Data Migration Project

Tomorrow we will begin a project to move the entire body of NLA Digital data from our current fabric attached storage system (FAS) to a new storage area network (SAN). This will involve moving approximately 2TB of data from one set of drives to another. We will be moving the data in blocks to make the work more manageable, and expect the entire project to take as much as two weeks.

The data migration has been designed to have very little or no impact to our clients. During the migration window, users may experience a slight degradation in performance as we port the existing system onto the new hardware. It's hard to quantify exactly what this degradation will be until we start the process, but we will be monitoring the system and we are prepared to abort the process if necessary.

The new SAN will provide us with not only enough expansion to accommodate growth for the next 36 months (and possibly beyond), but should also provide improved performance to our existing services.

We will post updated information to the blog as the project moves along.

Trinity Mirror Mainbook failure

Trinity Mirror are still experiencing server problems and have failed to deliver the Daily Mirror files, so far. They have ordered a new server and hope to have the problem fixed by the weekend. In the meantime everything is being done manually and we can expect delays.

I will keep you updated if and when we receive the files. Please be assured that our processors are ready and waiting to process the content as soon as it comes in.

Trinity Mirror server problems

Trinity Mirror’s server went down on Friday evening, severely impacting their delivery of files to the NLA. They have yet to resolve the problem which means that they are manually sending us files each evening. This manual process is rather time consuming and has meant that they sometimes fail to deliver before the 1am, 1^st edition deadline.

Please be assured that we are doing everything we can to get Trinity Mirror content into our database. Our production team are meeting with their IT team this morning to discuss resolution times.

We will keep you updated as progress is made.

FTP Services

Since Monday (29 Jan) you may have experienced some problems with the eClips FTP service. Specifically, you may have had trouble when trying to execute directory listings. This problem was caused by the application of an upgrade to our Globalscape Secure FTP Server software where we moved from v3.2 to  v3.3.

The v3.3 upgrade resolved a documented issue with the Globalscape software that caused stability issues under certain circumstances. While v3.3 seems to have solved that issue, it has created others.

We have formally logged the issue with Globalscape and have rolled back to v3.2 for the time being. Rolling back to v3.2 shouldn't have any adverse impact for PCAs using eClips.

This has only affected a very small number of clients under very special circumstances and we're sorry for any inconvenience it may have caused.

An update will be posted when more information becomes available.

Clippings Quality

You may have noticed that there are a higher number of clips that need re-processing after the weekend. This is due to a reccurring issue on Thursday/Friday night that disrupted our ability to post process articles (e.g. incorrect articles that need to be manually reprocessed).  We are currently working through a backlog of articles and correcting the problems so if you come across any, please report them in the normal way.  We are still investigating the issue that caused the problem in the first place, and as soon as we identify the cause we will let you know.
 
We are also seeing a small number of instances where articles are dropping random text elements meaning that articles are displaying with some words and/or text missing.  Our investigations have found that this appears to only be an issue in some versions of Acrobat Reader earlier than Version 8. We are still testing and have not ruled out that this may be an issue with our software.  We will keep you advised of the situation.
 
Please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused and if you wish to discuss this further then please do not hesitate to contact us.