- 2020/02/04 - Scheduled maintenance, 4 February
- During the Tuesday, February 4th 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: software will be updated on the routers serving all buildings in the areas listed below. All network services (including Wi-Fi and IP telephones) may be disrupted in those areas for up to 20 minutes.
St Peters campus: all buildings south of Lucas Avenue.
North and west campus: all buildings north of Prince Alfred St.
Off campus: all buildings east of Somerset St.
Mid campus: all buildings in the area bounded by Prince Alfred St, Rhodes Avenue and Lucas Avenue, as far as and including Botha, Olive Schreiner, John Kotze and Beit Houses.
Server software updates: software on the servers which provide the following services will be updated, resulting in outages of up to 30 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)
Wi-Fi: software will be updated on Wi-Fi access points in the buildings listed below. Wi-Fi services will be unavailable for 20 minutes.
33 South St
Allen Flats
Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Founders Lodge
Highway Africa
Legal Aid
Maintenance stores
Old Laundry
Stockenstrom Place
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.
- 2019/12/03 - Scheduled maintenance, 3 December
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During the Tuesday, December 3rd 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:
IP Telephones: all phone services will be unavailable for a period of around 15 minutes. After that time, the university's telephone system will no longer require that one dial a zero to get an outside line before dialing any external number. From then on, please dial all external numbers without adding an extra zero, just as one would when dialling from your mobile phone, or from your landline at home. Internal calls and incoming calls originating from outside the university will not be affected by this change. This change will apply when sending faxes using the RightFax service.
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). This work could not be completed in the November 5th maintenance window, so it will be attempted again.
Request Tracker (RT): RT software will be upgraded. We expect an outage of two to three hours, 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)
Wi-Fi: software will be updated on Wi-Fi access points in the buildings listed below. Wi-Fi services will be unavailable for 20 minutes.
33 South St
Allen Flats
Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences
Founders Lodge
Highway Africa
Legal Aid
Maintenance stores
Old Laundry
Stockenstrom Place
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.
- 2019/11/26 - Scheduled maintenance, 26 November
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IT scheduled maintenance work will occur on Tuesday, November 26th, starting at 7:30 PM.
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.
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.
- 2019/11/24 - Scheduled provider maintenance, 24 November
- We've been informed by our telephony service provider that maintenance will be carried out on one of the network links carrying telephone calls to/from the university PBX to the rest of the world. Maintenance will occur between 23:00 on 24 November 2019 and end at 2:00 on 25 November. During that time, we expect that there will be periods of around a few minutes during which it will not be possible to place or receive external telephone calls. Calls within campus will not be affected.
- 2019/11/19 - Scheduled maintenance, 19 November
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IT scheduled maintenance work will occur on Tuesday, November 19th, starting at 5:30 PM.
PBX: a number of significant changes have been made to the PBX in the past few months. As a result, I&TS staff have been able to simplify a number of aspects of the configuration of the PBX, and those changes to the configuration will be deployed in this maintenance window. Only brief interruptions to service are expected, but in the event that any of the changes have unforeseen effects, it is possible that all telephone services could be affected.
SEALS Sierra and Encore services: software which provides the Sierra and Encore services for the SEALS library consortium will be updated. Outages of around four hours are expected.
This work will be 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.