Message-ID: <12536904.1075852423491.JavaMail.evans@thyme>
Date: Mon, 24 Sep 2001 13:25:05 -0700 (PDT)
From: 40enron@enron.com
Subject: Outlook Communication
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Over the past few weeks, we have experienced significant issues with our em=
ail environment that have caused business interruptions and frustration for=
 Outlook users.  The purpose of this e-mail is to outline the issues that w=
e have encountered and what we are doing to resolve the issues.=20
?=09During the last week of August, we encountered a bug in Microsoft's Exc=
hange Server -- the mail server that is used by Outlook clients.  This bug,=
 which impacted approximately 3,000 users, delayed mail delivery for the be=
tter part of a day.  At that time, we applied a fix from Microsoft which ap=
pears to have resolved the problem.  We have carefully monitored the Exchan=
ge servers for four weeks, and have not seen a re-occurrence of the bug.
?=09Also during the last week of August, another Exchange Server experience=
d database corruption issues -- again, this impacted approximately 3,000 Ou=
tlook users.  To resolve this, we moved the 3,000 users to different Exchan=
ge servers and made several hardware/software upgrades to the affected serv=
er.  We have not yet returned the repaired server to full production use --=
 we are closely monitoring it to ensure that there are no more problems wit=
h the server.  While this event did not cause e-mail outages during the bus=
iness week, we had to do maintenance on the server during the evenings on W=
ednesday, Thursday, and Friday, and throughout the Labor day weekend to mov=
e users to different servers.  During these evenings and weekend, the impac=
ted users could not access their e-mail.
?=09During the last three weeks, there have been a number of new and danger=
ous viruses on the internet.  We have a multi-layered defense against virus=
es that include virus scanning software on servers and desktops.  All mail =
is scanned on the Exchange servers and all files are scanned on the desktop=
s.  During the last few weeks, we have had to apply numerous virus scanning=
 updates to the Exchange servers - sometimes even several updates per day. =
 The result is that when new virus scanning updates arrive, the performance=
 of the Exchange servers diminishes for several hours while the anti-virus =
product rescans every message in every mailbox.  This is unfortunate, but w=
e believe necessary to prevent viruses from causing outages in the Enron co=
mputing environment and threaten our revenue generating systems.  At this t=
ime, we are working with the vendor to arrive at a technical solution that =
will speed up the virus scanning process.  We have made some progress as th=
e performance has improved during virus scans, however, it can continue to =
get better.
There is no question that the email issues we have encountered over the las=
t few weeks are unacceptable.  We are continuing to monitor and improve the=
 overall performance to ensure that we substantially reduce the outages and=
 meet Enron's business needs and expectations.

Enron Global Technology