ITaP addresses, continues to monitor access issues

Dear Purdue University community,

I want to update you on the computing issues the campus community experienced over this first week of classes and let you know how ITaP has and is addressing the issues.

In addition to new procedures as students re-enter campus, faculty preparing for teaching in this de-densified environment and students acclimating to the new ways of learning in our “new normal” this first week of classes have been challenged additionally by a number of technology failures.

The problems experienced Monday that prevented many from basic access to our systems was a failure in ITaP testing procedures. We should have done a better job for you. We’ve resolved those problems and continue to monitor the situation closely.

On Monday, those who use Zoom were subjected to a nationwide outage at Zoom. Beginning Monday continuing through Thursday, those who use BoilerCast (Kaltura) have been subjected to a series of problems, including live streaming not working and classroom captures not being accessible to faculty or students when it should have been. Like the Zoom problem, these issues are related to the vendor, Kaltura, and were experienced by all of Kaltura’s customers.  As of Friday morning, no additional problems with Kaltura have been reported, and Kaltura website states that they have resolved known problems. ITaP’s monitoring confirms that the BoilerCasts are being processed as they should.

Although we proactively and systematically maintain our critical systems software, an unidentified software bug resulted in a one-hour internet outage on Thursday. We’ve received a patch from the vendor and will apply it over the weekend. 

On Wednesday, some of you may have experienced difficulty logging into classroom and lab computers due to an isolated problem on the university’s main data storage device. This is a rare problem and has been cleared up. 

Taken as a whole, this week has seen some technology hinder rather than help your teaching efforts. I want to assure you that ITaP takes these problems seriously and that we are “all hands on deck” to resolve new problems as they occur. Furthermore, while we have failures, ITaP staff is committed to your success and work proactively to maintain the availability that you need in fulfilling Purdue's mission.

Karl B. Browning
Vice President, Chief Information Officer