08/04/09 - Blackboard Vista migration

MCLA Community,

Our Blackboard Vista service is hosted by the University of Massachusetts. They will be migrating services, including our Blackboard Vista courseware, to new hardware over August 7th and 8th. Service will be suspended at 9 PM on the 7th and should return by noon on the 8th. No software upgrades or changes are planned as part of this migration.

The objective of the migration is to improve performance and reduce the possibility of downtime in the event of a hardware failure. Similar to the work we recently completed here. The goal is that users will see no changes in either their content or in the menus and structure of Vista itself. Computer Support Services and Academic Technology have been working together to verify that outcome to the extent that we can in advance of the actual migration. Users should understand that while planning and testing has been going on for some time, this is a complicated process and there may stilll be some bits to straighten out once service is restored.

We regret any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your understanding.

-Mark Berman