The rfanfs.research.partners.org server had to be rebooted on Thursday, September 29, 2016 at 5:35p.m. EDT to resolve an issue with the server. Users should verify they can connect correctly to the server.
On Tuesday, September 20th, 2016, Apple is releasing their next Operating System (OS) for Mac laptops & desktops, macOS Sierra. At this time, we recommend you do not upgrade your Mac as this upgrade may impact your ability to use enterprise services such as Email, VPN and more.
As with prior Mac OS releases, vendors will release new software for their products to integrate with Sierra, and we expect updates will be required for plugins such as Java. Further information regarding compatibility with Partners services will be broadcast in the coming weeks.
Please keep in mind that Apple, and therefore Partners, only supports the current OS and two versions prior. With the release of Sierra, the only supported Mac OSs will be macOS Sierra, Mac OS X El Capitan 10.11 or Mac OS X Yosemite 10.10.
If you are running a Mac OS older than Yosemite, please view our webpage on how to Update Your Mac, and contact the Service Desk if you need assistance with an upgrade. Older Mac operating systems introduce risk to your data and the enterprise as they are not patched for security vulnerabilities and do not comply with Partners policies.
On Sunday, September 18, 2016, the main server of RFA was successfully transitioned to a new server. RFA was down intermittently for maintenance between 2pm and 8pm on Sunday, 9/18.
Despite our efforts to retain the rfa01.research.partners.org domain name we were required to use the new name of rfawin.partners.org due to Microsoft Security Rules. If you receive a request for assistance from a user in regards to connecting to RFA please let them know that the new server name is rfawin.partners.org and that they need to remap the drive using this name instead of the old rfa01.research.partners.org. Below are links to instructions for mapping a network drive on both PC and Mac.
Map Network drive on Mac:
https://rc.partners.org/kb/article/1816
Map Network Drive on a PC:
https://rc.partners.org/kb/article/1823
There will be limited support next week while EDC Support attends the annual REDCap Conference. Please plan for delayed response times. Priorities will be made for Moving Projects to Production, User Access, Creating New Projects, and Change Requests. General REDCap questions will be best effort.
Be sure to review the Help&FAQ, Training Resources, and Getting Started with REDCap pages.
If you have any questions, please email edcsupport@partners.org
Applies To: Current Syncplicity Users
The renewal period for your Syncplicity online storage account has been postponed until November 1. You may continue to use your Syncplicity storage as usual with no interruption in service until that time.
More information regarding Syncplicity renewals and Dropbox Business are being finalized and will be communicated when ready. This is a preview of what your options will be.
Please see Appendix A of EISS 8c.1: IT Asset Management Standards for Data Classification. Contact your Information Security Officer for help determining the appropriate solution for your data requirements.
If you need assistance, please contact the IS Service Desk.
Applies To: All Users
The earlier issue regarding applications being unable to authenticate users, or users being slow to login has been resolved. If you continue to experience issues, please contact the IS Service Desk.
Applications known to have been impacted were;
ERISOne Cluster
Cyberark
NSMC PACS
NSMC Syngo
Epic Hyperspace
Epic Express Build
Cisco Jabber
and other applications that use the Partners Active Directory for authentication.
Thank you for your patience
Applies To: Current Syncplicity Users
The renewal period for your Syncplicity online storage account has been postponed until September 1.
You may continue to use your Syncplicity storage as usual with no interruption in service.
Syncplicity will continue to be offered as an option for use cases that must meet regulatory requirements under specific contracts and federal regulations such as FISMA. However, Partners Information Systems is working on a lower-cost, preferred solution using Dropbox Enterprise. More information for Syncplicity renewals and Dropbox Enterprise are being finalized and will be communicated during the month of August.
Please see Appendix A of EISS 8c.1: IT Asset Management Standards for Data Classification. Contact your Information Security Officer for help determining the appropriate solution for your data requirements.
If you need assistance, please contact the IS Service Desk.
Applies to: Users of Apple Devices (iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch, Apple TV, Macs)
Apple has released patches to both address a calendaring bug which can crash your iPhone or iPad and several security vulnerabilities for both iOS and OS X.
You should apply these patches to your business devices and personal devices.
As a reminder, patches to iOS and OS devices are developed to fix problems with a software’s usability, security or performance. Installation of these patches should be a part of your normal maintenance of your devices. These malware threats can adversely affect the security of your data or system. You can find more information about updating your Apple devices in the Knowledge Base.
The Consumer Technology Management (CTM) team worked with clinicians and Apple Engineering to identify the iOS calendaring issue many individuals first experienced in April 2016, leading to this Apple iOS update. CTM has also tested OS X 10.11.06 for compatibility and recommends the upgrade.
Please contact the IS Service Desk with questions or concerns.
