02/02/99: Bruin OnLine Email Service Interruption

During the past two years, Communications Technology Services (CTS) and the Office of Academic Computing (OAC) have successfully teamed together to provide Bruin OnLine (BOL) service. Throughout this timeframe, based upon a multi-phase plan developed by a joint CTS/OAC planning team, BOL services have gradually been transitioned from OAC to CTS. The installation of upgraded email servers, noted below, marks the final phase effort of the transition process, and the ultimate assumption of BOL service provision by CTS.

Beginning at 8:00 PM on Saturday, February 13, 1999, access to all Bruin OnLine email services as well as access to Orion through Bruin OnLine will be unavailable for approximately 17 hours. Services are scheduled to resume on Sunday, February 14, at 1 PM. During the service interruption, you will still be able to access the Internet and utilize the web, ftp and news services. Any changes in this schedule will be posted to the Bruin OnLine web site at http://www.ucla.edu/bruinonline/.

The existing Bruin OnLine email servers have long since exceeded their designed capacity and their ability to continue providing the reliable and stable service levels that the UCLA community has come to expect. During the scheduled outage, the servers will be replaced with new equipment that is designed to accommodate future email load requirements while maintaining desired levels of service.

Email retrieval through POP clients (i.e., using Eudora, Netscape, Outlook Express, etc.), as well as through telnet (ben2.ucla.edu), will not be available during the service interruption period. Additional services that will be unavailable during this timeframe include access to ORION via telnet, Bruin OnLine password changes and account creation capability.

During the 17 hour transition period, email sent through Bruin OnLine (using smtp.ben2.ucla.edu) will not be delivered in real time, but instead will be queued so that delivery can resume once the service interruption has concluded. This will result in email delivery being delayed for several hours until all queued messages are delivered. Email messages sent during the outage should not be lost, merely delayed.

Please note that if you encounter problems immediately after the transition, you may need to reboot your machine in order to refresh the network addresses.

We regret any inconvenience that this service interruption may cause while this important server upgrade is accomplished. In an effort to minimize the impact, we have scheduled the server transition during a three day Holiday weekend, from Saturday evening through Sunday morning (the lowest usage period). We certainly thank you in advance for your understanding.

Communications Technology Services
consult@ucla.edu