IT techs work to remedy myWSU

Technicians at Information Technology Services are still trying to determine what caused the myWSU site to crash on Monday… but they have some educated guesses.

“There is no way to replicate what happened, so it is impossible to know the exact cause and effect,” said Debby Lawson, director of operations and system services for ITS.

MyWSU experienced a kind of double-whammy on Monday, when approximately 18,000 Pullman students returned to class and flooded the myWSU website, which recently had expanded its services to include eInfoCenters and METRO. In addition to other myWSU services, students use the METRO system to add and drop classes. 

An IT staff meeting is scheduled for today to discus the site’s current status and other factors that may have caused the site’s failure, Lawson said. 

Lawson said the crash was primarily caused by user overload and the system’s inability to handle caching. The system’s memory management, or caching, had difficulty handling large volumes of users, she said. Since then, system settings have been adjusted and readjusted to handle the higher demands.

Lawson said the technicians also are working to remedy other ‘bugs’ they found in the system. 

The overload could have also been caused by user behavior, Lawson said. “On Monday, all the students wanted to add and drop classes at the same time,” she said. Problems arise when students get frustrated and start and stop the page or click the refresh button multiple times, she said.

Another issue, she noted, is that students can have multiple programs open at one time within the myWSU system, which may have added to the load.

The next step, Lawson said, is to apply patches suggested by program manufacturers.  However, myWSU is still in high demand by students and IT does not want to alter the system too quickly, she said.