To attempt to repair a long-standing issue with one of the nodes in the MAD storage cluster, ERIS did a full restart of the cluster on Tuesday, July, 26, 2016 at 10p.m. EST. The downtime affected both replicated and unreplicated data shares, and all users were affected.
Over the course of the week, ERIS is working with Red Hat to identify many of the outstanding issues that have plagued MAD (Massive Array of Disks) Data Storage Services over the past few months. The output of this engagement will be a remediation plan to both stabilize the current environment and recommendations to move to a vendor-supported iteration of the technology in play. During the course of this work, we may need to schedule additional downtime on short notice to repair issues, in an effort to maximize the value we have with our onsite expertise. We will still do our best to make any of these changes off-hours to minimize impact. Your patience during this exercise is very much appreciated.
We realize that service around MAD has been below standard for the past few months, and this exercise is our first step in improving things to an acceptable level. We are committed to providing near-line, archival storage to the research community, whether it be with the existing technology or with new technology coming into focus. Please email rcc@partners.org if you have any questions or concerns, your feedback is important to the ongoing improvement of our service!
Did you know that Microsoft regularly releases security patches for its software products on the second Tuesday of every month? How frequently do you update your computer? Here is some guidance to keep your device secure and your Microsoft software up to date and running smoothly.
Do I need to make changes on my computer?
How do I run Microsoft updates on my non-standard or personally-owned Windows device?
Turn on Windows Update for automatic updating. Most patches will install automatically, but you will be prompted when input is needed during an installation. It is strongly recommended that you click on any Windows Update alerts in your taskbar to be sure your PC does not miss an important download.
How do I run Microsoft updates on my Macintosh device?
If you use Office for Mac, turn on AutoUpdate to periodically check for updates. It is strongly recommended that you run these updates in a timely fashion.
IMPORTANT: If you don't see Check for Updates on the Help menu, download the latest version of the Microsoft AutoUpdate tool from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3133674.
Visit this webpage for additional instructions a: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Check-for-Office-for-Mac-updates-automatically-bfd1e497-c24d-4754-92ab-910a4074d7c1.
If you have any questions or concerns about updating and securing your software or device, please contact the IS Service Desk.
The GoToMyPC service has been targeted by a very sophisticated password attack. To protect you, the security team recommended that we reset all customer passwords immediately.
Effective immediately, you will be required to reset your GoToMyPC password before you can login again.
To reset your password please use your regular GoToMyPC login link.
The issue affecting VPN login is now resolved. If you are still experiencing any issues logging into VPN, please contact the Service Desk.
This morning, users were unable to login to VPN. This issue did not be affecting other sites (LMR, Partners MyApps, Workspace etc).
Thank you for your patience. View the IS Broadcast online.
Applies To: All Users
Information Systems Maintenance (ISM) is scheduled for Monday, June 20 from 12:00 am to 4:00 am.
During this time, planned system maintenance and testing will be performed by IS Operations teams. This routine maintenance reduces the risk of unscheduled outages on our computer network and to the Internet.
Impact to systems and applications
Impact to sites
Need help during the downtime?
View the Broadcast Online. Please contact your IS Service Desk if you have any questions.
View the 2016 IS System Maintenance (ISM) Schedule in the IS Service Desk Knowledgebase (Partners login required).
Did you know that Microsoft regularly releases security patches for its software products on the second Tuesday of every month? How frequently do you update your computer? Here is some guidance to keep your device secure and your Microsoft software up to date and running smoothly.
Do I need to make changes on my computer?
How do I run Microsoft updates on my non-standard or personally-owned Windows device?
Turn on Windows Update for automatic updating. Most patches will install automatically, but you will be prompted when input is needed during an installation. It is strongly recommended that you click on any Windows Update alerts in your taskbar to be sure your PC does not miss an important download.
How do I run Microsoft updates on my Macintosh device?
If you use Office for Mac, turn on AutoUpdate to periodically check for updates. It is strongly recommended that you run these updates in a timely fashion.
IMPORTANT: If you don't see Check for Updates on the Help menu, download the latest version of the Microsoft AutoUpdate tool from https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/kb/3133674.
Visit this webpage for additional instructions a: https://support.office.com/en-us/article/Check-for-Office-for-Mac-updates-automatically-bfd1e497-c24d-4754-92ab-910a4074d7c1.
If you have any questions or concerns about updating and securing your software or device, please contact the IS Service Desk.
Due to limited resources available this week, there will be limited support available at the RICS Office. Please call the Partners Service Desk at 617-732-5927 to open a request or ticket if you are having a support issue.
LimeSurvey (https://limesurvey.partners.org/limesurvey) infrastructure upgrades scheduled for Thursday, June 9th at 7:30 PM EST are complete. Actual downtime was 4 hours.
