IT maintenance and planned outages

Maintaining Our Digital Environment

IT Maintenance and Planned Outages aim to maintain central IT facilities regularly while minimising interruption to normal business functions and reducing the risk of unintended service disruptions. Every week ITDS conducts many preventative maintenance activities including server patching, system upgrades and certificate renewals, with these actions often taking place after hours.

Planned Outages

Maintenance Weekend dates have been approved for 2023 and 2024 by the Senior Executive. This schedule considers vital operations in the University calendar, such as enrolments, teaching, examinations and graduation.

During the maintenance weekend,  staff and students can log on into the MyIT Portal and check the service status to see what is available and what services are impacted. It is recommended that staff and students log off their WSU computer before the start of the Outage Time to avoid data loss.

Expand the accordions below to see details about each outage:

Scheduled Dates for 2023

Approved Dates/TimeServices Impacted

Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th April (Easter)

  • Online storage: This will impact all Western-owned computers connected to the University network, including staff laptops, desktop computers, library kiosks, library computers, student labs, teaching computers (both on-site and off-site), desktop files, My Documents files and all staff files.
  • Citrix/VPN remote access for staff and students.

Saturday 8th & Sunday 9th July

Outage Time:
1:00 am (08/07) to 11:59 pm (09/07)

  • All Western-owned computers connected to the University network, including staff laptops, desktop computers, library kiosks, library computers, student labs, and teaching computers (both on-site and off-site).
  • All staff desktop files, My Documents files and all staff files.
  • Citrix/VPN remote access for staff and students.
  • SMS Banner Including related systems -
    • Students and Staff MySR
    • SMS Application Navigator and Staff SMS Admin pages
    • DegreeWorks
    • Ellucian Recruit
    • ARGOS Reporting
  • Xetta / Payments

Saturday 14th & Sunday 15th October

  • Citrix will be unavailable for the duration of the weekend.

Thursday 21st & Friday 22nd December (End of Year Break)

  • Syllabus Plus -  No outage expected
  • Teaching cluster patching - No outage expected

Scheduled Dates for 2024

Approved DatesServices Impacted

Saturday 30th & Sunday 31st March (Easter)

TBD

Saturday 22nd & Sunday 23rd June

TBD

Saturday 21st & Sunday 22nd September

TBD

Monday 23rd & Tuesday 24th December (End of Year Break)

TBD

Student Computers Maintenance

All ITDS-managed general-purpose (student) computers (located in labs, Library, etc) undergo maintenance from 2 am to 5 am every morning.

Unscheduled Maintenance

From time to time ITDS may need to suspend individual services for urgent and essential repairs, patching, and updates. Such work is scheduled for the least disruptive time possible, and we do our best to inform all stakeholders and users of the impacts of this work when it must occur.

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