Archive for the ‘Downtime’ Category

Web server upgrade on Jan 19

Thursday, January 12th, 2017

On Thursday, January 19, starting at 08:00, we will OS upgrade the main D-PHYS web server. All websites hosted on zwoelfi*.ethz.ch will be down for several hours and will gradually come back as we progress. This does not affect the department website, the institutes and many of the group websites. However our groupware, the wikis and many special interest sites will be inaccessible. Note that if you're using the ActiveSync connector via groupware to sync email to your cell phone or Outlook, this won't work either. Temporarily use webmail while we bring back groupware as one of the first services.

Update 17:30 - due to an inordinate amount of user files on the web server the upgrade took a bit longer than anticipated. Now almost all websites should be back online, please let us know if you encounter any problems.

Network downtime 15th of September 05:30 – 07:30

Tuesday, September 13th, 2016

The Informatikdienste are upgrading the routers in our HIT/D/13 server room causing a downtime of the network of about 1 hour on Thursday morning, 15th September, between 05:30 and 07:30. Please note that various services will not be available during that time.

Maintenance window on Monday, September 5, 17:00

Tuesday, August 30th, 2016

In order to perform some core service upgrades, we schedule a server maintenance window on

Monday, September 5, starting at 17:00 and lasting for approximately 3 hours.

Most D-PHYS IT services will be affected by that downtime, including logins, file servers and e-mail services.
E-mails coming in during the downtime will be held on the sender’s side and will arrive at D-PHYS with a delay. Sending e-mails won’t be possible during the window.

We’ll update this posting as soon as things are back to normal.

Update Monday 18:30 We managed to complete the migration ahead of time, everything should be back to normal. If you still encounter any problems, please let us know.

Scheduled Maintenance Downtime Starting on Thursday, 14th of April, 5pm

Thursday, April 7th, 2016

Due to required changes to our network infrastructure and some hardware maintenance, we're scheduling a maintenance downtime for most D-PHYS servers starting on Thursday, 14th of April 2016, at 5pm. The downtime will last several hours and single services may be down for longer than others or will be down multiple times in a row.

We'll update this posting as soon as things are back to normal.

Most D-PHYS services will be affected by that downtime, especially file servers and e-mail services, but also some virtual machines and most websites hosted by ISG D-PHYS are affected. (http://www.phys.ethz.ch/ and other AEM-hosted websites are not affected.)

E-mails coming in during the downtime will be held on the sender's side and will arrive at D-PHYS with a delay. Sending e-mails won't be possible during the downtime either.

After the migration we will benefit from a faster and more reliable network connection to our servers.

Update at 19:30: Most services are back to normal. Expect further downtimes for home directories and mail later this evening.

Update at 23:00: All services are available again.

Update Fri 09:00: After Thursday's network migration a defective patch cable caused network problems on Friday morning.

Emergency Downtime of Mail Server

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2015

We had to shut down the D-PHYS mail server on short notice for replacing faulty hardware. Mail service should be back in the evening.

Mails sent to D-PHYS during the downtime will be on hold on the sending side.

Update, 19:30: The dust is settling. We're soon back to normal.

Hardware Maintenance Downtime of Mail Server Today 5pm

Thursday, July 2nd, 2015

In order to perform system-level maintenance work, we schedule a maintenance downtime of the D-PHYS mail server today (Thursday, 2nd of July 2015) starting at 17:00. We expect the downtime to take about one hour.

During the downtime all mail services (sending mail, receiving mail, accessing mailboxes, webmail, etc.) will be unavailable. Mails sent to D-PHYS users during the downtime will be held back on the sending side and will be delivered after the downtime.

We will post an update as soon as mail services are back.

Update 19:30: Took a little bit longer than expected, but everything is back to normal now.