2025/03/11 - Scheduled maintenance, 11 March

During the Tuesday, 11 March maintenance window, maintenance work will affect certain services, starting at 5:30 PM and being completed before midnight. The following work is planned: VPN service: software on the router which provides VPN services will be updated. An outage of ten minutes is expected. Storage systems: software on storage switches will be updated. No noticeable outage is expected, though an unexpected failure during the upgrade would cause an outage affecting almost all services. This work is being conducted during a minor maintenance period. Should there be a compelling reason why this work should not go ahead as planned, please contact support@ru.ac.za before 3:00 PM on Tuesday.

2025/03/04 - Scheduled maintenance, 4 March

During the Tuesday, 4 March 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: Single Sign On service: the software which provides the single sign on service will be reconfigured. 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. Afterwards, when you access a service that uses single sign on (e.g. RUconnected, ROSS or Fincore) the login process will be different. If you've already signed in to your Rhodes University Google Workspace account, you'll simply need to click the button for the appropriate Staff/Student/Guest category and you'll be taken directly to the service, or the personal information consent page. If you haven't signed in to Rhodes University Google Workspace on the device you're using, you'll need to select your category then complete the Google login process. You'll need to enter your email address (ending with @ru.ac.za for staff or @campus.ru.ac.za for students) then enter your password. If you've enrolled for 2 Step Verification, you will need to provide your second verification method. Once you've completed that, you'll be taken to the service or the consent page. This change is being made to improve the university's security by providing 2 Step Verification (2FA) protection for more services, without needing to enroll new verification methods. 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 Mailing lists SMS Provisioning (web proxy autodiscovery) Wi-Fi and VPN authentication 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) PC login service for public labs Archibus Storage systems: software on storage systems will be updated. No noticeable outage is expected, though an unexpected failure during the upgrade would cause an outage affecting almost all services. 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.

2025/02/25 - Scheduled maintenance, 25 February

During the Tuesday, 25 February maintenance window, maintenance work will affect certain services, starting at 5:30 PM and being completed before midnight. The following work is planned: Card-based access control: the software which manages card-based access control to doors in a number of buildings will be upgraded. It will not be possible to grant or revoke access to cards during the maintenance window. Cards which already have access granted to them should still be able to open doors during the maintenance. Africa Media Matrix Beethoven House Biological Sciences Building Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences (phase 1) Eden Grove Geography Hamilton Building Health Suite Institute for Nanotechnology Innovation Library Life Sciences Building New Arts Building New Education Building Physics Building 5 Prince Alfred St School of Languages and Confucius Institute Struben Building Wi-Fi: the controller software which manages Wi-Fi access points across campus will be updated. No outage is expected but in the event of unforeseen issues, it is possible that eduroam Wi-Fi service across campus may be unstable for some hours during the evening. 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. This work is being conducted during a minor maintenance period. Should there be a compelling reason why this work should not go ahead as planned, please contact support@ru.ac.za before 3:00 PM on Tuesday.

2025/02/18 - Scheduled maintenance, 17 and 18 February

On Monday, 17 February, maintenance work affecting SEALS Library services will occur, starting at 10:30 AM. Catalogue, issuing and WAM proxy services will be unavailable for some hours while software is updated on the servers that provide those services. During the Tuesday, 18 February maintenance window, maintenance work will affect certain services, starting at 5:30 PM and being completed before midnight. The following work is planned: VPN service: software on the router which provides VPN services will be updated. All existing connections to the VPN will be dropped and an outage of ten minutes is expected. Wi-Fi and VPN authentication: the software that authenticates all requests for connection to Wi-Fi and VPN services will be updated. No noticeable outage is expected, though unforeseen problems could result in a longer outage. 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. This work is being conducted during a minor maintenance period. Should there be a compelling reason why this work should not go ahead as planned, please contact support@ru.ac.za before 3:00 PM on Tuesday.

2025/02/11 - Scheduled maintenance, 11 February

On Tuesday, 11 February, maintenance work will affect certain services. The following work is planned: Printing services: from 1 to 2 PM, software that handles accounting of print jobs will be updated. It will not be possible to print to any iPrint queues which use print job accounting/charging during the upgrade. This work is being conducted over lunch time to allow testing of all printing scenarios to be completed during the afternoon. Access switches: from 5:30 PM, software will be updated on the network switches in the buildings listed below. All network services (including Wi-Fi and IP telephones) will be disrupted in those buildings. It is expected that each building will have an outage of around 15 minutes. Courtenay Latimer dining hall CSSR House Drostdy dining hall Fineart Annexe (St Peters campus) John Kotze House This work is being conducted during a minor maintenance period. Should there be a compelling reason why this work should not go ahead as planned, please contact support@ru.ac.za.