October 6, 2008 11:20 AM
| by Damon Gentry, Web Engineer
Web Engineering will be upgrading the Tier II web environment in the next few months. The Tier II web environment, commonly referred to as the 'web cluster' is web application infrastructure for non-CommonSpot sites.
The upgrade will occur in 2 phases: hardware and software.
The hardware upgrade will allow us to move from the old Sun E220r servers (450MHz and 2GB of RAM) to newer Sun V215 servers (1.5GHz and 8GB of ram). This move will also allow us fully separate the development and production environments. Naturally, we will be upgrading the hardware for the development environment first, with production following within a few weeks. This first phase should be somewhat transparent to the web developer community at OHSU.
The second phase, which should occur by December of 2008, will be to upgrade the ColdFusion servers from version 6.1 to version 8.1. In addition to all of the new features available in the latest version of ColdFusion, web developers should also notice a 2-3x performance boost.
If you have any questions about the upgrade process, please feel free to contact Web Strategies or Web Engineering. You can reach both groups at: webadmin@ohsu.edu.
April 2, 2008 12:24 PM
| by Darin Stewart, Director
We are ready to upgrade our content management system to the latest version of CommonSpot. As part of this upgrade we will be migrating all existing CommonSpot websites to the new version. This should be transparent but as is always the case with changes, something might break for someone. Test your sites NOW! Existing OHSU websites that have been built in CommonSpot are available for testing in the 5.0 development environment. I urge everyone who is responsible for one of these sites to thoroughly review your webpages in this environment. Here are the details of the migration from Renee and Damon.
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The CommonSpot upgrade (from version 4.6 to version 5.0) has been scheduled for next Tuesday, April 8. There will be no downtime for live, public-facing websites.
CommonSpot authoring will be unavailable most of the day on April 8. You'll receive an email when the upgrade is complete and authoring is available again.
The only interruption to website availability will be a 60 minute outage on the authoring server from 7am - 8am. During this time, live ozone sites will be unavailable.
Anticipated project time line for April 8:
- 7-8am: CommonSpot authoring and live ozone sites are unavailable
- 8am-12pm: Upgrade and migration to new hardware
- 12pm-3pm: Sites are live in new environment
- 3pm: Authoring is available
If you notice problems with your site on April 8, please call the help desk at 503.494.2222 or email webadmin@ohsu.edu.
Your CommonSpot 5.0 site is available to preview right now!
To prepare for the upgrade, we've created a copy of all CommonSpot 4.6 sites in a development environment and upgraded them to CommonSpot 5.0. We'll be running through a standard set of tests, but due to the large volume of content, will not be testing each page.
Let me know if you'd like access to the upgraded version of your site before it goes live. (This testing is strongly encouraged!)
January 28, 2008 11:36 PM
| by Darin Stewart, Director
As you all know, OHSU is facing some major challenges. As a result of the loss of the tort-cap the university is being forced to cut, consolidate and curtail. In the past, support for the web has been first on the chopping block. Naturally, there has been a lot of concern for the future of the web at OHSU in the post-tort cap world. We have started moving forward and have made a lot of progress toward revitalizing the web at OHSU. No one wants to see those efforts and investments derailed. I want to assure everyone that they won't be.
I have been meeting with members of the Executive Leadership Team regarding the impending launch of the Unified Site. Without exception, each member of the ELT has reiterated how critical the web is to weathering these difficult times and moving the institution forward. None of the initiatives we have undertaken or the support we have promised will be diminished by the loss of the tort cap. I think it is very telling that despite the challenges the institution is facing, Web Strategies has been instructed to fill the open positions on the team. We have an outstanding support analyst and a seasoned developer joining us at the end of the month. I look forward to introducing them to you.
The Unified Site will launch on schedule, February 19th with a new homepage, mission pages for Healthcare, Research, Education and Outreach as well as a revamped "About OHSU" section. This is just the start. Several areas of OHSU have already engaged Web Strategies to begin the process of redesigning their sites and integrating with the new Information Architecture. The coming year is going to see a transformation of the web at OHSU. The strictures placed on OHSU by new fiscal realities make that more imperative than ever. For once, difficult times will move us forward instead of back.
-dls-
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