July 2014

Date: Thursday, July 31, 2014 (06:00-08:00)

Who is affected:
All users of CS Department public login hosts (cycles.cs.princeton.edu and
penguins.cs.princeton.edu).

What is happening:
During this window, the cycles and penguins machines will be reinstalled
and patched. At the same time, the cycles machines will be upgraded with
new hardware.

SPECIAL NOTE: As we are reloading the public login servers, all crontabs
will be deleted. You will need to back up your crontabs before the
downtime, and put them back after.

Why is it happening:
This is part of our routine annual maintenance of the public login systems.

We will post updates to the status page: http://www.csstaff.org
as necessary.

If this downtime will cause you undue hardship, please contact
csstaff@cs.princeton.edu immediately, so we can discuss options to reduce
any negative impact. Your patience is appreciated.
Sincerely,
CS Staff
_______________________________________________
downtime mailing list
downtime@lists.cs.princeton.edu
https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/downtime

Date: Tuesday, July 29, 2014 (06:00-07:00)

Who is affected:
All users of the CS Department network and services, including e-mail, web
servers, and public login hosts.

What is happening:
During this window, OIT will be replacing hardware in a piece of equipment
which carries our fiber connection between the CS Department and the
Forrestal Data Center. As a result, all communication with the Data Center
will be interrupted. This will interrupt access to all CS Department
network services and hosts.

Why is it happening:
The equipment in question enables us to share long distance fiber with OIT
and other groups, and involves active electronics. The fans are failing in
this equipment and must be replaced.

We will post updates to the status page: http://www.csstaff.org
as necessary.

If this downtime will cause you undue hardship, please contact
csstaff@cs.princeton.edu immediately, so we can discuss options to reduce
any negative impact. Your patience is appreciated.

Sincerely,
CS Staff
_______________________________________________
downtime mailing list
downtime@lists.cs.princeton.edu
https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/downtime

Date: Thursday, July 24, 2014 (05:00-08:00)

Who is affected:
All users of the CS department computing.

What is happening:
We are upgrading our storage operating system, which requires for CS
storage to be rebooted. We expect that some of the SMB/CIFS clients will
have to reconnect, but NFS service will be continuous. The rest of CS
services should not be affected.

Why is it happening:
This is necessary in order to fix numerous bugs on our file system.

We will post updates to the status page: http://www.csstaff.org
as necessary.

If this downtime will cause you undue hardship, please contact
csstaff@cs.princeton.edu immediately, so we can discuss options to reduce
any negative impact. Your patience is appreciated.

Sincerely,
CS Staff
_______________________________________________
downtime mailing list
downtime@lists.cs.princeton.edu
https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/downtime

Date: Thursday, July 17, 2014 (09:00-12:00)

Who is affected:
Potentially, all users of CS Department infrastructure systems, to include
e-mail, web service, and penguins login machines.

What is happening:
During this window, the storage underlying the department\’s VMware
infrastructure will undergo minor repairs.

NO OUTAGE IS EXPECTED during this time, but this message is being sent in
the interest of disclosure in the unlikely event something goes wrong which
causes an outage.

Why is it happening:
One of the storage nodes underlying the department\’s VMware infrastructure
has a bad DIMM. So far, it is only generating correctable errors, but needs
to be replaced in order to avoid the potential for further problems.

We will post updates to the status page: http://www.csstaff.org
as necessary.

If this maintenance will cause you undue hardship, please contact
csstaff@cs.princeton.edu immediately, so we can discuss options to reduce
any negative impact. Your patience is appreciated.
Sincerely,
CS Staff
_______________________________________________
downtime mailing list
downtime@lists.cs.princeton.edu
https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/downtime

It appears that the CS network is not reachable from the outside. We are en route to campus to troubleshoot the problem.

Update (23:05): It seems that the fiber link between the department and the main campus (and onward to the internet) is not working. Technicians are working to sort out the issue ASAP.

Update (01:35 7/13): A damaged fiber has been located and replaced. Network service to the CS Department should now be restored.

Date: Thursday, July 10, 2014 (05:00-08:00)

Who is affected:
All users of the CS department computing

What is happening:
We will be troubleshooting our file system, which will require for CS
storage to be rebooted. All services that depend upon access to storage
will be unavailable, including – cycle servers, ionic cluster, web content,
home directories, CIFS, etc.

Why is it happening:
This is necessary in order to fix a bug on our file system, which can cause
major NFS failures.

We will post updates to the status page: http://www.csstaff.org
as necessary.

If this downtime will cause you undue hardship, please contact
csstaff@cs.princeton.edu immediately, so we can discuss options to reduce
any negative impact. Your patience is appreciated.

Sincerely,
CS Staff
_______________________________________________
downtime mailing list
downtime@lists.cs.princeton.edu
https://lists.cs.princeton.edu/mailman/listinfo/downtime