Central IT
02/24/09 PRISM Communication
The PRISM 9 Upgrade is on track and moving forward. There continues to be a great deal of activity in preparation for the upgrade scheduled for July 2009. Here are a few of the highlights.
PRISM 9 Testing
The initial phase of the PRISM 9 testing is coming to a close at the end of February. This phase has primarily focused on validating the functionality in the new version. It is estimated that 75% of the functionality will have been tested and no issues have surfaced that would potentially delay the implementation date.
The PRISM Team is scheduled to perform another upgrade "pass" in the test environment beginning March 2 and finishing on March 16. The test team will resume testing once the upgrade pass is completed with the expectation that 100% of the functionality will have been validated prior to the production implementation.
Infrastructure Improvements
FASTAR, the vendor that maintains the servers and hardware for PRISM is in the process of redesigning its infrastructure to improve the performance and availability of the services. Previously, intermittent performance issues would arise when there was a high volume of activity. The redesign will alleviate these performance issues by installing additional servers and load balancing equipment to handle the peaks in activity. The PRISM 8.9 environment will be upgraded on Saturday, March 21 and Sunday, March 22. The PRISM Team is working with the vendor to coordinate an implementation date for the PRISM 9 environment.
Preparation for PRISM 9.0 Production
The PRISM Team successfully established the base environment that the PRISM 9 production upgrade will use for the final installation. The environment provides the framework and structure (similar to the foundation of a house) that the upgrade will use to install components, the application and the data. The PRISM Team worked closely with PeopleSoft Support to address a few issues that were encountered. The base environment is ready for the production implementation.
Communication Planning
The PRISM Team has been working with the Registrar's Office, the Central Business Office and the Financial Aid Office to determine the most effective mechanism for users to report issues during the production implementation. Temporary mailboxes will be created and communicated to campuses so our partners can report "upgrade specific" issues during the production implementation. The Central IT Service Center will also serve as a central point of contact if campus partners need to communicate via telephone. More details will be shared as we move closer to the implementation date.