Blogs hosted at blog.vcu.edu will be unavailable for viewing or publishing on the morning of Jan. 23 while the UCC upgrades the operating system on the server hosting VCU’s Movable Type installation. The work is scheduled to begin at 6:30 and should be completed by 8 a.m.

We appreciate your patience. If you have any questions, please feel free to email the blog webmaster.

Posted by jcox9 at 3:42 PM | Permalink

At 6 a.m. on Friday, December 9, the University Computer Center will be performing maintenance on the database that stores data for the Movable Type blog system (blog.vcu.edu). Published blogs will continue to be accessible during this time, but users will be unable to make any administrative changes, such as publishing new entries or updating existing ones. Movable Type should be restored to full functionality by 7 a.m.

We appreciate your patience and understanding.

Posted by jcox9 at 8:42 AM | Permalink

In the summer of 2011, WordPress became the officially supported blogging platform at VCU. Movable Type, the backend of blog.vcu.edu, will be maintained through the end of 2012. To learn more about this change and WordPress, please visit the blog pages in the Technology Services knowledge base.

On December 15, we will take the first steps toward removing Movable Type by permanently deleting inactive personal blogs from the system and the server. Departmental and organizational blogs will be unaffected.

We used two criteria to identify inactive personal blogs:

• Has the blog been updated in 2010 or 2011? If not, the blog is inactive.
• Does the blog have any content? If not, the blog is inactive. (These blogs were created automatically when a user logged in to contribute to a departmental or other blog.)

User accounts associated with inactive blogs will be unaffected, so you will still be able to log in and administer any other blog to which you have access. However, if you do not have access to any other blogs, you will no longer be able to log in.

If you are unsure if your blog meets one of these two criteria or if you have any questions, please contact the VCU Webmaster. For more information on moving your blog from Movable Type to WordPress, please view the step-by-step guide in the TS knowledge base.

Posted by jcox9 at 10:33 AM | Permalink

At 1:30 pm on Saturday, January 8, the central MySQL server will be taken down to replicate data to the secondary SAN at Harris Hall; once the data has been replicated, the MySQL server will be brought back up and will serve data from the secondary SAN while the primary SAN is being repaired.

The VCU Blogs store data on the central MySQL server. Downtime is anticipated to be no longer than 30 minutes, but there is a possibility that the primary SAN will be unavailable until 6:00 am Sunday morning (January 9).

Published blogs will continue to be available throughout the downtime, however any updates (including comments) will not be possible. We anticipate having a second downtime sometime next week to replicate any data that was saved to MySQL on the secondary SAN back to the primary SAN when we transition back to the primary SAN.

Posted by sdgrainer at 9:24 AM | Permalink

The University Computing Center will be shutting down their central MySQL database on Thursday, October 21 from 8:45 to 9:30 pm in order to upgrade the network storage drives on which the database is stored. The VCU blogs are housed on the MySQL database, and as a result, all administrative functionality will be unavailable during this downtime. Users will be unable to post new entries, edit existing entries, or perform any other actions within the Movable Type blog administration system. Visitors will be unable to leave new comments on blogs. Published blogs (and individual entries) will still be available to read.

Thank you for your understanding and patience as we work to make our databases more stable.

Posted by sdgrainer at 7:55 AM | Permalink