CERN Accelerating science

1994 Computer Centre Christmas Shutdown Schedule

This year CERN closes officially on Wednesday 21 December at 17.30 and re-opens on Wednesday 4 January at 08.30.

In order to complete necessary work on the electricity distribution system, power will be off in the computer centre on 2 and 3 January except for a special supply to some networking equipment. Power-up of the equipment and progressive re-establishment of services will begin on the evening of 3 January with the aim of completing the process during the following morning.

During the period from 21 December to 2 January, most systems in the centre will be left powered-on but log-on access to services will normally be blocked for security reasons, except in specific special cases where arrangements have already been made with the user communities concerned.

Consequently, the computer centre schedule for the two-week period between 21 December 1994 and 4 January 1995 is as follows:

• The following computer centre services to the user community will be stopped on Wednesday 21 December at 12.00 in order to allow time for backup of all critical system files during the afternoon: CERNVM, the central VMS clusters, DXCERN, SHIFT, CSF, SP2, tape services, PaRC, CAE servers, PIAF, SUNSLDB, SLDBMEAS, VXLIB, AFCERN, central database servers.
• Other services will be left running until 2 January on a best-efforts basis. Users are, however, reminded that coverage by computer centre staff cannot be guaranteed, that there will be no file backups during the period and that the network situation mentioned below may prevent access.
• The last normal (incremental) ADSM backup will take place during the night of 20-21 December. No further ADSM service will then be available until 4 January.
• Concerning the general purpose computer networks (Ethernet, AppleTalk), no service across the site can be guaranteed, due to partial power cuts outside the control of CN Division. In one or two particular cases, connectivity to the Computer Centre has been agreed following special requests. As usual, external transit traffic (Internet, DECnet, EARN) will be maintained. Electronic mail will in principle be accumulated for later delivery. The ACB and RLN services will not be switched off, but they may be ineffective due to other systems being off.

Users are reminded that, when the CERNVM service re-opens on 4 January, it will be running on a machine with half the power of that presently installed (see CNL 217 2.1 for details).

Please contact the undersigned if this schedule seriously inconveniences you, or if you would like more precise information.

David J. Underhill

Central Infrastructure and Operations

Tel : 4920 / E-mail : DJUCT@CERNVM