Network Maintenance: 16, 26, 27 May 2011

We are planning a couple of scheduled maintenance windows to perform software upgrades on core and distribution network equipment.

The planned maintenance windows are as follows:

Monday 16 May 2011, 05:00 – 06:00 GMT.  For operations in Baltimore – Expected impact is minimal, though potentially up to 10 minutes of connectivity disruption in case of the need to roll-back the upgrade.

Update 07:00 UTC:  The upgrade on the Baltimore Core was successful.  We have delayed the upgrade to the Distribution, however as there will be an impact on downstream equipment.  We will schedule a new maintenance window for this equipment.

Thursday 26 May 2011, 00:00 – 02:00 GMT – to perform software upgrades to distribution hardware in Paris.  As with Baltimore, minimal impact is expected, but may incur up to 10 minutes of connectivity disruption in case a rollback is required.

Update 01:42 GMT (03:42 CET) – we have upgraded one of the distribution switch systems to the new software.  We will reschedule the other two switching systems for a later date.  Currently hosting operations (stop/start/restart/create, etc.) are suspended and will resume once the systems have stabilised and our teams have verified the integrity of the architecture.  We will keep you updated.

Update: 02:00 GMT (04:00 CET):  Hosting Operations have been resumed.  No further maintenance work is scheduled for tonight.

Friday 27 May 2011, 03:30 – 05:30 GMT – software upgrades on the core routers.  Impact will be localised to external transit and/or peering connectivity for each the associated routers.  Traffic will be re-routed to alternative paths, but minor route disruption is to be expected as routing reconverges.  There will be up to six minor disruptions of this kind during this maintenance window as each router will need to be reloaded during the upgrade.

Update 05:04 GMT:  The core router software upgrades have been completed and this maintenance is now terminated.  The remaining distribution systems from yesterday’s maintenance window are postponed for a future date and will be announced separately.

We apologise for any inconvenience.