« June 2008 | Main | August 2008 »
July 9, 2008
Is Everything Broken?
I don't want to sound like some old grouch, but this past week has just not been rosy. It seems like everything decided to break all at once, probably because the weather was nice outside. Yesterday Dale and I spent most of the day putting the Oracle Enterprise Managers for Aero and Slider back on line. Yup, they both decided to go down, although for different reasons. We did finally have to delete and rebuild the entire EM repository on each database. On Aero, we started getting a java error, which resulted in the loss of all of our statistics including CPU usage, SQL performance, and user data. Slider was working perfectly until I tried to re-run an RMAN backup, then poof, it started spitting out errors mighty fast, then just crashed.
The backups running from EM on Slider continue to fail. The RMAN job just isn't using the correct paramaters so it fills the flashback recovery area up then fails. The backups aren't supposed to go into the flashback area. If we run RMAN by hand, it works flawlessly, using the correct backup disk destination. The next step is to remove the EM backup job and recreate it.
Yesterday we had the weirdest experience on Astra. Kathy Hill called me asking why the NS building wasn't showing up for scheduling of classes. Gee, I don't know, why not? Then, a few minutes later, Nan Lehto called me wanting to know why she couldn't schedule any SOAR events into NS. Gee, I don't know, why not? Well, in looking over Astra I discover that the entire NS building has been marked as "offline" meaning nothing can be scheduled in it. A couple hours later, poof, that designation goes away, and it's back to normal. Or should I say paranormal? Anyway, I spent a good hour removing permissions from all but the core Astra users that allow for the changing of building and room information.
No, that's not all. Last Friday I got a call from Kris Adams - the Bookstore's new printer won't print PO's correctly. Oh, no problem, it's the Forms Path software probably not set correctly for the new printer - a call to MBS hardware support should fix it pronto. Well, after about 8 phone calls, and umpteen hours on the phone with MBS tech support, we're finally back to where the new printer will print some stuff, but still no forms such as PO's. We have re-installed Forms Path, and now we're waiting for further help from hardware. The Forms Path seems to be working, but can't get the print jobs onto the print queue (for reasons currently unknown).
Well, I'm due for a vacation in two weeks!
Posted by rossm at 10:00 AM | Comments (0)
July 2, 2008
Events Moves Forward, Exams Feature Reviewed
More and more users are getting their areas converted to Astra for event management. It is really coming together nicely. I've got a few more installs of Astra client to do, and we'll have even more folks using Astra. Our goal is to go to the web model by September 1st, meaning event requests will come through Astraweb, be routed to the proper person(s) for confirmation, then be scheduled in Astra. Anyone will be able to see the campus schedule, and see which rooms are available/not available for their event.
We had a meeting regarding the handling of classroom/event conflicts, who needs to make decisions on whether to move a class or event, and those sorts of internal issues. I think we have a good basis for ironing out most of the space conflicts that inevitably will crop up. Astra will help to minimize these conflicts, and will also be helpful in identifying other spaces that are available for a specific event. I was impressed with the way the main Astra users were willing to be flexible and offer really useful suggestions for solving some nagging scheduling issues.
We also discussed the implementation of an Astra feature - Exams. If the Exams feature is activated for a particular term, Astra will cancel all classes for the last week of the term, replacing the regular class meeting dates with a final exam schedule instead. The problem that comes up if Exams isn't enabled is that classes are scheduled in Astra right through finals week, when those classrooms aren't really needed then. We discussed several alternative ways of handling finals week, and are going to experiment and see what suits our needs best. We decided that Kathy Hill has the most difficult organization task around this, so we're going to go with whatever suits the needs of LAS best.
One other item that came up is maintenance of our Room information. A new smart classroom was added into the APS building, and the MAN building will also have new spaces pretty soon. I have volunteered to try and stay on top of this as I work closely with the Planning Department anyway. Amazing - we have a new smart classroom to schedule! That can only help!
Posted by rossm at 8:42 AM | Comments (0)
All Quiet on the Western Front
The databases are running smoothly, with just a few minor things such as jobs not running and so forth. Aero has been quite stable since the hardware replacement on the server. Dale and I still want to get in and do some more tuning on application SQL. Also, there are some permissions issues that need to be fixed. Slider has been serving it's two application users well. The server for Slider does double duty as our backup server, but seems to handle both loads pretty well. WOU has some additional server hardware which is being set up now. This could very well mean that the production db's will get some new homes. Exciting!
I spent about an hour trying to start up our old 10g install on Maverick, but it is pretty unhappy. Some of the sys datafiles seem to be missing. Dale and I will be setting up a 10g test version on Maverick, but it looks like a complete new install is going to be required. That's OK, though, as I would like to get the latest patch of 10g and see how that works, plus we should also get busy looking at version 11. There's always something going on when it comes to db's - I like it!
Posted by rossm at 8:33 AM | Comments (0)