Maintenance & Outages

Planned Maintenance and Unplanned Outages

Modern academics enables learning anywhere on your own time. Technology needs to be available 24x7 to allow busy students the flexibility to work when they can. IT Services has two different ways to describe services being unavailable, planned maintenance and unplanned outages.

Definitions | Unplanned outages | Past maintenance | Future maintenance

Planned Maintenance
A system or service is unavailable while it is being worked on by technicians and engineers. IT Services reserves Sunday mornings from 12 AM to 12 PM for planned maintenance. IT Services announces planned maintenance to the community 72 hours in advance of the outage. There is no planned maintenance during the busy times at the beginning and end of the semester. This halt on maintenance is called "blackout."		 Unplanned Outages
A system or service is unavailable due to an error or failure. IT Services responds immediately to unplanned outages; resolving or working around them as quickly as possible. Status updates to unplanned outages are shown here and can be heard on the IT Callcenter voice recording. IT Services works to minimize the frequency, impact, and duration of unplanned outages.

Unplanned Outages


All four Blackbaord servers are unavailable.
Feb 19 2012 6:00AM-Feb 19 2012 8:10AM (Server Maintenance > Server Issues) All 4 Blackboard servers are unavailable.
Blackboard Currently Unavailable
Feb 17 2012 3:29AM-Feb 17 2012 5:22AM (Applications > Course Management (Blackboard)) Currently we are experiencing service degradation with our Blackboard servers; users at this time may not be able to log in. Out engineers are aware of the situation and are working to resolve the problem as soon as possible.
Metnet Circuit failure
Feb 16 2012 10:49AM-Feb 16 2012 3:09PM (Connectivity > Wired Network Access) All buildings that are provided service by the Metnet circuit are currently in an outage. ACS has determined an alarm state on their switch in BCORE and are investigating.
ANC-BB-03 Unavailable
Feb 11 2012 8:02AM-Feb 11 2012 8:55AM (Applications > Course Management (Blackboard)) At this time when individuals attempt to login to Blackboard they may experience a "Service Temporary Unavailable" message if reaching the affected server. Tomcat services stopped on Bb03. Stopping and restarting services did not restore them. Server restart resolved issue.
Blackboard Server 02 & 03 Down
Feb 10 2012 3:28AM-Feb 10 2012 6:48AM (Applications > Course Management (Blackboard)) Currently we are experiencing a degradation of services on two of our four Blackboard servers. Some users are currently unable to login at this time, and are receiving an error message; our engineers are aware of this issue and are working to resolve the problem as soon as possible.
503 Service Unavailable when logging into WebAccess
Feb 9 2012 10:08AM-Feb 9 2012 11:55AM (Messaging > Email & Collaboration) Currently email users may not be able to send or receive email from webaccess.uaa.alaska.edu or their Desktop Clients. Engineers are aware of the situation and are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. HTTP Virtual Instance failed on Anc-Exchange02. Solution was to roll the cluster, however we could not do this until several accounts that were in UD Migration state had finished. Call Center has performed an RTS - closing this as resolved.
Identity Manager failing.
Feb 8 2012 9:01AM-Feb 7 2012 11:00PM (Identity > Account) Identity Manager site is failing login for multiple users at multiple locations as it seems to hang on searching security profile.
Exchange 03 Failure
Feb 7 2012 10:23AM-Feb 7 2012 11:10AM (Messaging > Email & Collaboration) Currently, some users on the Legacy Exchange 2003 system may be unable to sign into WebAccess, or their Outlook clients may be showing Disconnected. Engineers are aware of the issue and are working to resolve the problem as quickly as possible. Exchange 03 Storage Group 2 unique transaction ID's ran out. This is a result of the long length of life our legacy Exchange servers have run. A process was run to reset out transaction ID's and service has been restored.
Commodity pegged
Jan 26 2012 3:47PM-Jan 26 2012 3:52PM (Connectivity > Wired Network Access) External internet access appears to be failing at this time. Brief interruption of service, which self resolved before any monitoring tools were able to clearly identify the issue. Spoke with Statewide which reports they have had high utilization of commodity bandwidth to GCI over the past week which may have caused the brief interruption we saw.
Routing Problem
Jan 25 2012 6:30PM-Jan 25 2012 6:55PM (Connectivity > Wired Network Access) UAA is experiencing a routing problem that is preventing access to outside resources. Users may be unable to browse websites outside of the uaa.alaska.edu domain.

