Re: Maintenance Window(s) Procedures

[Ray Bruder <bruder () DUQ EDU>]

We do PM's on all of our servers each month.  PM's are completed during the
evening shifts.

-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Daniel Bennett
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 2:24 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Maintenance Window(s) Procedures

Ours is from 5am to 7am any day of the week.  We do major upgrades during
Christmas/New Year break

Daniel R. Bennett
CompTIA Security+
Information Technology Security Analyst
Pennsylvania College of Technology
One College Ave
Williamsport, PA 17701
(P) 570.329.4989

-----Original Message-----
From: The EDUCAUSE Security Constituent Group Listserv
[mailto:SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU] On Behalf Of Brian Paige
Sent: Wednesday, June 04, 2008 2:22 PM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Maintenance Window(s) Procedures

Oakland uses Wednesday mornings for maintenance, 4:30 - 7:30am, as it is
historically a very low system/network utilization period on campus,
there is solid 1st line support from vendors and contractors who may be
unavailable on weekends or holidays, and user/customer feedback is
immediately available (by 8:00am).

Our university community recognizes this as a maintenance window, so we
  don't make specific announcements about window events to the general
community.  However, if services are changing as a result of the
maintenance, we will do a campus communication campaign or communicate
with the customers of the service.  Also, IT staff will typically work
with the application owners and distributed departmental sysadmins if
the maintenance is of direct impact.

Additionally, significant maintenance window items are vetted by an
internal IT review group no later than the prior Monday during a staff
change management meeting, and changes are finalized and locked-in by a
maintenance item list sent to IT staff before 6:00pm on the prior
Tuesday evening (this allows for last minute no-go decisions if there is
a concern).  This process also allows IT staff to consider the level of
communication necessary with application owners and allows IT and
application owners several decision points before maintenance is performed.

Changes requiring longer outages are typically scheduled during 2
maintenance weekends, one in the fall (generally October) and one in the
spring.  The same change management process applies but there is broader
campus notification of the outages.

Brian Paige
Executive Director - Networking and Technology
University Technology Services
Oakland University
Rochester, MI.

Joey Rego wrote:
> To the Educause Community:
>
>
>
> We are currently in the process of rethinking our maintenance window and
> procedures for servers, applications and devices.  We were wondering how
> other institutions have gone about doing this.  If you could help with
> some information on how your institution decided the time(s)/day(s) of
> your maintenance window and would like to share we would really
> appreciate it.   Also, any information on the level of communication
> with the departments that were the business owners of applications and
> how their input swayed your decisions any would be helpful as well.
>
>
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
>
>
> Joey Rego
> Senior Network Administrator
>
>
>
>
>
> Lynn University
> Information Technology
> 3601 North Military Trail
> Boca Raton, Fla. 33431-5598
> Phone: 561-237-7982
> Fax: 561-237-7115
> E-mail: jrego () lynn edu <mailto:jrego () lynn edu>
> Web: http://www.lynn.edu <http://www.lynn.edu/>