set to NO arbitrarily.

Sam McCool - nothing new.

Tigon - nothing new. (Works with Travis, and stays away from Randy and Pete.)

Tracy Tolliver - not a lot going on right. First weeks are going well. Gearing up for H1N1 because it has already hit students who are on campus. Pandemic Flu planning is under way. Shared some of the administrative moves to alleviate attendance problems and avoid having students attending class when they are sick. Also, presented the levels of response from the online resources to support instruction on short notice for pandemic response.

Travis Kramer - nothing new. Start a discussion in chat: Do you make use of Respondus LockDown browser or some other secure software in conjunction with your Bb deployment?

1. Sam will mail document regarding the data transfer. - Done
2. Jack Sharon will forward his storage notes to provide information about anticipating storage growth.
3. Kathy Saville will send Sam McCool the Chat logins. - Done
4. Mary Holmes will look up Banner information for Cheryl McCann.
5. Randy will share his settings for F5 to Mary Holmes, re: persistent users issue.