Planned Application, System, and Network Maintenance Policy

Policy #: 01.006
Policy Title: Planned Application, System, and Network Maintenance Policy
Responsible Position for Policy: Chief Information Technology Officer
Office/Department Responsible for Policy: Center for Information Technology
Division Responsible for Policy: Office of Finance and Administration
Original Issue Date: 03/04/2021
Last Revision Date: 03/04/2021
Log of Previous Revisions: 03/04/2021

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Policy Purpose

CIT has established scheduling guidelines for performing necessary maintenance on computers, administrative systems, applications, and network systems. During regular semester periods (not including breaks, Winter Term, and summer), CIT will endeavor to keep important production systems available. Whenever possible, necessary maintenance will be performed during off hours.

Policy Statement

The table below shows periods during which CIT staff will or will not perform planned maintenance on administrative systems, applications, and network systems.

	12AM–3 AM	3 AM–7 AM	7 AM–10 PM	10 PM–12 AM
Sunday	Up	Minor	Up	Up
Monday	Up	Up	Up	Up
Tuesday	Up	Minor	Up	Minor
Wednesday	Up	Minor	Up	Up
Thursday	Up	Major	Up	Minor
Friday	Up	Up	Up	Up
Saturday	Major	Major	Minor	Up

Up: All systems are expected to be up during this time, barring emergencies or unexpected outages.

Minor: Most systems are expected to be up during these times. Maintenance may be performed for low-impact, small-scale changes, as determined by factors such as number of people affected, duration of the maintenance, and time of year.

Major: Broad impact maintenance will be performed at these times. This includes regular Microsoft Windows Server updates that often occur early Thursday.

Scope

Policy applies to planned maintenance on systems that CIT controls.

System maintenance may be performed outside of (or extend beyond) the scheduled maintenance for any of the following reasons:

• Emergency corrective maintenance may be required.
• Major upgrades or changes may take longer than the scheduled maintenance period.
• Some cloud-based software (such as Google Workspace, Blackboard, and others) may be unavailable outside of these time periods as designated by the vendor. Every effort to communicate about these outages and maintenances will be made.
• The maintenance schedule above applies to regular semester periods only. More major maintenance periods may be scheduled during breaks.

Administration

The Chief Information Technology Officer is assigned to administer this policy. This individual is responsible for keeping the policy up to date and coordinating a detailed review at least once every five years.