University Park, Pa. — Information Technology Services (ITS) will perform a major upgrade to the systems that support Penn State Access Account Storage Space (PASS) services beginning at the close of business on July 3 and ending at approximately 7 a.m. Monday, July 7.
During this time, PASS systems and services will be migrated in stages to a new file system technology that will provide for faster and more resilient performance. As a result, several PASS services and tools will be disabled and/or interrupted -- however, migration facilitators will strive for as little disruption of service to the Penn State community as possible, while the changes are being implemented. Penn State has planned the migration effort to take place in early July, so that a fully upgraded and more reliable PASS service will be in place in time for the fall semester.
The migration schedule will begin at 5 p.m. Thursday, July 3, at which time the current PASS system will be suspended from service and no longer available for use. New PASS accounts will not be added/created again until 7 a.m. Tuesday, July 8, once the new system is in place. In addition, all tools and methods for accessing PASS will be disabled, and all services that use PASS will default to read-only mode.
This means that any personal, course or departmental Web space will be available for viewing only via a Web browser, but will not be available for editing again until 7 a.m. July 7. It should be noted that some brief interruptions of read-only service may be experienced during the regularly scheduled maintenance window on the dates noted above.
For users who need to provide updated content to their respective PASS spaces by July 7, it is recommended that they download local copies of their work prior to July 3. This way, they will be able to update and save content locally, and then upload files once the migration is fully complete on July 7.
A full listing of services affected by this extended maintenance will be available via http://its.psu.edu/PASS/. Documentation is in the ITS Knowledge Base http://kb.its.psu.edu/ and training materials are available via the ITS Training Services Web site at http://its.psu.edu/training/. Inquiries and requests for assistance should be directed to ITS Help Desk staff at helpdesk@psu.edu.