One of Information Technology and Communication Office's four e-mail servers failed early yesterday morning, preventing many students from accessing their e-mail accounts between 5:30 a.m. and 1:30 p.m.
All students whose e-mail addresses begin with the letters d, e, k, q, r, u and w were denied access to their accounts during that time because the central mail server node which handles those letters failed.
ITC Network Systems Manager Robin Ruggaber attributed the failure to an aged component malfunctioning on the central mail service's oldest server.
The central mail service is comprised of a cluster of four machines. Each machine is a back end server or node which handles different letters of the alphabet for the first letter of e-mail addresses.
Second-year College student Kate Hamel, whose e-mail begins with the letter "k," said she was frustrated when she could not access her e-mail after classes yesterday.
"There was nothing vital that I couldn't get to, but I'm annoyed because this just seems to be a long string of events with ITC," Hamel said.
Ruggaber confirmed this was not the first hardware failure the central mail service has experienced. A similar incident occurred this summer due to the failure of another aged part.
In both the instances, ITC network programmers restored mail service using spare equipment within a matter of hours.
Under its hardware maintenance contract, the server's vendor will replace the broken part for the old system as soon as possible.
In the long run, however, ITC officials said they hope to replace the aging servers completely.
"All the equipment is aging on the central mail service which is why ITC is making efforts to replace it," Ruggaber said.
She added that it is hard to say for certain how old the servers are because different components can be replaced or upgraded at different times.
Jim Jokl, ITC director of communications and systems, said the spring ITC budget provides funds for a new server.
"[The new server] will have more capacity and reliability, which is what we really need," he said.
Jokl added that ITC will replace the servers as the budget allows, beginning with the next oldest.
"We're always asking for more storage space and replacement of equipment," Ruggaber said.
In an incident unrelated to the e-mail server's hardware failure, some students also experienced a delay in mail service yesterday.
ITC employees were installing hardware for an anti-spam solution for e-mail, but the server failure distracted them from their task at hand. This interruption caused a delay in some mail delivery but was corrected by 10 a.m.
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