GHS Tech Help

eBackpack has been down all morning, but should be back up and running today by 11:00am.

During the Thanksgiving holiday week, Grossmont High School will perform on update and upgrade on many of its computers and server infrastructure.  This will be done in an effort to bring Grossmont staff the next generation of technology being developed.  It will also allow us to integrate with the District FITT tablet PCs.  There will be some noticeable changes to the way you use some of the computers around campus.  To make this transition as seamless as possible we will develop instructions that will address the more common foreseeable issues.  These instructions will be available on this web site within the “How To” section, they will emailed to staff members as well as placed in staff mail boxes.  As with most upgrades, unforeseeable issues may arise, and Grossmont HS site support staff will be available the week we return from Thanksgiving and will be dedicated to resolving these issues.  Thank You in advance for our patients!

Last night, Grossmont upgraded to the newest release of the 2X ThinClient Server Software.  This release has resolved all of the issues we experienced in mid-April and through some of May. The original upgrade that took place over Spring Break failed as soon as students and staff members returned and placed the server under load.  After several weeks of submitting bug reports and server logs to 2X, the software manufacturer finally realized they had released a bug riddled product and began working with Grossmont extensively to resolve these issues.  After beta testing for several weeks they released the upgrade to me.  I began my own testing in my virtualized test environment and found that, in fact the newest release was far more stable.  I began a phased roll-out starting with the Open Lab (550) and Library. Aster several days without issue, I decided to complete the roll-out campus wide. Today is the first day on the new server, and so far I have received positive feedback. If you experience any issue please submit a HEAT ticket @ http://heat.guhsd.net/Site.

Thank You for your patience while we strive to bring Grossmont the most cutting edge of technologies!

Over the weekend the server responsible for logging into the ThinClient system failed.  I cut over to a backup server around 7:30 Monday (6/1) morning, so ThinClient workstations are back up and running.  I brought the failed server down, and will be correcting the issue today, and hope to have it back in place before tomorrow (Tuesday – 6/2) morning. We appologize for any inconvenience.

A recent upgrade of servers has caused considerable instability of certain network resources.  That combined with a power outage in our main server room has caused various and significant anomalies which just adds to the complexity of troubleshooting these issues.  I have been working for the past week with the software manufacturers to find the cause of and solution to these errors.  As of today, we are unable to solve the issues associated with the latest version of software.  Therefore to hopefully reduce computer downtime, I will be rolling back to an older more proven version.  This will take place over the weekend, primarily Saturday 4/25, and may cause intermittent down time. So if you plan on doing work on campus this weekend please plan accordingly.  Thank You,

RESOLVED: Morning of 1/27/09

Currently the web access to email is still down for most of the entire District and it is affecting all sites. However, if you connect via the “client” (installed on all ThinClient computers) you can access your mailbox. We do not know when the issue will be resolved, but I will update this post as soon as it is fixed. Thank You,

Welcome Back! I hope everyone had a happy and restful vacation. 2009 is among us and many changes took place during the break. The District cut over many of the web pages we use everyday including Attendance and eRoster. This means that any bookmarks or favorites you saved for these sites are no longer valid. To access the new URL please go to the “LINK” page on this web site. Click the “Link” tab at the top of this page to go there.

Also, the Thin Client servers were all updated over the break. We are now at version 6, and there are some noticebale changes. I tried to keep the transition as seamless as possible, but if you experience any issues or have a request for change please submit a HEAT request and I will attend to it ASAP.  Thank You and HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

To prepare for new server infrastructure over the winter break, I will be cutting over several key network services during the next few days.  This may cause intermittent network interruption and or delays.  The cut-over will take place after school ends each day to reduce potential impact on students and or finals. I appreciate your coperation and apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. Thank You,  HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

RESOLVED @ 8:49am

The District Main Web site is currently down.  This may be the default Home Page for many of you, and when you open your browser and the page times out, it may appear as if the “Internet” isn’t working. However, if you use bookmarks, type into the address bar directly or follow the link below you can reach the Attendance page:
ATTENDANCE (Teacher Web Portal)

RESOLVED 12/4/2008

The ThinClient servers were updated over the weekend with numerous Microsoft updates that were recently published.  Apparently the servers needed a restart to complete the installation but that did not take place.  In order to restart the servers no one can be logged in which means that they have to be restarted after school business hours.  I will be attending to this issue as soon as I have an available time after hours.  Thank you for your patience and we apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused. HAPPY HOLIDAYS!