Services: Maintenance and Outages

Information technology services and infrastructure require regular maintenance to run smoothly and reliably. While we strive to maximize the availability of these services, occasional outages are required for upgrades and maintenance.

During these outages, we install, upgrade, patch, and reconfigure software and networking systems. Vendors provide new features, bug fixes, and security patches regularly, and we use this window to keep services and infrastructure stable and performant. We may also upgrade hardware, add and remove devices from the network, and perform other tasks that have a chance to effect the stability of campus services and infrastructure.

We categorize this work in two main ways: planned maintenance and unplanned outages.

We perform upgrades and maintenance during a weekly "maintenance window" from 4:00 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. every Friday. This time was selected to minimize inconvenience to the UW-Eau Claire community. In some circumstances, this window is not the most appropriate time for a given outage, and such outages are occasionally scheduled for different times.

Occasionally, software glitches, hardware failure, or time-sensitive security patches require an unplanned outage. We strive to quickly and transparently inform the UW-Eau Claire community about unplanned outages and when services are restored.

To communicate planned maintenance and unplanned outages, we use an automated messaging system that sends notifications via email, RSS, JSON, and a website.