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UMB E-Mail Project
Next Phases
July 2003

Problem: Campus e-mail resources require updating to provide students, faculty, and staff with improved access, features, and functionality

Goal/ Objectives:  To provide faster, more contemporary and secure e-mail access to students, faculty, and staff across the campus.

  • UMB schools and organizations are planning to migrate from Exchange 5.5 running on Windows NT servers to Exchange 2000 or Exchange 2003 running on Windows 2000 servers; this is necessary as Microsoft has announced End of Life Dates for Windows (01/01/05) NT and Exchange 5.5 (12/31/03)
  • The Schools of Pharmacy and Social Work are moving from Novell Netware environments running GroupWise and managed by school staff to CITS managed and hosted Windows 2000 servers running Microsoft Exchange
  • OEA is moving from in-house managed e-mail to CITS managed and hosted e-mail
  • The student e-mail system (UMnet) is in need of updating or replacement in order to improve response time, functionality, security, and provide a more contemporary user interface; the web access component of UMnet (Webmail) is at End of Life and requires replacement

Current State:  Over the last year, CITS worked closely with campus e-mail administrators to build a hybrid e-mail system that connected the disparate e-mails servers on campus. Each school, the hospital, UPI, and administrative units participated in the project that resulted in increased functionality to the user community. Many e-mail servers on campus will require migration to newer servers and versions of software; close coordination and planning will have to occur to retain the current level of functionality (e.g. GAL, free/busy searches, calendaring, etc).

The Schools of Pharmacy and Social Work are running Novell Netware/Groupwise on in-house managed servers and plan to migrate to Windows 2000/Exchange 2000 managed centrally by CITS. The Office of External Affairs plans on migrating their users to the campus CITS Exchange server.

The student e-mail system (UMnet) was experiencing performance problems; short-term improvements were implemented by doubling the number of CPUs and memory on the system. The system is utilizing an End of Life web interface and the server requires replacement in order to provide increased security and functionality.

Schedule:
Spring/Summer 2003

School of Pharmacy

  • Created an Active Directory presence in the campus root domain
  • Planned and began migration of RX Novell Netware servers to Windows 2000 and Active Directory
  • Investigated, tested, and implemented a migration plan for RX GroupWise users to Microsoft Exchange 2000
  • Prepared the CITS campus Exchange 2000 server for account hosting of RX users (e.g. created an information store, organizational units, and delegation of administration tasks)

 Social Work

  • Met to discuss possible hosting of Social Work e-mail accounts on the CITS campus Exchange 2000 server
  • Social Work wants to deploy Outlook Web Access only, requiring the migration to begin after CITS upgrades to Exchange 2003; this may also require the deployment of multiple front end IIS servers

 OEA

  • Met with OEA staff in preparation of moving their services to Active Directory and hosting their e-mail users on the CITS campus Exchange 2000 server
  • OEA ordered hardware; current plans are to perform migration and hosting by December 2003

Summer/Fall 2003

UMnet

  • Sized and ordered a new enterprise class server (SUN V880) to serve as the replacement for UMnet
  • Researched and identified several new software products (web clients) that are potential candidates to replace Webmail
  • Currently identifying all current processes (back end & front end) that require modification when services/users are migrated to new server
  • Install, configure, and test back end and front end servers
  • Procure and install new web front end software
  • Engage schools and Assistance and Service Center to test new UMnet server functionality and plan on how to manage the necessary changes that users will experience
  • Migrate existing users, services, and processes to new servers; deploy new environment

CITS Campus Exchange Server Cluster

  • Upgrade the CITS campus Exchange 2000 cluster hardware to provide increased redundancy, performance, and storage capability
  • Install SAN, switches and associated fiber connections
  • Install additional memory and cpus
  • Migrate data to new environment
  • Implement new tape storage capabilities

Fall/Winter 2003-2004

School and Departmental e-mail

  • Complete installation of upgraded CITS e-mail server and SAN infrastructure
  • Migrate Pharmacy staff and faculty users from the RX Groupwise servers to the CITS campus Exchange 2000 server; train users in the new technology
  • Migrate OEA staff to CITS campus Exchange server
  • Depending on software version availability/deployment, migrate Social Work faculty and staff to CITS campus Exchange server
  • Work with other schools and administrative units as they plan their migration and methodology for migrating from Windows NT/Exchange 5.5 to Windows 2000 and Exchange 2000/2003