Service News & Tips

The university’s Research Data Center (RDC) is preparing to install a new HPC cluster in fall 2026. The new system will have 40 nodes of CPU compute, two 8-GPU nodes with H200 GPUs, and one 3TB High-memory node, and will incorporate InfiniBand networking for MPI capabilities. It will be available sometime in the later part of this year.

The university’s AI roadmap has reached some significant milestones, shared in a town hall opened by chief AI officer David Ebert. The biggest news is that campus community members now have access to U of A GenAI collection built on AWS Bedrock. This includes the generative AI platforms that can support teaching, learning, research and administrative work. All are private and FERPA compliant, though not HIPAA compliant. 

Beginning Wednesday, April 15, Microsoft will stop offering the embedded Copilot tool within Word, Excel, PowerPoint and OneNote. This change will affect University of Arizona students and employees. You don’t need to take any action.

Members of the campus community may need to update the Duo Mobile app on their device to version 4.85.0 or later by Feb. 28, 2026. This update is required by Duo due to an expiring security certificate that affects older versions of the app. If the app is not updated by this date, Duo will be unable to verify your identity and you will not be able to sign in to University of Arizona systems.

Four Cyber Safety Tips to Stay Secure: Use the Duo Mobile app, Recognize phishing and scams, Usestrong passwords, Update software

UITS will migrate alumni email accounts created since 2009 and all retiree email accounts from Gmail in Google to Outlook in Microsoft 365 on Nov. 4, 2025. We will discontinue their university-managed Google account, including access to applications such as Photos, Drive, Docs and Sheets, on Nov. 25, 2025.

Starting in September, the university will disable NetID and university system access of employees and designated campus colleagues (DCCs) who are overdue to complete the annual Information Security Awareness Training recertification.

All email currently in a student’s CatMail account will be migrated to their Outlook account.

On Wednesday, March 13, beginning at 6:00 a.m., there will be a power shutdown in the Computer Center. This shutdown will include the High Performance Computing (HPC) data center and all servers on premises.

Stay alert this semester—be wary of unknown/external senders and unusual requests