Banner in the Ellucian Cloud

Banner is currently hosted at University Shared Services Enterprise (USSE) on the Oregon State University campus.

Eastern Oregon University, Oregon Tech, Southern Oregon University, and Western Oregon University have all made the decision to move to the Ellucian Cloud (EC).  Ellucian is the company that owns Banner.

EC is hosted on Amazon Web Services (AWS).  WOU’s instance of Banner will be hosted on an Oregon AWS site.

Why move Banner to another hosting site?

  • Oracle and Ellucian are no longer supporting Banner 8, effective December 30, 2018.  EC resources are sufficient to successfully implement the Banner 9 infrastructure that is required to meet the deadline.  (more on Banner 9 in a future post)
  • EC provides us with a Disaster Recovery plan that includes failover to one of two other Oregon AWS sites.  If all three Oregon AWS sites are inoperable, then WOU Banner will be failed over to one of the Virginia AWS sites.

When will WOU go production on EC?

  • Access to Banner at USSE will be terminated at 5:00pm on Friday, February 2, 2018 and WOU will be live on Banner at EC at 7:00am on Monday, February 5, 2018.

How will I access Banner on EC?

  • Both WolfWeb and Banner INB will continue to be accessed though the Portal.  UCS will change the links to each system during the go-live weekend.
  • WolfWeb can be accessed from any browser, while Banner INB requires Internet Explorer (IE) or Firefox ESR (extended support release)
  • In an effort to strengthen security, off campus access to Banner INB will be available only through VDI.  (https://wouvdi.wou.edu)  There will be no changes to off-campus access to WolfWeb.
  • If you have shortcuts saved to your browser, those will no longer work, post migration weekend.

How is the migration going?

  • The migration effort includes modifying many integrations and job submission server parameters.  A team of technical and functional staff have been working with Ellucian on the cloud migration project since the third week of August.  All this effort is coming together and we expect a successful transition.

Schedule for functional testers:

  • Another test export of both Degree Works and the Banner database will occur on December 19, 2017.  Ellucian will have the refresh ready for us the following morning, December 20, 2017.
  • The final test export will be performed January 12, 2018.  Ellucian will have refresh completed the following morning, January 13, 2018.
  • A code freeze will occur on January 12, 2018 and will be in effect until go-live weekend.

Schedule for go-live weekend:

  • Friday, February 2, 2018 at 5:00pm, Banner will become unavailable.
  • Friday, February 2, 2018 at 5:30pm, Degree Works exported and sent to Ellucian Cloud for import
  • Friday, February 2, 2018 at 7:30pm, Banner exported and sent to Ellucian Cloud for import
  • Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 9:00am, UCS technical team work through checklist and perform initial testing.
  • Saturday, February 3, 2018 at 1:00pm, Functional team begins their testing and UCS technical resolve any outstanding issues.
  • Sunday, February 4, 2018 at 9:00am, Functional and technical teams complete outstanding issues.
  • Monday, February 5, 2018 at 7:00am, Banner production is available in the Ellucian Cloud

Where do I find additional information for Banner Cloud?

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