noticeboard.ru.ac.za

During the Tuesday, May 7th maintenance window, maintenance work affecting a number of services will occur, starting at 5:30 PM and being completed before midnight.  The following work is planned:

• Distribution routers: a new link will be installed between the distribution routers serving the South campus area (all buildings south of Prince Alfred St between Rhodes Avenue and Artillery Road, around the Hobson and Jan Smuts dining halls).  Brief outages are expected, during which time no network services (including IP telephones and Wi-Fi access) will be available within this area.
• TerminalFour: software on the server hosting TerminalFour will be updated. We expect an outage of two hours during which time it will not be possible to change content managed by TerminalFour (already published web pages will still be accessible).
• Single Sign On service: the software which provides the single sign on service will be updated.  We expect that it will not be possible to login to services using the single sign on service, such as RUconnected, ROSS and the Ethical Review Application System, at times during the evening.
• 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
  • Provisioning (web proxy autodiscovery, telephone provisioning)
  • Wi-Fi and VPN authentication
  • CHERTL Evaluation Assistant
  • Network graphs
  • Network monitoring
  • Terminal Four content management system
  • RU Single Sign-On system
  • Main web server (www.ru.ac.za, etc)
  • University administration and meal booking systems
  • SEALS Library consortium services
  • Network printing services (iPrint / PaperCut)
  • Home directories (gnu)

While we try to publish a list of all service-affecting work here in advance, the list should not be considered exhaustive and other low impact work may also be undertaken during the maintenance window.

This maintenance work is being undertaken in the ITSC-approved scheduled maintenance window.