[LCH Announce] Systems & Network Maintenance 30/03/08 01:00 - 06:00

[Phillip Baker]

Hello,

In order to replace a damaged and old rack cabinet which is not lockable and not sufficiently deep to house the equipment therein, we will need to take a number of servers and services offline in the above period.

Unfortunately, this means a significant amount of downtime for the servers contained in the rack TFM40 D12, and a shorter downtime for all services only delivered into this rack location. Contingencies are being put into place which will mean that despite all of the current core being dismantled most services will remain up throughout the work period, though there will be some brief outages whilst services are repatched to the temporary routing equipment and then back again. After this work is completed we will be announcing an at risk period in order to augment our network with additional equipment spread across seperate racks to remove the current dependency on a single rack footprint, and generally improve the resilience of the network against hardware failure.

Server downtime is expected to be between 2 and 4 hours. Services which cannot be rerouted via the contingency equipment for any reason will be down for 1 to 2 hours.

Affected LCHost Servers are:
cloud0.lchost.co.uk
maelstrom.lchost.co.uk
cpanel0.lchost.co.uk
hurricane.lchost.co.uk
tsunami.lchost.co.uk

There are currently a number of colocation machines in this rack which will also need to be removed. All customers who have colocated equipment should be aware if this work affects them but if you are unsure please do not hesitate to contact us and ask.

The colocation and LCHost servers contained in this rack will need to be relocated at a later date, as this footprint is gradually being repurposed. Those of you with colocated equipment will be rehoused in another Telehouse Docklands footprint.

While this work is grossly inconvenient it does pave the way for significant improvements to the security and reliability of the network and the services it provides - please accept our apologies for any inconvenience caused.

-- 
Regards,
Phillip Baker
LCHost Chief Technical Officer
0870 068 HOST ext 50