Managed Workstation Services News
July 31, 2017
Migration update
99.9% of all managed workstations have been migrated to the NETID domain, and today we’ll be removing the 5 remaining workstations still in the Nebula2 domain. We greatly appreciate your partnership in both the user and computer migrations over the past couple years. Your patience while we completed this large undertaking has been amazing. I’m also happy to report that new computers can be enabled for Managed Workstation services without the Nebula2 domain. https://it.uw.edu/wares/mws/hardware/adding-computer/ documents the steps needed to do that—it’s available today. In a nutshell, you now can “claim” your computer before joining it to the domain. If you...
July 7, 2017
Workstation migration to NetID domain update
Approximately 2,428 managed workstations, or about 78%, have been migrated from the nebula2 domain to the NetID domain. We will continue to attempt to migrate every managed workstation at 5:00 pm daily. We are still unable to offer a self-service option for workstation migrations at this time. The technical issues that may be encountered are unlikely to lead to a positive experience. What’s Next: Migration are still taking place at 12:00 pm (noon) and 5:00 pm Monday - Friday for any non-migrated workstation. We encourage customers to send us a migration request via help@uw.edu with “MWS Migration” in the subject...
June 19, 2017
Workstation migration update
Approximately 2200 managed workstations, or about 66%, have been migrated. Every non-migrated managed workstation has been a candidate for nightly migration and has been attempted at least 3 times. At any given point only 75% of managed workstations are manageable over the network, so customers will need to work with us for further progress to occur. If you have questions about the workstation migration, a FAQ is available and updated regularly. There were a number of problems over the last 3 weeks, some with our workstation migration approach, others related to unanticipated file service issues. We’re sorry for any inconveniences...
May 17, 2017
Workstation migration FAQ
This page has frequently asked questions about the workstation migration from Nebula2 to the NETID domain. Index of questions: Does my managed workstation need to be migrated? My computer was scheduled to be migrated, but wasn’t. When will it be migrated to the NetID domain? How do I find my computer name? How do I know if my computer was migrated to the NetID domain? How will I Remote Desktop Connect to my computer after it has been migrated? What about managed workstations that are NOT physically on campus? What do you mean by ‘on the UW network’? Is it...
May 17, 2017
Workstation migration – user notice
Managed Workstation is migrating workstations from the Nebula2 domain to the NETID domain. The impact to you is very low. Please ensure your managed workstation is on the UW network during the noted period. What and When: Beginning Monday, May 22nd at 5pm, and every night through Friday, June 2nd, we will attempt to automatically migrate managed workstations to the NETID domain. Any given managed workstation will be scheduled for one night during this period, as documented at https://it.uw.edu/wares/nebula/news/migration/schedule/. Computers which are unavailable will be retried on every successive night during this period until successfully migrated. There are two noticeable impacts of...
May 15, 2017
Computer renames happening 5/17
A notification like the following one was sent to the primary user, last user, and department contacts for the ~380 computers with a name that included an underscore character (_). ----------- You are listed as a contact for the Managed Workstation (Nebula) department MAA. The computers listed below all have the underscore character ("_") in their name, which is no longer permitted in the name of Managed Workstation computers. This Wednesday, May 17, at 5pm we will be automatically renaming these computers to remove the underscore character from the computer's name. In most cases, the process will simply remove the...
May 15, 2017
Migrating workstations to the NETID domain
Managed Workstation is migrating workstations from the Nebula2 domain to the NETID domain. What and When: Beginning Monday, May 22nd at 5pm, and every night through Friday June 2nd, we will attempt to automatically migrate a set of managed workstations to the NETID domain. Any given managed workstation will be scheduled for one night during this period, and we will publish the schedule next week. There are two user impacts of this work: -computers that are being migrated will be rebooted, with a user visible 5 minute warning message when the migration agent is ready to initiate the...
May 10, 2017
Office 2007 End of Life (EOL)
Office 2007 (along with Vista) will got its last security updates in April 2017. What and When: Office 2007 reached its end of support lifecycle on 4/11/2017. What does this mean? This means there will be no new security updates, non-security updates, free or paid assisted support options. Customers who are using Office 2007 products and services should move to Office 2016. See our Operating System lifecycle and support page for additional info. What You Need to Do: If you have a computer running Office 2007, we recommend you upgrade to Office 2016. If your department wants us to automatically remove Office...
April 17, 2017
Disabling SMBv1
We are disabling SMBv1 (a file service protocol) on all Managed Workstations What and When We are disabling SMBv1, which is a file service protocol used by Windows, on all Managed Workstations. The change is going out starting now, but it will not take effect until the next time each computer is rebooted. More Info As you may have seen from media reports over the weekend, several vulnerabilities in Windows were reported on Friday. These reports were mostly overblown, as Microsoft had already patched most of these vulnerabilities, and basic security configurations would block or mitigate the remaining ones. SMBv1,...
April 2, 2017
Planned work on 4/2 for home and group directories
A service outage is planned for all Managed Workstation home (H:) and group (I:\groups) directories. What and When: On Sunday, April 2, 2017, all Managed Workstation home (H:) and group (I:\groups) directories will be unavailable from 8am to 9am, for planned maintenance. More info: This work is required to switch the underlying authentication mechanisms for the file servers that provide the home and group directories as part of the migration to the NETID domain. During this work, there will be no access to files and folders in both user home directories (H:) and group directories (i:\groups). If you have questions...