Jump to content

Tom Grozev

Members
  • Posts

    139
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    14

Everything posted by Tom Grozev

  1. The IT team has been working hard in the background to bring a new support system to the community. Using the power of the well known ticketing process, you are now able to open tickets for issues through https://helpdesk.vatpac.org From today, all issues should now be created as a ticket in the help desk system instead of emailing a particular department. This process will allow for a faster response to queries and a log of all tickets. You can also email [email protected] and a ticket will be automatically created. Issues with access, e.g. Discord Access, should be created as a ticket in the help desk. The previous feedback system will stay live for the next week, after that time it will be closed in favor of help desk. Adam Hammond has spent a lot of time working on this so let's thank him for his hard work on getting this going.
  2. Recently, Sam Wilson informed me that due to outside commitments he has decided to step down from the role of Technology Systems and Support Manager. I thank him for his time in the role and wish him luck in the future. I am quite happy to say that Adam Hammond has been appointed the role of Systems and Support manager. Adam brings extensive experience from industry and will be able to really excel in the role. He will be looking at managing some of the systems as well as implementing some new platforms. Please join me in congratulating Adam on his new role.
  3. The long awaited transfer of resources to AWS has now been completed. All VATPAC services are now fully running on AWS services. While there were a lot of moving parts involved and a significant amount of changes occurred behind the scenes, a brief overview of the important and noteworthy changes are mentioned in this post. What the changes bring The move to AWS improves the security, privacy and reliability of VATPAC's services. Services have been observed to perform better than before and after a trail with some services, it was deemed that the remaining services will be moved. AWS reduces the cost of maintaining VATPAC services and allows for an improved experience for the wider membership. Along with the migration of services, other changes were made for an overall service upgrade, some of which are listed below. VATPAC CDN To unify the use of static resources, these are now stored on a centralized Content Delivery Network (CDN). The CDN provides global delivery and high speed file serving to all VATPAC services. Forums Changes The VATPAC forums now has a new look and feel to it! The redesign is cursory of @Callum Strawbridge who put a significant effort in to customize the look of the forums for a more modern design. The forums now uploads all images and attachments to the VATPAC CDN, improving the access and performance of static resource handling. New Homepage To match the new design of the forums a new homepage is now released. The homepage, like the forums theme change, is a fresh new look that will better serve the membership. A big thanks to @Callum Strawbridge and @Zach Biesse-Fitton for their huge roles in the customization of the pages. Academy The training academy got an update as well as a theme change the fitted better with the other design changes. The academy is now also using VATSIM Connect (SSOv2) to replace the old SSO. Core Core has been running on AWS for the past few months and has since been adjusted behind the scenes for improved performance. Homepage statistics The homepage statistics have temporarily been removed but will be returning in the next week. So don't worry they aren't gone for good. Ongoing issues With the significant change of services there are likely to be unforeseen issues that may arise, namely legacy links. When data was transferred, a big clean up of old files and links was carried out. This marks the first proper consolidation of VATPAC services in over 5 years. We have multiple backups of these files so if there are any broken links or missing files that were used externally (or even internally) that are found, please email [email protected] and it will be resolved as soon as possible. While we have done our best to minimize bugs, some bugs can be expected. If you are having any issues at all, please email me at [email protected] For all staff the files that were previously available for archive purposes, they will soon be available to any member of staff through the VATPAC Google Drive. Previous Service Issues During the process of transferring some services, unforeseen issues arose that affected the uptime of said services. Sometimes a service would go down without notice or an issue would arise that would prevent use of that service. I do apologize for the issues and from here on these issues should not occur again. Although in the process of bettering member experience, some things were not able to be fully tested until in production due to the nature of the transfer. I do hope that these changes will better everyone's experience while using VATPAC services and look forward to the possibilities it brings.
  4. It comes with great pleasure that today I announce the appointment of a new member to the IT team. Sam Wilson will be joining the IT team in the newly created role of Systems and Support manager. I have no doubt that his previous experience and enthusiasm for the VATPAC community will serve him well in his new role. Sam will be taking on the role of helping me in managing the VATPAC systems and creating a new structure within the VATPAC IT department (soon to be announced). Sam will also be the key guy for providing support to the community on any IT related issues. Until such time that he has settled into his new role and the new IT support system is in place, I do ask that all IT support requests continue to be sent to [email protected]. Please join me in congratulating Sam on his new role.
  5. Due to a discord server outage many discord servers are not available at the moment. The VATPAC discord is unfortunately one of them and may be unavailable for the next few hours. We will keep you updated as the situation develops. UPDATE: This seems to be resolved now.
  6. As we endeavor to improve the IT systems at VATPAC, we are upgrading a number of the systems. Although to achieve this, VATPAX needs to be taken offline while we upgrade some systems. VATPAX has been a system that was developed a few years ago now and has had band-aid fix after band-aid fix. It has come to a point where it uses substantial resources and only a few members of the community are using it regularly. This is not the end of VATPAX however, it will be redeveloped to serve the community in a better way overall. VATPAX will be taken offline on Sunday the 23rd of August.
