LTS Maintenance Sprint 2 (Winter 2021)

Maintenance Sprint 2 (2/23/2021 - 3/12/2021) Recap

In the Fall of 2020, LTS established a practice of quarterly maintenance sprints, which are dedicated work cycles with a goal to reduce technical debt across the Library service portfolio. We completed LTS Maintenance Sprint 2 on Friday 3/12/21. The focus of this sprint was to accommodate service retirements, address security vulnerabilities, and implement system software patches and version updates. The 3-week work cycle had a very ambitious scope; please see below, at a summary level, the work that was addressed during the sprint. The items still in progress will continue to be moved forward until resolved. 

Completed Work

  • All LTS production applications have been updated to be compatible with updates to HUIT’s CloudShield firewall security service. HUIT changed IP addresses for services and LTS updated the necessary registrations.
  • DASH, Alma, and DRS have been remediated to accommodate the new version of HUIT’s Personnel Directory Service. The old service will be retired on 3/31/21.
  • LibraryCloud, ArchivesSpace, DRS, NRS, Colonial North America, CURIOSity, Harvard Digital Collections, and Emily Dickinson Archive have been updated to work with the newest version of Solr (an enterprise search server), 8.1.1. This new version of Solr contains important security updates and technical feature improvements. 
  • Electronic theses and dissertations (ETDs) remaining in the legacy ETDs@Harvard service (Vireo) have been processed and loaded to DASH and ProQuest Dissertations & Theses. This completes the work to move older, backlogged ETDs to the Library’s repository and discovery services.
  • DRS Web Admin’s custom access management solution has been replaced with HUIT’s centrally-provided authentication solution. Changes will take effect when HUIT sets up the necessary Grouper security groups.
  • Improvements and bug fixes have been made to the conversion of JSTOR Forum records into Harvard systems, including adding support for JSTOR Forum "part of"/"larger context for" relationship terms, correct mapping of titles, correct conversion of item record IDs, and a fix to mapping of image type to work type. 
  • Library.Harvard.edu has been updated to improve the accuracy of assistive technology experiences, expand profile role options for library staff, improve images displayed via social media cards, enhance the featured media content component for page authors to include links and better formatting, and to bring a number of application packages supporting the operation of the site up to date, reducing the number of vulnerabilities by 98%.
  • EAS/Electronic Archiving Service’s custom access management solution has been replaced with HUIT’s centrally-provided authentication solution. The system infrastructure has been updated to upgrade underlying system software and to move EAS into a Docker container to enhance security and ease of maintenance.
  • The Policy Admin application’s Development and QA environments have been refreshed and made available after their earlier move from a retired on-campus server to the cloud.

In-progress work

  • Vireo (the retired legacy software behind ETDs@Harvard) will be removed from LTS servers once a final data export has been accepted by stakeholders.
  • Inscriptio (the study carrel reservation system) will be relocated to a new server to enhance security.
  • ArchivesSpace will be upgraded to the latest version, 2.8.1. In addition, the code, database, and system software will be contained in a Docker container and the many Harvard-specific plugins will be normalized, all for future ease of technical service management.
  • Colonial North America’s infrastructure was updated to move the service into a Docker container. The work for the development servers is complete and moving the QA and Production environments are in-progress. This work will make it easier to manage the service in a secure and modern fashion.
  • A new release of DASH is in progress, in collaboration with our technology partner Atmire. Details about the improvements in this version will be shared with the broader community when the upgrade is complete.