Published March 4, 2013
By Rick Lesniak, lesniak@buffalo.edu
Wings has been UB’s public Web hosting environment since
the inception of the Web at UB in the early 1990s. With the release
of UBCMS, UB’s enterprise web content management system,
Wings continues to provide service to the university for
non-official UB websites, course pages, and various virtual hosts.
The underlying hardware of the current Wings is old, however, and
Wings has been suffering performance issues especially during times
of peak demand. Unfortunately, old hardware is difficult and
expensive to upgrade.
Comment(?)
To address these performance issues and to provide a mechanism
to quickly and inexpensively upgrade system resources, a technical
project team within CIT’s Enterprise Infrastructure Services
has put together a plan to upgrade the Wings server hardware during
Spring break. Wings’ current hardware devices are being
emulated on new virtualized servers. This upgrade will
significantly improve performance of Wings, and enable additional
upgrades when performance issues demand them.
The new virtual Wings environment has been constructed with
identical system binaries, libraries, applications and file system
that should eliminate any functionality issues. Although they
anticipate a very smooth transition, it is possible that some Web
pages and applications may not function properly on the new virtual
Wings environment.
Wings information providers and programmers are invited to
preview their websites on the new virtual environment before the
new system is put into full production. What matters most is that
any problems are brought to the attention of the technical team so
they can identify the configuration problems and address them. To
assist with the process, a website has been constructed at www.buffalo.edu/ubit/new-wings with
technical details about testing, and answers to frequently asked
questions.
We think everyone will be pleased with the performance improvements
in the new virtual Wings environment. If you have additional
questions or concerns, you can direct them to the technical team by
sending email to wings-upgrade@buffalo.edu.
VITEC Solutions services both personal and department-owned computers and iProduct devices; visit their drop-off depot in the Lockwood 2nd Floor Cybrary or call 800-333-1075. You can also request office pick-up for UB-owned equipment. Track your repair status.
iPhone usage by students is up in every UB school. Students in
the School of Nursing reported the biggest increase this year-
their iPhone usage jumped from 18.6% in 2011 to 45.9% in 2012.
Verizon Wireless is currently the carrier of choice of students at
UB, with 39% using their service.
In 2012, more students reported connecting to Wi-Fi through UB
Secure. 74% reported securely connecting vs. 67% in 2011.
Computing and Information Technology at UB is more than 40 years
old. Here’s a look back at the Interface newsletter from March 1980.
(Please note: this PDF file includes perturbations natural to the
duplication process at the time.)
