Operating Schedule
Scheduled Downtimes
Downtimes shall be scheduled as follows:
Monthly system backups are performed on the first Sunday of each month, except in January which is done on the second day of the month (Jan 2), and is usually scheduled for a 8 hour period starting a 4:00pm. The hours for the monthly dumps will be posted 10 days in advance. The monthly and semester dump schedules may vary from the above schedule if the backups are being performed on an official holiday or during a semester break.
Regular reserved downtimes: Every attempt will be made to schedule system down times during this time for disk configurations and other system maintenance.
Downtimes may otherwise be scheduled to occur between 5PM and 8AM; during the day if necessary (eg, for hardware work); and by special arrangement with the EML staff.
Unscheduled Downtimes
All workstations and servers will be taken down under the following circumstances:
Emergency hardware or software conditions may occur, including emergency filesystem repair, which may result in unscheduled system downtime. As much advance warning as possible will be given; but at times the system must be taken down rapidly to avoid further damage to hardware or other system resources.
Scheduled system downtime is posted in the ssh login message. An attempt will be made to post the message at least 24 hours in advance. The announcement will state the date(s) and time(s) of the downtime and every attempt will be made not to exceed the posted downtime hours. Whenever possible, 10 minutes warning will be given prior to shutting the system down.
If it is transparent to all users (which in practice means that there are no users on the system and no user background jobs running) the system may be taken down (for no more than 30 minutes) without advance message of the day warning.
The machines usually can reboot themselves from a crash, but occasionally the system will be unavailable until a qualified person can be reached.