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Executive Summary
| Project |
E-mail Implementation Project |
| Description |
Implement e-mail services on new hardware and software. |
| Purpose |
Greatly increase reliability of e-mail services; increase scalability
so that e-mail services can continue to support increases in users
supported and volume of e-mail transported; increase breadth of
services to include robust webmail and webcalendaring. |
| Duration |
Phase I, migration: 11/29/2001 - 2/18/2002 |
| Status |
Phase I is complete. |
| Contact |
For Support questions please contact the ITS Help Desk at 956-8883 (Oahu), 800-558-2669
toll-free, or email: help@hawaii.edu. |
Phase I - Implementation of Core Services
Phase I establishes the foundations for our new e-mail services.
All functionality in our current environment has its equivalent
in the new environment. Phase I ends with a dramatic migration
effort. The elements of Phase I include the following:
- Industrial Strength Servers and Services - The computer and storage array are designed for high availability
and are designed to limit single points of failure. If a systems
board dies, the system can automatically fail the board and and
resume operations; if a disk drive dies, the systems can on-the-fly,
swap out the failed drive and engage a hot spare, rebuilding it
with parity data while the system continues providing services.
- Improved Reliability - The combination of hardware designed with high availability
in mind plus the software designed to support millions of e-mail
users has been selected to greatly improve the reliability of
our venerable e-mail services and ensure that the UH community
can rely on the main UH mail services.
- Room for Continued Growth - E-mail usage continues to expand. Over the last five quarters
the number of pieces of e-mail handled by the services has increased
from an average of 150,000 pieces daily to over 200,000 pieces,
and this does not include the mail that has been rejected by our
enterprise antivirus scanner.
- Robust Webmail - At least, a robust, secure, web-enabled e-mail client that
can be used from home or work, here or abroad to provide easy
access to e-mail (documentation).
- Final Demise of ProcMail Filtering - The unsupported UNIX ProcMail utility (not to be confused with
the supported ListProc utility) will be taken out of service since
it is not compatible with the new e-mail services. Client e-mail
tools provide robust mail filtering capabilities.
Phase II - Implementation of Related Services
Phase II builds upon the Phase I foundation and extends the available
services. Unlike Phase I's dramatic denouement, Phase II is a
series of events, a steady roll-out of new functionality over
the next several quarters. The elements of Phase II include but
are not limited to the following:
- Enterprise WebCalendar - Finally, a centralized, widely available tool that fits the
way we collaborate in a complex, multi-campus University environment.
A centralized calendaring tool will greatly facilitate our constant
need to collaborate and coordinate with our colleagues through
the UH community.
- White Pages (as opposed to yellow pages) - Modern e-mail clients have an
LDAPoption that makes e-mail address lookups readily available. In
the University setting it is necessary to consider FERPA requirements as well.
- Preferred E-mail Address Support - The modern student is likely to have already established an
on-line identity before joining the UH community. Preferred e-mail
address support will allow UH community members to update the
white pages and share their preferred e-mail address.
- First.Last Name Support - Those that prefer their email formatted as john.doe@hawaii.edu
will have that option, primarily on a first come, first serviced
basis.
- Secure Access - There are a variety of protocols underlying our use of e-mail,
logging into remote systems, transferring files, etc. Increasing
those protocols are being replaced by secured protocols. Secured
protocols encrypt your information so that intercepted packets
do not easily reveal their contents. We will be steadily moving
toward secured protocols and prohibiting the use of unsecured
protocols.
- Automation of Class Mailing Lists - Automatically establishing class mailing lists at the beginning
of each semester will facilitate instruction for Instructor who
include e-mail as a communication option.
- Palm Calendar Synchronization - Provides calendar synchronization with Personal Data Assistants
(PDAs).
- Enterprise AntiSpam Filtering - Subscription to antispam services provided by a reputable antispam
service will help reduce time and resources wasted on manually
removing junk mail.
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