This consisted of the PostgreSQL database being upgraded, which will result in better overall system performance.
If you have any concerns about LimeSurvey being offline at this time, please email edcsupport@partners.org
LimeSurvey (https://limesurvey.partners.org/limesurvey) experienced an unexpected outage due to database platform issues. Systems are back online. LimeSurvey was down from 7:30AM to 9:30AM.
We are actively investigating the cause of this issue to prevent future outages.
If you have any concerns, please email edcsupport@partners.org
Maintenance on Confluence (https://confluence.partners.org) has been completed. Confluence has been upgraded from version 5.8.13 to 5.9.11. If you have any questions or concerns, please contact rcc@partners.org.
Confluence is an Enterprise Wiki and Collaboration tool used by ERIS and Research for documentation, team calendaring and information dissemination.
Service is fully restored after non-replicated shares and gateway mad-store1.research.partners.org on the MAD (Massive Array of Disks) data storage service were reported unavailable starting at 11a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 24, 2016.
The issue was related to the data access layer, so it hasn't had any impact on the data stored in MAD and the service is available again.
Check any transfers that you may have had running and restart the transfer if necessary. If you experience any issues with the MAD data storage service, please contact rcc@partners.org.
Applies To: Macintosh Users
We are experiencing an issue concerning Mac users not being able to launch applications via the Partners Citrix Workspace portal at https://workspace.partners.org when off the Partners network. If you are on a Mac and currently unable to access applications via this portal, please follow these steps:
1. Go to Applications > Utilities > Keychain Access
2. In the list of Certificates, find the USERTrust RSA Certification Authority certificate.
3. Double click the USERTrust RSA Certification Authority Certification and then expand the Trust dropdown.
4. On the When using this certificate: option, change the setting from "Use System defaults" to "Always Trust" option. Close the window and you will be prompted to enter your local administrator password to authenticate the change.
5. Restart Safari and all other web browsers, then open the Workspace Portal at https://workspace.partners.org and launch an application.
If you continue to experience issues, please open a Service Desk request.
Maintenance is scheduled for Confluence (https://confluence.partners.org) on Sunday, May 29, 2016 at 7:30a.m. The work is scheduled to upgrade Confluence from version 5.8.13 to 5.9.11. Work is expected to take approximately 30 minutes; please plan to log out and save all work for this maintenance window.
If you have any questions or concerns, please contact rcc@partners.org.
Confluence is an Enterprise Wiki and Collaboration tool used by ERIS and Research for documentation, team calendaring and information dissemination.
Applies to: DIPR Virtual Machine (VM) Customers
ERIS is in the process of making infrastructure improvements to the DIPR environment behind the scenes. Work began in May 2016 and will continue into June 2016 with no interruptions to DIPR VM service. The upgrades allow ERIS to scale the infrastructure more effectively, increase memory capacity, and continue to meet the growing demands from the research community.
We can now scale the infrastructure more effectively using the latest version of VMware vSphere 6.x. vSphere is the cloud computing platform that allows virtualization software to run in our DIPR environment. This upgrade gives our customers broader access to different Operating Systems that can be run on DIPR.
Once again, there is no downtime and no impact to customers using DIPR VMs. If you have any questions, please contact rcc@partners.org.
ERIS provides Discovery Informatics Platform for Research (DIPR), a flexible, secure cloud computing infrastructure designed to meet research needs. DIPR Virtual Machines (VMs) offer IT power and services to research customers without placing the burden of purchasing or managing server hardware on the researcher.
Applies to: ALL SQL database customers on ERISSQL2K8D.dipr.partners.org\ERISSQL2K8D and ERISSQL2K8P.dipr.partners.org\ERISSQL2K8P
We are in the process of migrating all of our SQL databases to our new SQL 2012 platform. We will be retiring the two existing SQL 2008 instances as of June 1, 2016. We will be offering up to 50 GB of free space on the new SQL platform and will assist any clients who wish to migrate their existing databases to the new SQL platform.
If you have a database on either erissql2k8d.dipr.partners.org\erissql2k8d or erissql2k8p.dipr.partners.org\erissql2k8p - you will need to migrate your database. Please contact us at rcc@partners.org, and we will assist you with your migration.
If you would like to see what other database services we offer, please visit the Database & Data Services section of this website.
Partners accounts are now able to log in through the Syncplicity web interface, https://my.syncplicity.com or https://partners.syncplicity.com. If you have a Syncplicity account, you can also access your files from your device.
Starting the evening of Tuesday, May 17, 2016, new installs of Syncplicity software were unable to complete and access through the web interface was inaccessible to Partners accounts because of the log in issue.
Partners IS and Syncplicity support resolved the issue.
