ITS adds two servers to address service issues
After weeks of having more bugs than the roach motel, CULink appears to be fixed.
In an effort to deal with the recent problems CULink has been experiencing, CU’s ITS department said they have increased their number of servers to seven to prevent further complications.
“It helped lighten the load on the five servers that were being overwhelmed,” said Gregory Stauffer, public relations and communications manager for ITS.
Last week many students returned to school to find that they could not access their e-mail accounts. Stauffer attributed this problem to the e-mail service being burdened by connections from e-mail clients such as Outlook or Thunderbird.
“It seems to be performing much better,” Stauffer said.
The ITS department had received a number of complaints from CULink users, as the e-mail service is often used by professors when giving assignments and readings.
“I was upset,” said Jack Lariviere, 22, an ecology and evolutionary biology major. “I needed information for one of my classes and I couldn’t access my e-mail.”
In addition to the two servers being added, there is still a backup server to take over should one of them fail.
“We now have seven servers that all of the e-mail accounts are distributed across,” said Stauffer. “If one of those seven would stop working, the extra server would pick up that traffic.”
When asked about additional contingency plans, Stauffer said ITS is working on improvements.
“We’re keeping an eye on the service,” Stauffer said. “If we were to try to move to a new service provider as a contingency plan, it would take a very long time.”
Many students say they hope that CULink will remain stable in the wake of ITS’ new changes.
“It’s a big issue when the e-mail goes down because we depend on it to communicate with our professors, and a lot of students don’t have e-mail other than what CU provides us,” said Kyle Bajtelsmit, a senior finance major.
Contact Campus Press Staff Writer Stephen Oskay at Stephen.oskay@thecampuspress.com.
