Maintenance Windows

Routine maintenance: Work that has a low risk, but a risk nevertheless, of disrupting services will take place during our Routine Maintenance Window. Routine Maintenance Windows are 5:30am - 7:30am on weekdays. Infrastructure staff will announce planned routine maintenance to Engineering IT staff at least one day before the outage.

Major maintenance: Work that requires the disruption of one or several established services, will take place during our Major Maintenance Window. This time frame will be on a weekend roughly once a month, typically the second weekend of every month, 9am - 1pm Saturday and/or Sunday.  Infrastructure staff will announce planned major maintenance 3 to 14 days before the outage, with a preference towards giving as much notice as possible.

Emergencies During an emergency or crisis, Infrastructure may shut down, restart, modify hardware, or do any number of disruptive acts in order to repair or protect an existing service.

Communication and announcements During emergencies and if maintenance issues go beyond what is expected, Infrastructure staff will contact their division management or his/her designates.  Infrastructure staff may make an announcement to alert Engineering IT staff, but division management is responsible for periodically checking on the situation and making further announcements to Engineering IT staff.

If service outages will affect people external to Engineering IT, division management will write an announcement worded appropriately for external use, and post it to whatever approved system is in place at the time (twitter, blog posts, etc.)

These rules were put in place August 1, 2012.