Webmail crashes for over 18 hours

School of Arts and Sciences Webmail crashed for the entire work day yesterday, hindering students and faculty during the last week of classes.

The server - which has gone down several times this year - was out of service from about midnight until 6 p.m. yesterday.

SAS Information Technology Director Ira Winston said the crash was the result of having a server that is both outdated and overloaded.

"It's an older system, and it failed," he said.

Winston added that the technology staff had been continuously trying to bring back the server since 1 a.m. yesterday but was unsuccessful due to various technical reasons.

Ramin Sedehi, SAS vice dean for finance and administration, sent an apology e-mail late last night to all Webmail users, writing that he is "very cognizant of the timing of this outage."

"These are intense days for our students and faculty - having the e-mail system out of service is just unacceptable," the e-mail added.

SAS has been trying to switch from Webmail to new servers run by either Microsoft or Google, but the process has remained behind schedule.

Winston said the school is now in legal talks with both companies and still hopes to make the switch by January.

He would not reveal which company Penn is leaning toward due to concerns about negotiations.

Yesterday's break-down - which Winston said was the longest in recent memory - is indicative of the problems Webmail has had handling the University's most widely used e-mail account.

Winston said he is confident that a switch to a newer server will prevent future crashes.

But with yesterday's mishap coming in the middle of one of students' busiest weeks of the semester, some were angered that another crash occurred.

College freshman Chris DiFeliciantonio said he was upset that the break-down stopped him from sending information about a research paper to his professor.

"It just seems kind of ridiculous that it crashed for a whole day," he said. "You never see Engineering [e-mail] crash, but this one seems to crash so often considering it services so many kids."

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