noticeboard.ru.ac.za

2015/07/07 - Scheduled Maintenance
During the Tuesday, July 7th maintenance window, maintenance work affecting a number of services will occur, starting at 5:30 PM and being completed before midnight. The following will occur:
  • Network printing services: printing accounting software will be upgraded, which will take about an hour. During times when the printing servers are down, print jobs will be rejected with an error message. During other times in the upgrade, print jobs will be held, then printed later. Staff and students should not reprint if their print job(s) isn't printed immediately unless they receive an error indicating that their print job couldn't be queued. (This work could not be completed in the June maintenance window, so was held over.)
  • Server software updates: software on the servers which provide the following services will be updated, resulting in outages of up to 15 minutes per server:
    • DNS
    • DHCP
    • NTP
    • RT
    • Web proxies
    • Registration system
    • Incoming e-mail
    • Outgoing e-mail
    • E-mail mailboxes
    • Webmail
    • Mailing lists
    • SMS
    • Apple Software Update Server
    • Provisioning (web proxy autodiscovery, telephone provisioning)
    • Wi-Fi and VPN authentication
    • CHERTL Evaluation Assistant
    • Network graphs
    • Guest network access
    • Network monitoring
    • RU Single Sign-on
    • Terminal Four content management system
    • University administration and meal booking systems
    • SEALS Library consortium services
  • Access switches: software updates will be done on a number of access switches, causing a network outage of up to ten minutes in the following buildings:
    • AMM
    • Bangor House
    • Biological Sciences (1 Gbps ports only)
    • GRPGV
    • Highway Africa Building
    • Library
    • Physics, including Fountain Lab
    • RATT servers
    • Struben
    • The Greens
  • PBX server: a backup SIP server will be rebooted. No noticeable outage is expected.
  • Firewalls: software on the firewalls which connect the Internet to the campus, SEALS and public networks will be updated. As the firewalls operate as a redundant pair, no noticeable outages are expected during this maintenance.
This maintenance work is being undertaken in the ITSC-approved scheduled maintenance window. More information about maintenance windows and maintenance periods.
The maintenance on the AMM access switches has been deferred to the August maintenance window.
The PaperCut (printing) maintenance has been deferred to the minor maintenance period on Tuesday 14th July.
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