"Number of users exceeded." New semester, same ISIS crisis.
As students scramble to solidify their schedules for the next four months, many are encountering the problems that typically arise with ISIS, even though the University updated the system this year.
According to Don Reynard, director of applications and data services for ITC, the main problem is the heavy volume of students trying to access ISIS during the first week of classes.
"It's simply a volume issue that we deal with right now," he said.
First-year College student Whitney Roper said she couldn't access ISIS for two days.
"I probably tried like three times at three different times each day," she said.
Most of the problems occurred Wednesday when ISIS traffic was at its heaviest. There were, however, two program interruptions prior to the first day of classes, Reynard said.
Monday, some students reported having trouble accessing their VISTAA reports. Technicians worked with the ISIS database vendor, and the problem was resolved the next day, Reynard said.
Tuesday, Reynard said the database log file filled up, which means that the number of ISIS transactions exceeded maximum capacity. Consequently, ISIS shut down for 15 minutes. In order to cater to the large volume of users, the size of the database log file was eventually tripled, Reynard said.
Fourth-year College student John Benton said he needed to find out the times and locations of his classes but couldn't log onto ISIS all day Tuesday. He called the registrar's office and was told they had to shut down ISIS to reboot the system.
Benton said he was frustrated by the fact that the registrar was "leaving people out in the cold" and "not leaving people with many options."
He finally was able to access ISIS early Wednesday morning.
Reynard attributed the ISIS glitches to the large number of students trying to complete final registration at the last minute.
"All students know they can start doing final registration much earlier than the last few days," he said. "But we are 900 students ahead of where we were last year at this time."
He added that once a student successfully logs on, there are few problems with ISIS coming to a standstill.
While a high volume of users continues to be a lingering problem, several improvements have been made to ISIS, according to Reynard. The model machine was replaced over the summer and now allows for 20 percent more operating capacity than the old machine.
Additionally, ISIS technicians now are using new versions of the operating system and database software.
"All of those have shown performance improvements, but these five days are our largest transaction volume times of the year," Reynard said.
The machine constantly stays at 100 percent capacity during the first week of the semester and runs at less than 30 percent throughout the rest of the year, he added.
Some students are more frustrated by their ISIS troubles than others.
"It's not a huge deal, but it's just kind of frustrating because you want to have everything organized for your first week," Roper said.
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