noticeboard.ru.ac.za

2022/05/03 - Scheduled maintenance, 3 May
 
Updated: v2.0 @ Fri, 29 Apr 2022 16:32:30 SAST

During the Tuesday, 3 May 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:

  • Mail routing: the delivery of outgoing mail from Gmail in the RU Google Workspace service will be changed. There is a risk that some messages sent from RU accounts during this maintenance may not be accepted by their destinations and returned to their RU senders (bounced). We will be monitoring for signs of increased numbers of bounces.

  • Wi-Fi: software that controls the Wi-Fi access points in the buildings listed below will be updated. Access to the eduroam Wi-Fi network will be unavailable for a period of around 15 minutes.

    • 19 Somerset St

    • 23, 33 South St

    • 2, 3 Croft St

    • Allan Webb Dining Hall

    • Allen St Flats

    • Alumni House switchboard office

    • Catering Stores

    • Continuing Education Centre

    • Chessington Court

    • Confucius Centre

    • Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences Building

    • Day Care Centre

    • Drostdy Dining Hall

    • Fish farm

    • Founders Dining Hall

    • Founders Lodge

    • Grounds and Gardens HQ

    • Health Care Centre

    • Highway Africa Building

    • Hobson Dining Hall

    • ISER Annexe

    • John Kotze Annexe

    • Kimberley Dining Hall

    • Law Clinic

    • Library

    • Maintenance stores

    • Nelson Mandela Dining Hall

    • Old Laundry

    • PSAM

    • Royal Engineers Building (DIFS)

    • Jan Smuts Dining Hall

    • St Mary Dining Hall

    • Stockenstrom Place

    • Waainek Tick Research

    • Victoria Mxenge housekeeping office

  • 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.

  • 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)

  • Core routers: one of the two core routers in the campus network will be replaced. No noticeable outage is expected as all network traffic should be handled by the other core router.

  • Firewalls: software will be updated on the firewalls which connect the Internet to the campus, SEALS and public networks.  As the firewalls operate as a redundant pair, no noticeable outage is expected during this maintenance.

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.

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