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Downtime Policy

JSCC Policy Number: Not Yet Assigned

TBR Policy Reference: Not Yet Assigned

TBR Guideline Reference: Not Yet Assigned

Approved By: Dr. Allana Hamilton

Original Date Effective: 2010-08-05

Last Modified: 2019-09-03

Responsible Office: Office of Information Technology

Purpose

Jackson State Community College is committed to ensuring reliable information technology services. In order to meet this objective, Jackson State's system may need to be taken offline to maintain or improve system performance, safeguard data, or to respond to emergency situations. The goal of this policy is to explain those circumstances during which downtime may occur, anticipated durations of downtime events, and procedures for notifying affected users.

Planned Downtime

From time to time, it will be necessary to make systems unavailable for the purpose of performing upgrades, maintenance, or housekeeping tasks. The goal of these tasks to is to ensure maximum system performance and prevent future system failures. The following activities fall within the definition of "planned downtime":

  • Application of patches to operating systems and other applications in order to fix vulnerabilities and bugs, add functionality, or improve performance.
  • Monitoring and checking of system logs.
  • Security monitoring and auditing.
  • Network maintenance
  • Disk defragmentation, disk cleanup, and other general disk maintenance operations.
  • Required upgrades to system physical memory or storage capacity.
  • Installation or upgrade of applications or services.
  • System performance tuning.
  • Regular backup of system data for the purpose of disaster recovery.

In the event that any of these activities will require downtime to perform, every effort will be made to perform the procedure in order to minimize the impact on those who use the affected systems or services. The following time periods will be used to carry out {{planned downtime" activities:

  • After hours during the week or on weekends.
  • First Friday of every month, from 12:00 pm - until (time subject to change) when support is needed for outage.

Emergency Downtime

Unexpected circumstances may arise where systems or services will be interrupted without prior notice. Every effort will be made to avoid such circumstances. However, incidences may arise involving a

compromise of system security, the potential for damage to equipment or data, or emergency repairs. Affected users will be contacted via the Notification of Downtime mechanism described below.

Notification of Downtime

Users will be notified of downtime according to the following procedure:

  • The system administrator for the system in question is responsible for notifying all identified users of "planned downtime", as well as any unplanned interruptions to system availability as they occur.
  • In the case of a "planned downtime," the system administrator will notify all affected users via email. In the case of an "emergency downtime," the system administrator will send out an email. In the event that email is unavailable due to "emergency downtime", the system administrator will contact department heads by telephone to inform them of the situation.
  • If general maintenance procedures will cause "planned downtime" during regular business hours, then the system administrator must notify system users 3 days prior to the "planned downtime".
  • In the event of "emergency downtime", the system administrator will use his/her discretion in notifying end users of the situation. In emergency circumstances where time is of the essence, it may not be possible for the system administrator to engage in normal downtime notification activities. When emergency measures are completed and a prognosis has been determined, then the system administrator will contact all users with information on system status and/or information on additional expected downtime.

All downtime announcements will provide the following information:

  • Systems and services that are affected, as well as suggested alternatives to them (if any).
  • Start and end times of the "planned downtime" period, or estimated time to recovery in the event of Emergency Downtime.
  • The reasons why the downtime is taking place.
  • Any ongoing problems that are anticipated as a result of the downtime event.

Requests for Availability

If you foresee a critical need of a system during a period of "planned downtime", then contact the OIT Director in advance to make an appeal. The utmost effort will be made to reschedule the downtime or make alternative arrangements for required resources.