Harvard-MIT Data Center

2 Scheduled HMDC Outages

Announcing HMDC Account Self Service

The Harvard-MIT Data Center (HMDC) is pleased to announce a new web interface for managing contact information and passwords associated with HMDC accounts: HMDC Account Self Service.

Please note that the way in which you change your HMDC account password might be changing. Periodic changes of HMDC account passwords are required by HMDC policy, and you will receive an email reminder sent to your contact address on record when your password approaches its expiration date.

The new HMDC Account Self Service web site enables you to update your contact information and password simultaneously for any of the following accounts you might have with HMDC:

• RCE (Research Computing Environment)
• CGIS (Windows desktop logins)
• E-mail (<@hmdc, @iq, @gov, @cgis.fas, @rwj, @wcfia, @cga, @medsoc, or @edlabs>.harvard.edu domains)

Previously, managing passwords and contact information for these three types of accounts hosted at HMDC required that you use a separate application for each. Our hope is that by consolidating the password change interfaces, we can simplify password management, eliminate confusion arising from mismatched passwords, and provide a simpler method of updating contact information for greater accuracy.

Please note that HMDC follows industry and University standard IT security procedures and NEVER asks for your password in email. If you receive any of the following types of communication, please do not respond but immediately forward it to HMDC Support at <support@help.hmdc.harvard.edu>:

• E-mail that claims to be from HMDC Support and asking for your password
• E-mail that directs you to enter your HMDC account password on a non-HMDC web site
• E-mail that in any way references your HMDC account with a suspicious premise

If you have any questions about what constitutes official HMDC policies
and web sites, please refer to the HMDC Support web site for the latest
information:
  <http://support.hmdc.harvard.edu/>

For detailed instructions on using the new HMDC Account Self Service web
site, please refer to the following web page:
  <http://support.hmdc.harvard.edu/kb-1130/how_do_i_change_my_password>

If you have any questions or concerns regarding this change, please
contact HMDC Support:
  <support@help.hmdc.harvard.edu>

Scheduled Central Fileserver Outage

HMDC Core Services will be performing hardware and software maintenance on the central HMDC fileserver on Wednesday, December 2, 2009 (our regularly scheduled maintenance window). The maintenance will provide for improved reliability.

Nearly all HMDC-hosted networked services will experience a service outage during this time, including:

• E-Mail (all e-mail services including sending and receiving mail through HMDC, Webmail, etc.)
• Web (all HMDC hosted websites)
• Windows workstation login authentication (CGIS account logins)
• Mapped network drives / CIFS shares
• Research Computing Environment (RCE)
• Cluster Resources (RCE)
• Dataverse Network (DVN)
• Linux shell accounts
• CVS repositories
• SFTP
• FTP
• Research Databases (i.e. those on db-2.hmdc)

This service outage may last for up to 2 hours, during which time services will be unresponsive or unavailable. Email messages received by HMDC during this time will be requeued for later delivery.

This service outage will occur on Wednesday, December 2, 2009, between 7:00PM and 9:00PM.