  7. For the upcoming AIRAC2005, the brand new Auto Updater Client will be used. The client is developed by Peter Story and you can check out the details and download it from his post below in anticipation for the upcoming AIRAC.
  8. Recently I received a resignation letter from Liesel Downes from the role of IT Developer. Liesel is leaving the team due to personal commitments and through out the course of being an IT Developer, Liesel has made an enormous contribution to the team on various projects. We wish Liesel well with future endeavors and thank you for your service to VATPAC IT.
  9. One of the goals of the IT Department is to improve transparency in the platforms being developed and what and how personal data is stored. With this in mind, we are announcing the VATPAC profile. This page will be where you can go to find the data stored and used by VATPAC. Generally, this will generally be data sourced from VATSIM SSO but will expand in the future. https://profile.vatpac.org/ NOTE: This does not include forums or academy data. It is solely personal data from the core. If you would like to contribute, the code can be found on the VATPAC GitHub https://github.com/vatpac-it
  10. At the request of Dick Tucker VATOCE3: https://www.vatoce.net/documents/2019/Q1/VATOCE_Q1_Report.pdf
  11. The VATPAC IT team is hard at work on numerous projects and in an effort to increase transparency and community engagement we are opening up our projects to the community. This GitHub account houses various projects that are developed for the VATPAC community. We invite you to collaborate, make pull requests and raise issues to improve the quality of the systems on VATPAC. You can run the projects on your local machine with a connection to the Core for the time being but API keys will be implemented in the future to be able to access the Core locally outside VATPAC servers. In regards to security and privacy, only projects that do not involve any sensitive data are being published to the GitHub, i.e. frontend projects that integrate with the VATPAC Core and do not directly deal with any sensitive data. For that reason systems such as the VATPAC Core backend are not published to the public. You can access the VATPAC GitHub at https://github.com/vatpac-it.
  12. Over the past few days, the VATSIM Australia server had been experiencing issues and was intermittently unavailable. After a few modifications to how both the server and the VATPAC web server are managed, we believe to have resolved the issues. More specifically, the connection drops were purely to do with the connection between the server and the outside world. The bandwidth pipe had seemed to be overloaded by other traffic and in an effort to reduce the network traffic, the VATPAC TeamSpeak server is no longer running on the same server as the VATSIM Australia FSD server. Instead, the TeamSpeak server is running independently to these services. In regards to the future of TeamSpeak, the board is meeting in the near future to discuss VATPAC's voice communication services, including the results of the survey. Currently, the TeamSpeak is fully operational and all services are back to normal with a few quality and assurance additions in the background. If you continue to experience any issues, the rw2.vatpac.org voice server is the designated backup and will remain so in the case of any future mishaps. If you have any questions or are still having issues, please contact me at [email protected].
  13. **Update** If you are having issues with the voice servers please try connecting to rw2.vatpac.org.
  14. Over the past few days, VATSIM's Australia based server has been experiencing connection drops. These losses in connection are temporary and only last for about 10 or so seconds before regaining connection. Loss of connection only seems to be occurring once or twice per day at irregular intervals. We are aware of the cause of the issue but due to various constraints, we are forced to look into various alternative solutions. The services affected are as follows: VATSIM Australia Service (both pilot clients and controller clients) VATPAC voice servers (rw1.vatpac.org & rw3.vatpac.org) VATPAC TeamSpeak For the majority of the time, the Australian server will work just fine, if you are having troubles and are not able to connect please try connecting to rw2.vatpac.org as this should work. If you have any questions about this feel free to contact me at [email protected]
  15. Hello all, Please join me in congratulating @Elliot Parker, @Jamie Ashton, and @Peter Story who have just join the IT Development team. Each of these individuals possesses unique skills that they bring that will prove invaluable to the team.
  16. The VATPAC IT team has a long road ahead with various updates to current systems and new implementations planned. Due to the amount of work we are seeking interest from the community to join the IT team. Being apart of the VATPAC IT team allows you to expand your skill set with the opportunity to work on a diverse range of projects in varying areas in the interest of the betterment of the VATPAC IT systems. Reports to You will report directly to the VATPAC Director IT. Duties Include Assist in the development of web, desktop and back-end based applications that will ultimately enhance the VATPAC infrastructure. Liaise with the Director IT and/or Deputy Director IT with regards to current and future projects. Ensure that member privacy and platform security is the utmost concern when developing/maintaining systems. Ensure that any project and information not available to the general membership is held in strict confidence. Essential Criteria Include Be a member of good standing in VATSIM (do not have to currently be a member of VATPAC) Be able to work well in a team in a voluntary organisation Have good problem-solving skills and are able to 'think outside the box' A candidate applying for this position will preferably Hold at least 6 months membership of VATSIM Be able to provide an example/portfolio of previous work Have good knowledge in one or more of the following Web (HTML, CSS, JS) Backend (PHP, Ruby On Rails, NodeJS, Python) Angular CLI Window Applications (C++, C#, etc.) Support/Administration How to Apply Members interested in being considered for the role should apply by outlining their experience and suitability with links to any previous work. Applications should be sent via email to [email protected] APPLICATIONS ARE IN STRICTEST CONFIDENCE. Applications Close 11:59 pm, April 10th, 2019.
×
×
  • Create New...