ICS Maintenance September 21, 2016

We will be making multiple potentially disruptive changes to ICS systems on this day.

• Impacting: SPF Email Implementation, see below. (RT Ticket #59623)
• Impacting: Openlab CentOS7 Update and new SGE queue (RT Tickets #60192 and #60193)
• Impacting: Network Switch Upgrade. (RT Ticket #59949)
• Impacting: Libya UPS Manual Reconditioning in critical rack A05. (RT Ticket #59847)
• Impacting: Perform OS Updates and Reboot IGB Computing (RT Ticket #60195)
• Operating System Patches for all hosts begins 9/18. (RT Tickets #60191)
• ICS Mailman List will no longer automatically respond to new subscribers. (RT Ticket #60110)
• Move Bren Hall Screen Content to Tier 1 File Server (RT Ticket #59959)
• Software Updates and module default load (RT Ticket #60194)
• Samba4 Deployment
• Virtual Box Upgrade

After this change, email that does not originate on a mail server that is identified in the ICS SPF record may be rejected or tagged as spam at the destination. See email settings for more important information about how this affects uesrs at ICS.

• Openlab hosts running CentOS6 will be reinstalled with the latest version of CentOS7 and rebooted.
• The 15day.q and 12hour.q queues will be disabled.
• A new SGE queue of openlab hosts running CentOS7 is available now as “openlab.q”.
• The exclusive, h_vmem and s_vmem complexes will be assigned on all hosts in the openlab.q. This will allow users to specify queues with exclusivity or high memory requirements. Sun Grid Engine
• You may test out the Openlab CentOS7 environment today by logging into openlab7.ics.uci.edu or submitting SGE jobs to the openlab.q queue.

In order to facilitate the retirement of the existing border switch, existing network switches that link to it will have their up link ports moved. This move will cause temporary network outages to the servers throughout the day.

The UPS in critical rack A05 will be reconditioned. This process will take about an hour during which time servers in this rack that do not have dual power supplies will be unavailable.

* The sites students.ics.uci.edu and faculty.ics.uci.edu will be offline.

OS patches will be applied to all IGB CentOS 5, CentOS 6, CentOS 7 and Ubuntu servers throughout the day. After patches are applied the computers will be rebooted.

Latest patches will be applied to all CentOS5, CentOS6 and CentOS7 hosts. Hosts will not be rebooted unless otherwise noted above.

All ICS systems with Virtual Box currently installed will be updated to the latest available. Any running Virtual Box instances will be shutdown.

All ICS Openlab hosts will be upgraded to CentOS7 for the Fall Quarter 2016. Faculty may test out this new environment today by logging into openlab7.ics.uci.edu.

The Samba 4 servers will be deployed in place of the Samba 3 servers. It is important that anyone who has their files opened through the Samba server should close any file connections opened on the desktop as the samba connection will be dropped.

Auto response on all ICS Mailman lists will be turned off in order to prevent mail bombing and preserve the ICS email server reputation.