Director's BlogWeb Strategies Director's Blog

One step forward...two steps back

Tue, 19 May 2009 17:30:00 -0800

Well, we ran into yet another issue with the Cisco ACE appliances. In order to effectively troubleshoot the issue, we are rolling back the DNS change we made yesterday. I apologize (again) for the delay on this. If we can't get the Cisco ACE to work properly, we'll update the Cisco CSS to use the new web servers. That way, you can still get the benefit of the hardware and software upgrade. I'll post more information tomorrow after we conduct more testing.

Launch!

Mon, 18 May 2009 17:20:00 -0800

Well, we updated the DNS records today for the 'www' and the 'ozone' sites, but only for internal users. Client browsers outside of the OHSU network are still using the older servers. (We'll update external DNS in a week or so.) We've run into a few configuration issues that were missed, but we've also been resolving them as they are reported. If you are experiencing any problems with the site, please contact the ITG Helpdesk or Web Strategies. Thanks for your patience!

New Launch Date

Fri, 15 May 2009 11:24:00 -0800

We're going to launch on Monday, May 18th at 9:30am. Hopefully, this should be a seamless transition this time. I've reviewed the old CSS rules line by line (all 5186 of them). We're very confident that the new servers are now configured to support every URL that the old servers were supporting. Wish us luck! And of course, be ready to test your websites Monday morning!

Postponed.......yet.....again

Thu, 30 Apr 2009 11:07:00 -0800

I just discovered that the IT engineers who can update the DNS servers (needed to launch Tier II and revert back if there are major problems) will all be busy today taking examinations. Therefore, we are re-scheduling the launch for Monday, May 4th, at 11am.

Tier II Web Upgrade

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 16:40:00 -0800

We are planning to actually launch the upgraded servers on Thursday, April 30th at 10:00am. I really, really, really hope I don't have to retract this announcement! Damon

Tier II Web Upgrade

Tue, 21 Apr 2009 09:25:00 -0800

The Network Engineering team will be applying a firmware patch to the Cisco ACE network appliance modules on Thursday, April 23rd. Web Engineering would like to wait a few days after this patch to ensure that the ACE modules are stable after the upgrade before we make the DNS change that send traffic for Tier II web sites to the ACE. Thanks for your patience!

Tier II Upgrade - More delays

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 09:58:00 -0800

I'm sorry to have to report that the Tier II upgrade has once again been postponed. I probably jumped the gun a little on announcing that we would launch yesterday. The issue at hand is that the Cisco ACE (load balancer) is having some problems. Specifically, one of our VIPs (Virtual IP addresses) is failing, and we don't know why. The failing VIP happens to be the one that serves http://dev.ozone.ohsu.edu. The 'production' VIPs seem to be working. However, until we identify the root cause of this issue, I'm worried that the same issue might affect a production VIP. Therefore, we are once again postponing the launch. I will keep this blog updated with status reports as often as I can. Thanks in advance for your patience!

Tier II Upgrade - Today!

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 10:30:00 -0800

Ok all. We are finally ready to launch the new upgraded Tier II servers. At 11am today (or shortly thereafter), the DNS records for www.ohsu.edu and ozone.ohsu.edu will be updated for INTERNAL network clients only. Anyone on the internal network browsing the OHSU or O-Zone sites will be using the new servers. All external web browsers will continue to view our site on the old servers. If you experience any issues with the new servers, please follow our standard support notification process by completing our support form at: https://www.ohsu.edu/webstrategies/support.cfm. Thanks for your patience!

Tier II Web Infrastructure Upgrade - Round II

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 10:03:00 -0800

UPDATE: Yet another postponement. I apologize for the series of delays here. This time, the network engineering team has discovered a bug with the Cisco ACE appliances. They are working with the vendor to get the issue resolved. Currently, they are expecting to have the ACE issue fixed later this week. I'll keep this blog updated with status as soon as we see a change. For now, Tier II is still running CFMX 6 on the old 'cluster'.

Tier II Web Infrastructure Upgrade - Postponed

Fri, 03 Apr 2009 09:34:00 -0800

Hi all. We discovered an issue with the NFS Mounts and symbolic links that would have affected lots of applications in the production environment. We should be resolving that today and will begin testing as soon as possible. At the moment, the revised ETA for Tier II launch is Tuesday, April 7th.

