itsnews IT Services manage a complex infrastructure set up on behalf of the University and certain services have specific times set aside for maintenance.
For general systems that ITS provide, this period is from 18:00 Tuesdays. This can affect any system that we host or maintain. This list includes, but is not limited to systems like email, network infrastructure, file stores, the university website and so on.
For the JANET network (campus internet access) it is Tuesday 07:00 – 09:00
For readingConnect, network access in halls of residence, it is Tuesday 10:00-12:00
Urgent maintenance can take place at any time, but is managed by a process of Change Control.
For updates on system status and infrastructure availability, we recommend that you bookmark the following page:
www.reading.ac.uk/its/status
You can also follow us on Twitter for other updates:
http://twitter.com/UniRDG_ITS
The problem with sending out the list of planned affected services as a link to a site, is that the site is often unavailable just when you need to re-check it if something goes awry.
Hi Chris,
That is a fair comment, however, ITS have set up website mirrors in the event of an incident affecting the hosting services on Whiteknights.
It is also why we suggest Twitter, as yet another means of communication to aid incident management.
Also, if you need to check connection issues, there is the option of using 3g via a smartphone to access our external feeds.
Hope this helps
Gordon
Most of the tasks involved in maintenance are things that need to be done on a regular basis. This often involves the use of a schedule of some kind. By mapping out maintenance tasks on a schedule its really would be muci better..
Hi IT Services Oklahoma city,
The need to have a regular slot, as opposed to regular tasks is due to the variety in and complexity of the systems that are supported here.
For example, on any given ‘Patch Tuesday’ Microsoft release patches that we may need to distribute within our environment. It is easier to manage a customer base that expects that we will be carrying out remedial tasks on one particular day of the week than to try to perform it on a system by system basis over the course of say a month.
Furthermore, Finance systems, HR systems, student records, etc, will all have individual timetables that they may want IT to adhere to, which can become a customer management problem. The latter approach potentially could leave a system at risk unless you run an emergency maintenance process which is not good resource management. At this point, it may as well be a regular day of the week.
For our internet connection, the ‘at risk’ period is controlled by our external supplier and for the readingConnect network, we have found that time to be the least intrusive for our customer base.
This way, we can perform regular maintenance, on a regular day, when our customers expect it.
Hope this answers your comment.
Gordon