A hardware failure that occurred on Wednesday, December 29, at 5:30 a.m. prevented students from accessing their e-mail for more than five hours during the day, until the problem was resolved at 11:00 a.m., said Bob Bartlett, director of Networking Services and Information Technologies (NSIT).

NSIT technicians traced the failure to Plaisance, the machine server where user mailboxes are stored. Once the error was detected, NSIT contacted engineers from Sun Microsystems who, after running a system check, traced the failures to two systems boards and an I/O board. The engineers identified two defective memory modules and replaced them, which solved the problem.

Bartlett added that NSIT has purchased a new mail system to replace the current one. “[The system] is currently undergoing load testing to ensure that it can handle the demands of our environment,” he said. “It has already passed the hardware failure tests,” he said.