By Adam De Lucia
A storage device in Washington, D.C. caused a hardware crash for the Blackboard system on Friday, leaving University students unable to access imformation on Blackboard.
The Blackboard Application Service Provider (ASP) is based in Washington, D.C., said Laurie Harvey, the director for Student Computing Services and Help Desk. The Blackboard ASP site communicates with Snapshot, a program maintained by the University, to deliver the Blackboard application to the University community.
Harvey said Snapshot sends secure transmissions of the latest student enrollments to Blackboard every night. Early Friday morning, the Blackboard ASP site experienced a storage device failure while updating enrollments.
“Class enrollments that went through prior to the communication breakdown were unaffected,” she said. “All other classes lost their Blackboard enrollment.”
The Blackboard ASP site delivers services to thousands of campuses worldwide. “Hofstra was affected along with many other schools,” she said.
It is estimated that 80 to 90 percent of University students were left without access to Blackboard from 3 a.m. until 1:30 p.m. After a failed second attempt to send data to Blackboard, the University realized “an alternate means” for secure transmission of information via a “private line,” Harvey said.
During the outage, approximately 25 calls were received between 9 a.m. and 10 a.m. alone, James Shuart, the manager of Student Computing Services, said.
Paul Carson, the University Blackboard facilitator, said Blackboard had similar problems in the past.
In September 2002, Blackboard collapsed because the system was built for fewer users than the number who actually received services, Carson said.
“Hofstra is a relatively small school,” he said. “The system collapsed as a result of Blackboard growth elsewhere. The problem is not Hofstra.”
One solution that may improve Blackboard reliability would be to move the Blackboard ASP to the University, he said.
A plan to house Blackboard hardware on campus is still in the “feasibility study stage,” Roy Roberti, the manager of systems, operations and technological services, said. “It is a significant effort.”
Roberti said cost-benefit analyses and technical ramifications to housing Blackboard on campus were issues that must be understood before moving the system.
Housing the hardware is an issue, he said.
“We must weigh the costs of each model against the benefits of where it should be housed,” Roberti said. Maintenance, man power and the cost of resources are other concerns.
He emphasized that the biggest obstacle would be gaining a full understanding of the system, he said.
“We have fewer techs, but diverse systems,” he said. Most University systems are not outsourced.
Roberti said benefits to housing Blackboard hardware on campus include elimination of dependency and increased control over system maintenance.