 Past Planned Maintenance


Upgrade WLC and WCS to address IP issues
Feb 17 2012 12:00AM-Feb 17 2012 6:00AM (Connectivity>UAA WiFi) Upgrade WLC and WCS to address IP issuesSuccess
Convert BoB access points to use UAA wireless
Feb 19 2012 12:00AM-Feb 19 2012 1:00AM (Connectivity>UAA WiFi) Convert BoB access points to use UAA wirelessSuccess
Add Switch to WFSC MDF to increase port capacity
Feb 15 2012 9:00AM-Feb 15 2012 10:00AM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) Add 48 port switch to WFSC MDF.Success
Create Encrypted SSID for Facilities
Jan 20 2012 9:00AM-Jan 20 2012 12:00PM (Connectivity>UAA WiFi) Build a SSID for facilities to use for their wireless signs.Success
Create PCI Networks for UAA Campus
Nov 27 2011 12:00AM-Dec 1 2011 5:00PM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) Create PCI compliant networks behind FWSM.Success
Reset the transaction log sequence on Exchange SG2 and SG3
Feb 7 2012 10:00AM-Feb 8 2012 12:00AM (Messaging>Email & Collaboration) SG2 ran out of unique transaction log ids this morning at roughly 10:00am. SG3 although not completely out of ids is close and needs to have the same steps performed as a preventative measure.Success
Firewall Changes - Allow TMG server inbound
Feb 8 2012 1:00PM-Feb 8 2012 1:30PM (Connectivity>Security) This change allows the development reverse proxy server to send traffic to the new SharePoint farm. This change is a 2 step process - 1. Rename network object 137.229.138.2 to SharePoint 2. Create rule allowing TCP 80/443 from 137.229.149.130 to 137.229.138.2Success
SQL 2008 R2 becomes production
Jan 20 2012 12:00AM-Jan 20 2012 12:00AM (Internal Service>Internal Service) The new SQL cluster (2008 R2) is ready to be a production service.Success
Increase the maximum simultaneous mailbox moves on Exchange 2010
Feb 6 2012 10:00PM-Feb 6 2012 10:10PM (Messaging>Email & Collaboration) To minimize migration time the number of simaltaneous mailbox moves will be increased.Success
Replace failing switch in SSb-200J
Feb 3 2012 4:00AM-Feb 3 2012 6:00AM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) The 3560-PS switch in the SSB second floor Comm closet is failing. IP Phones are not getting a valid Voice IP address causeing routing problems with phone calls.Success

Future Planned Maintenance


Move Managed print behind ASA to allow Nat
Feb 26 2012 12:00AM-Feb 26 2012 3:00AM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) Ticket 187350, Move Managed print behind ASA to allow NatTicket
Modify SMTP routing in ironport to avoid MS filtering
Feb 17 2012 3:00PM-Feb 17 2012 3:10PM (Messaging>Email & Collaboration) This change will add three new routing rules to send traffic destined for MS mail servers out a relay server. This will prevent the traffic from being rejected by the MS mail system. Since the realy server won't have a bad reputation.
Increase Memory on Mailman
Feb 26 2012 1:00AM-Feb 26 2001 2:00AM (Applications>Web Services) Increase memory on anc-mailman virtual machine to 4096MB.
Swap out Library 210 IDF Chassis
Mar 4 2012 12:00AM-Mar 4 2012 6:00AM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) Swap out old WS-C6513 with new WS-C6513-E IP:192.168.10.108
Matsu OSPF Statement
Feb 22 2012 11:00PM-Feb 23 2012 12:00AM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) Will be adding the 192.168.136.0/22 network to the OPSF routing table.
Create Perimeter Network for Lync Edge/TMG server
Feb 15 2012 9:00AM-Feb 16 2012 5:00PM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) A new VLAN is needed off of the firewall. Both the Lync Edge server and the TMG server will sit between the 137.229.149.128 /25 and the newly created network. Network Objects will need to be created for Lync Edge and TMG in the firewall.
Remove Diplomacy Swing Space Switch
Feb 22 2012 9:00AM-Feb 22 2012 10:00AM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) Remove swing space switch: 192.168.19.19
Update Mailman List Archives from Public to Private
Feb 26 2012 1:00AM-Feb 26 2012 3:00AM (Applications>Web Services) Update Mailman List Archives from public to private.
Change MetNet DHCP scope options
Feb 26 2012 12:00AM-Feb 26 2012 3:00AM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) Change MetNet DHCP scope options
Upgrade Core network to 10G
Feb 26 2012 5:00AM-Feb 26 2012 9:00AM (Connectivity>Wired Network Access) The Core network except to CMNS will be upgraded to 10G