There will be a planned twelve-hour interruption to IT services at the University of Minnesota beginning on Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 6:00 p.m., with service restoration beginning on Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 6:00 a.m. All services will be restored by noon on Sunday. This service interruption will result from the Office of Information Technology (OIT) shutting down its main data center to perform necessary maintenance, testing, and repairs of facility infrastructure. A full list of the IT services that will be impacted by this work is available.

The Fire Marshal requires that the Emergency Power Off (EPO) and the fire suppression system in the data center be tested. This requires that the data center be powered down to protect the IT equipment from damage. Since this power down is necessary, the OIT data center services team intends to leverage the downtime to fulfill some additional data center activities that are less urgent, but require the power to be off. You can view the full scope of maintenance activities, including the schedule for restoring services.

All affected departments have been consulted and have been planning for this shutdown for the past several months through coordinated efforts with the OIT Change Approval Board and the University of Minnesota IT Leadership Alliance.

Every effort will be taken to ensure that the University community is notified of this service interruption. We ask you to assist us by sharing this message with your own colleges, departments, or administrative units. During the service interruption, updates will be available on the University of Minnesota System Status page.