Scheduled maintenance windows will take place on a semi-monthly basis, Thursdays overnight from 6:00pm to 6:00am. These maintenance windows include updates to production systems and services as well as networking hardware including, but not limited to:
- Core Services
- Wireless Network Services
- Production Servers and Applications
During these maintenance windows, the associated systems and services may be unavailable for use by students, faculty, and staff. Routine patches or security patches to designated systems will be deployed at these times.
In the event that maintenance needs to be performed outside of the scheduled maintenance windows, we will do our best to give the community advanced notice. However, there is always the chance that emergency maintenance needs to be completed as the result of an unplanned system outage. Circumstances that may require unscheduled maintenance include:
- System/Hard Malfunction or Failure
- Discovery of a High Risk Security Vulnerability
- Identification of issue(s) caused by prior patching
Upcoming Maintenance Windows
Maintenance windows are scheduled to occur every second and fourth Thursday of each month.
In the even that a maintenance window is required outside of the dates listed above, we will do our best to communicate with the community in advance.
Definitions
Core Services – this includes major pieces of our network infrastructure that provide network access to all of our systems and services.
Wireless Network Services – this includes items such as wireless access points and wireless controllers, including the software for managing these systems. These devices provide a connection from your wireless capable devices to our network infrastructure, then out to the internet. Performing maintenance on these devices and systems will prevent your wirelessly connected device from getting network and internet services for the duration of the maintenance window (while connected to the campus network).
Production Servers and Applications – this includes any live, in use servers that Arcadia University students, faculty, and staff rely on for various services. Performing maintenance on these servers and applications may cause these services to be temporarily unavailable.
Patches – a piece of software that updates an application or operating system (such as Windows 10) in order to improve performance or to provide new/improved features.
Security Patches – a specific update in response to a discovered security flaw in an application or operating system.
