Tufts Computing and Communication Services (TCCS) shut down e-mail services to all University faculty and staff Saturday afternoon in a "preemptive" attempt to save staff messages, according to Director of University IT Infrastructure Lesley Tolman.
The redundant disks that support the Granite server, which holds the mailboxes of the faculty and staff, failed. In order to prevent the loss of any e-mail, TCCS shut Granite down and performed a full system backup.
"We knew the e-mail was going to be in trouble, so we made a conscious decision to make a backup of messages to faculty and staff," Tolman said. "We won't be losing anybody's messages, and that's the bottom line."
Undelivered messages will also reach their destinations, although it may "take some time," she said.
The shutdown did not affect student e-mail because it is held on a different server.
TCCS replaced the defective disks on yesterday. Although it has yet to complete the restoring process, which takes between 12 and 15 hours according to Tolman, service for staff and faculty should be back "by the start of business Monday," she said.
