EWS Linux Home Directory Server Migration - COMPLETED - October 26, 2013

The migration of Linux home directories to new file servers successfully completed by 8am on Saturday, October 26 as scheduled. The remote access servers were back in service by shortly after 8am and all Linux labs will be open for their normally scheduled hours.  Details about the migration and issues of which to be aware:

• Linux home directories were only migrated for users with at least 5 minutes of recorded Linux client usage as of October 13.  This was necessary in order to complete the migration of active users in time to open the labs as scheduled this morning.   Anyone who was not migrated and requires assistance, please email ews [at] illinois.edu.  See below for how to access the old home directory contents on your own.
• Empty directories were created for users whose directories were not migrated.  Anyone missing a home directory, or having any issues with their new home directory. should email ews [at] illinois.edu or talk to one of the student workers on-duty in the labs.
• Read-only access to the home directories on the old file server is available through the path /ewshomeold/?/NetID where ? is the first letter of the NetID.
• The ews-restore command does not currently work due to its dependencies on the old file server.  It will be updated on Monday to work against the old home directories, primarily so that files moved from Linux to Windows during the October 12 home directory migration can still be recovered.  Originally the ability to do this was only going to be available through the end of October.  We are making the changes necessary to allow this functionality through the end of this semester.
• There may be some brief, unannounced outages for the next few days while we adjust some configuration parameters on the new file servers.  We will try and only make changes during off-hours but will do so during the day if necessary to ensure good performance of the new servers.
• Snapshots are not currently enabled on the new file servers and it will take the CITES TSM service awhile to do an initial backup of the new servers.  Please be cautious that no file recovery will likely be possible for at least a week.  One of the features of the old file system (ZFS) that actually did work well was snapshots.  The new servers are using XFS and we need to test the snapshots feature of it under Linux before enabling it.
• We are going to leave in place through the end of the weekend the workstations converted to standalone mode as a partial workaround.  They will be converted back to regular mode on Monday.
• We are working to verify that all Linux workstations have picked up the configuration changes necessary to mount the new home directories.  It is possible that a few did not pick up the changes and will need to be either rebooted or have manual reconfiguration work done to them.
• All non-user home directory shares (e.g. /home/class) are still using the old file server.  We are continuing to work on migrating this data off to new file servers with priority being given to /home/class.  We should be able to switch /home/class over yet this weekend.  It will be end of day Monday before all could be migrated.

Additional status updates will continue to be posted throughout the week to http://ews.linux.edu/performance and to https://it.engineering.illinois.edu/.