and then there were 5 ! October 16, 2007
Posted by Paul Cheeseman in: General, Team News, add a commentTags: Groupwise, Spam, Sun-Ray, virtualisation
Just a quick note to say that the Core Services team is now complete. Neil Malcolm has joined us from the Business System team, I’d also like to welcome Adam Riches to the team. The IT Services offices in the SIC are in the process of being moved around. The Core Services team will be located at the back of the IT Services offices and the IT Services Helpdesk is moving forwards in the office and will be situated closer to the main door.
The Sun Ray Pilot is finishing this Thursday. If you haven’t seen a Sun Ray yet and you want to see what the fuss is about contact me by phone or e-mail and I’ll point you in the direction of the closest trial machine. If the trial is a success they will be deployed into the new Health building at the Ormskirk site, they will also be deployed into the open access areas in the new building.
The Spam Quarantine product is still under trial but we have moved all Edge Hill mail over to this service. The product will remain in trial until our suppliers release a new version of the software in the next few months. The next release of the software promises an improved interface to the quarantine area and a number of other features. We have also made significant changes to the Groupwise system in the past few weeks and this will give the institution a much more reliable internal and external e-mail service.
Virtualisation is still on the agenda and we are in the process of obtaining quotes from suppliers for hardware, software and consultancy. It is likely that we will implement two virtualisation servers and in the first few months of the project we are hoping to virtualise at least 10 servers.
SPAM August 16, 2007
Posted by Paul Cheeseman in: Uncategorized, 2 commentsTags: Groupwise, Spam
We have been testing out a SPAM solution for the past 6 weeks. The trial solution takes the form of one single server with some clever software on it that tries to figure out if an e-mail is SPAM or not. I’ve known that the SPAM solution has been working quite hard but I’ve never really looked into it any further…..until about 20 minutes ago that is.
The SPAM software does some clever things to figure out if e-mail server connections coming in is from a legitimate source. If the source can not be verified the the incoming connection is probably SPAM. The software also checks against lists of known SPAM e-mail addresses and mail servers. It then uses the information from these checks to decide if the connecon should be allowed or not. In the past 24 hours the SPAM software rejected 111,481 connection attempts from known spammers and unverifiable sources. Around 90% of all incoming e-mail connections are rejected because they are trying to deliver SPAM. I was quite shocked by this.
Of the incoming e-mail connections that pass the initial tests there are still a number of SPAM messages that get picked off by the software. Before the SPAM software was put into place these messages would have ended up in our GroupWise mail boxes. How many SPAM messages do you thing Edge Hill gets in 24 hours ? Have a guess, 100, 1000, 10,000 ? Would you be suprised to know that the total SPAM messages dealt with by the SPAM solution in the last 24 hours was 19,121 messages? All this is in just one day !! Once I have some stats for a full month I will report back, but I’m sure the numbers will be quite staggering.
Missing your SPAM? July 15, 2007
Posted by Paul Cheeseman in: General, 3 commentsTags: Spam
Week 2 of the trial of our new anti-spam solution is upon us. Initial feedback from the users is good but we’ll be asking for some formal feedback later on in the trial. A few comments have been made about the speed of the quarantine area website. The website can be a bit slow at times, but there’s a very good reason for this. If we were to go live with the product we would have multiple units in place to deal with the load, we currently only have one. If we decide to buy into this product we will purchase additional units which will speed up the service. All incoming e-mail is being scanned by the new anti-spam product, by the end of this week all our out going e-mail will be scanned by the new product as well.
Our suppliers have also been looking in on the trial and they have gained some useful information by watching our use of their product. They have made a commitment to make some changes to the Quaratine area website to improve performance. I am having a review of the trial with our suppliers on the 18th July, and then a final review on the 27th July. If you have any questions for our suppliers or any comments that you would like me to pass on please e-mail me or post a comment here.
A busy week July 7, 2007
Posted by Paul Cheeseman in: Team News, add a commentTags: core-services, e-mail, Groupwise, Spam
Interviews were held for the Senior Core Services officers posts on Tuesday, we have offered the posts to two candidates and we are waiting for the usual HR procedures to be completed. There is also a Core Services Officer post advertised externally, the closing date for applications is the 20th July. We are aiming to have all three of these posts in place for the 1st August, at that point the Core Services Team will officially come on line.
Our Anti-Spam appliance trial officialy started on Thursday afternoon, and despite some minor teething issues I’m please to report that the Anti-Spam appliance performance is very impressive. Our Customer Services Manager will be making everyone aware of the User Interface on Monday. The User Interface will allow users to login and view any e-mail that has been identified as Spam. Users are then given the option to block, delete or release e-mail into their e-mail accounts.
There has been a team of people (including myself) at EH today working on the Groupwise e-mail system. We are trying to improve performance and have been making some changes to the system on the advice of our external IT support. We are back in on Sunday morning to finish things off. Here’s hoping that next week is a bit quieter.
Welcome June 6, 2007
Posted by Paul Cheeseman in: General, 2 commentsTags: Spam, UK Federation
Welcome to the Core Services Blog !
This blog will be used to keep you updated on what’s going on in the Core Services Team, what we are working on and our plans for the future.
Our projects for the next few weeks and months include;
- Installing a new anti-spam and anti-virus solution for the e-mail system
- Improving the reliability and availability of the e-mail system
- Joining the UK Access Management Federation
- Reviewing and simplifying the Identity Management Systems
We are also looking at technologies such as Server Virtualization and Shibboleth
Please feel free to leave comments, I hope to hear from you soon
Paul Cheeseman
Core Services Manager
