Network Maintenance

Low Impact Maintenance Schedule
Planned network maintenance that involves hardware, software or configuration changes that should not cause a service interruption, is deemed Low Impact Maintenance.These are changes that need to occur on a regular, recurring basis.Examples of low impact maintenance include modifying firewall rules as a customer request, adding an interface card to an existing production switch, or modifying an access control list. Low impact maintenance will be scheduled after 5:00PM CT to 8:00AM CT Monday through Sunday.

Notification: Notice will be sent to the Consolidating Monitoring Service group at OCS prior to the work taking place.  This will be done so that in the unlikely event that a service interruption occurs and is related to the maintenance work, CMS will be able to correlate the event with any trouble calls they might receive. Another notice will be sent after the work has been completed.

High Impact Maintenance Schedule
Planned network maintenance that is known to be service affecting is deemed High Impact Maintenance. OTM has established a maintenance window of 3:00AM to 7:00AM CT Saturdays for this type of maintenance. Maintenance will not necessarily be performed every Saturday, nor is it likely that maintenance for a given event will last the entire 4 hours. This 4-hour maintenance window has been established to cover the possibility of multiple maintenance operations at multiple locations, or extensive work at any single location. Most of the maintenance which falls under this category will involve a simple reload of a device or the addition or removal of hardware, a process which usually lasts a few minutes.

In addition to the standard maintenance window described above, agencies may have critical times during which their normal network service may not be impacted. For example, the Division of Administration has identified payroll weekend as a standard time during which service may not be impacted, so no maintenance work, which would possibly affect DOA, is scheduled on payroll weekends. Other agencies may identify these critical times to OTM and High Impact Maintenance that will affect the agency will be avoided.

Notification: Subscribers will be notified by 5:00PM CT on the Wednesday before the scheduled downtime of the upcoming outage. Notice will be sent to the email list for the group that will be affected by the service interruption. The notice will contain the following information:

• Scope: What work is being done
• Impact: What impact to service can be expected
• Reason: Why this work is being done
• Duration: Estimated duration of the activity

Notification will be sent to the same group after the fact indicating that work has been completed.

Emergency Maintenance
Unplanned network maintenance may need to be done on an emergency basis. This work will only be done if normal service is interrupted or degraded, and action is necessary to restore service to normal levels.

Notification: Notice will be sent to the email list for the group that will be affected by the emergency maintenance.The notice may be sent just prior to the activity, as time is normally of the essence in an emergency situation. The notice will contain the following information:

• Scope: What work is being done
• Impact: What impact to service can be expected
• Reason: Why this work is being done, and why its being done outside normal maintenance window
• Duration: Estimated duration of the activity

Notification will be sent to the same group after the work has been completed.