During the Tuesday, 2 August 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:
PBX: the central server for the university telephone system will be rebooted. We expect that all phones (IP telephones and emergency phones) will be unable to make or receive calls for a period of up to an hour. Phones will likely show a message reading "Discover 146.231.128.90" during that time. This had been previously planned for 19 July, but it was decided that it was unnecessary at that time. An issue has reoccurred and we’ve been advised to reboot.
Single Sign On service: the software which provides the single sign on service will be updated. There may be times when it will not be possible to login to services which use the single sign on service, such as RUconnected, ROSS or library electronic resources, among others, at times during the evening.
Request Tracker (RT): RT software will be upgraded. We expect an outage of 30 minutes, during which time it will not be possible to access the RT web interface. E-mail messages will be processed once the upgrade has been completed.
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
IMAP e-mail mailboxes
Webmail
Mailing lists
SMS
Provisioning (web proxy autodiscovery)
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)
File servers/home directories (gnu, serval, studentfiles)
Wireless links: software on point-to-point wireless link devices will be updated. This will cause network outages (including IP telephones and Wi-Fi access) of up to 20 minutes in the following buildings:
7 Croft St
Waainek telescope
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.