Endeca v. Google, part 1 of ∞

Wed, 01 Apr 2009 14:48:00 -0800

Google has become the gold standard for search - with good reason. It works. Really well. Google makes all of us smarter by surfacing relevant information, quickly. Were it not for Google search, I'd probably still be looking for information on that cool new cgi-bin technology and checking my Eudora mail account. I try to avoid Endeca versus Google comparisons because - for OHSU's needs - they really aren't comparable products. But on the surface, the core function looks the same: submit term(s), receive links. And while we strive for that same effortless return of perfect results, Endeca is retrieving information from a very different pool of data than Google is working with, which produces very different outcomes. Rather than write an epic novel about these outcomes where I pretend to have all the answers about what happens and why, I'm going to occasionally respond to common questions that I do have a reasonable response for. Why does Google do so much better at surfacing home pages than Endeca? Search engines commonly base their relevancy ranking strategies on the number of links that point to any given page. Internal search engines don't have this external data available to the ranking modules, nor would it be a particularly reliable source of information to define a home page if it were based solely on internal links - which means we really have no organic way of defining which pages are "home pages." I'd love to find a way to mimic this behavior with Endeca. I'm in the midst of testing a custom ranking strategy to float web site home pages higher up in the results. I'm starting with CommonSpot subsites because we have fast, easy access to tag home pages with the right meta data. I'd be happy to throw any other site into the early test phase though - send me an email if you'd like to participate. Feel free to send me any of your Endeca v. Google questions.
Renee

Tier II Web Infrastructure Upgrade

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 17:40:00 -0800

If your content is on the Tier I environment (CommonSpot), this upgrade will not affect your site. This upgrade is only for web content on the Tier II environment. On Tuesday, April 2nd, computers on the OHSU network will begin using the upgraded Tier II web hardware for 'www.ohsu.edu' and 'ozone.ohsu.edu'. External visitors to these sites will continue to use the existing, original hardware. A follow up DNS change on April 13th will be implemented to allow external visitors to the OHSU site to use the new hardware as well. You can test your site on the upgraded Tier II environment at one of the following URLs: - http://test-www.ohsu.edu - http://test-ozone.ohsu.edu Please contact Damon Gentry (x4-2601) if you have any questions.

CommonSpot Service Pack Released

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:33:00 -0800

A service pack for CommonSpot was recently released. I'm testing it in our development environment and waiting another week or so to see what the greater CommonSpot community has to say about it, then I'll schedule the upgrade in production. Estimated time to installation in production: 2 weeks. This service pack has a few bug fixes for issues we've encountered here - my personal favorite is a correction to the way HTML code is formatted in the rich text editor. Right now, all code is bunched together. This service pack will indent and format code in a more sane manner. Feel free to contact us with any questions.

OHSU's Many Search Tools

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 13:00:00 -0800

OHSU's websites use several different search technologies - we have everything from enterprise software (Endeca, Verity) to free tools (Google search, PHP scripts) to custom-built solutions.
In many cases, there's really no way of knowing which tool is powering any individual interface. To set the record straight, what follows is an explanation of some of our most frequently used search applications.

Endeca - Enterprise Search
http://www.endeca.com/enterprise-search/
Endeca powers search for many of our public-facing sites. These search results display on pages with "www.ohsu.edu/searchresults" in the URL. If the page has a different URL, it's not Endeca.

HtDig - Ozone Search
http://www.htdig.org/
The Ozone search tool is a free application that desperately needs to be replaced. As far as I know, the configuration hasn't been touched since it was installed more than four years ago. Unfortunately, the Ozone didn't make the cut for projects being supported after budget reductions.

Custom - OHSU Health Website
The health topics, find a doctor and find a clinic search features on the health website are custom-built. There are no third-party applications involved.
As always, I welcome your feedback.

Search Feedback Wanted

Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:28:00 -0800

I've heard a rumor or two (or three, or four, or...) that our internal search engine is not quite functioning like we need it to. I'm looking for detailed feedback on Endeca searches that aren't working. The best format for this feedback is:

search term (you can even copy the URL after you run the search; your term will be in there
desired URLs in the top 10 search results
other notes about the search

For example:

search term: "school of medicine"
http://www.ohsu.edu/searchresults/controller.jsp?Ntt=school+of+medicine&Ntk=All&rpp=10&search=Search+Again
desired URLs: www.ohsu.edu/som, http://www.ohsu.edu/ohsuedu/academic/som/dean/deans-message.cfm

Send this info to webadmin@ohsu.edu or open a ticket via https://www.ohsu.edu/webstrategies/support.cfm.

Look forward to hearing from you!