IT Maintenance Windows
In September 2010, the Information Technology Steering Committee approved the creation of a regular IT maintenance window. This window provides the IT Division with an opportunity to do major maintenance, and allows the University to plan around such work.
The maintenance window occurs on the first Tuesday of every month. An exception exists in January, where it occurs on the first working Tuesday after the end of the shutdown period; in all other months, it is always the first Tuesday irrespective of whether or not this is a public holiday (as sometimes happens on 1 May). The maintenance window starts at 17:30 on Tuesday evening, and extends to 07:30 the following (Wednesday) morning.
The University community should consider all ICT services (including telephones, network, Internet access, library and learning management systems, and file & print sharing) to be at risk of an outage during every single maintenance window, and should plan accordingly. The dates of the maintenance windows over the coming year are:
- Tuesday, 8 January 2013
- Tuesday, 5 February 2013
- Tuesday, 5 March 2013
- Tuesday, 2 April 2013
- Tuesday, 7 May 2013
- Tuesday, 4 June 2013
- Tuesday, 2 July 2013
- Tuesday, 6 August 2013
- Tuesday, 3 September 2013
- Tuesday, 1 October 2013
- Tuesday, 5 November 2013
- Tuesday, 3 December 2013
- Tuesday, 7 January 2014
These maintenance windows will not be rescheduled; it is not possible to move them to accomodate other activities.
The IT Division uses the scheduled maintenance windows to conduct maintenance on core ICT services that is likely to be significantly disruptive to the entire University community, and that usually affects multiple services. Examples of things that have been done in previous windows include the replacement of core switches (complete network outage) and changes to electrical power (complete service outage). Whilst the approved maintenance window allows for work to continue throughout the night, in practice human limitations generally mean that work ends in the early hours of the morning. Not every maintenance window is used, and not all work conducted during maintenance windows is service-affecting.
We usually publish information about our intended use of a maintenance window during the preceeding week.
Other maintenance periods
In addition to the monthly maintenance windows, a minor maintenance period exists every Tuesday evening during the same times (17:30-07:30). However, unlike the above maintenance windows, we will consider rescheduling work planned for these periods should it become necessary to do so. The onus is on individual departments and divisions to draw things of relevance to our attention. Historically these periods are seldom utilised, except for very minor work.
Note that having such maintenance windows and maintenance periods does not preclude maintenance work at other times. Changes that are not expected to be service-affecting will be carried out during the working day, as will work that only impacts a small subset of the University population (a single building or group of buildings, for instance). Minor maintenance and work that involves only very brief (no more than a few minutes) interuptions often happens on other evenings as required, although we generally try and fit these into the Tuesday maintenance period. Emergency maintenance will be carried out at the IT Division's discretion whenever it is necessary.
We will always endeavour to publish prior notice of our intent to carry out such work (as well as its expected impact).
