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| Thursday, 21 July 2005: 1:30 PM-2:15 PM | |||
| Yerba Buena Salon 05 (San Francisco Marriott) | |||
| H-7: Keeping it up 24/7 - Successful Strategies for High Availability | |||
| Detailed Description: | WebCT services are usually considered mission critical, users expect round-the-clock access. When a problem occurs it's essential that corrective action be taken as quickly as possible. This presentation will look at a successful implementation at the University of New South Wales that has resulted in high availability of the service. Participants will gain practical knowledge on how to set up an automated monitoring and response system to ensure high availability of their service. | ||
| Presentation Format: | Showcase | ||
| Topic: | Integrating the campus: Technical solutions and extended uses | ||
| Target Audience: | Academic Technology Directors, E-learning Managers, System Administrators | ||
| Appropriate Audience Level: | Experienced WebCT users | ||
| Abstract Text: | WebCT campus implementations have over time moved from being projects to mission critical services. Integration into daily academic life now means that students and faculty expect the server to be available at any time of the day or night. In the online world, the concept of ‘business hours' is not applicable. As with any server, WebCT servers can be the target of hack attacks, software glitches and network outages, all of which can cause considerable disruption unless quickly discovered and remedied. Unless successful, proven, strategies are put into place to monitor and automatically respond to service outages, the likelihood of an unplanned server outage is high. Many institutions do not have the luxury of having technical support staff available outside of normal business hours, so the question of how to ensure the WebCT service continues to operate after hours needs to be addressed. This presentation will look at the successful strategies implemented at the University of New South Wales. The monitoring and response system is the result of many months of trial and error. The strategies implemented include server, network and hardware monitoring. The system is able to autonomously respond to and correct certain situations as well as sending alerts to technical support staff via any electronic medium, such as mobile sms messages, email, wap pages etc. The system includes on campus monitoring systems as well as off campus monitoring. A valuable lesson learned was that the monitoring system needs monitoring itself! The implement system was implemented on a shoe-string budget and has proven itself invaluable many times. By the end of this session your will have the practical knowledge to help ensure your WebCT installation has high availability. | ||
| Session Leader: | Colin J. Lowe University of New South Wales | ||
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