Subject: IETF server update and cutover on March 7th

From: IETF Chair <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 4 Mar 2016 17:18:49 +0200

All,

On Monday, March 7th, the IETF will be switching over from its current
primary server to a new server, with upgraded operating system and
application software.  This upgrade is one of many regular and ongoing
steps that we take to continue to improve the IETF's IT infrastructure
and capabilities.

The cutover process will begin at 9AM Pacific/12 Noon Eastern/1700
GMT.  In order to ensure a complete and clean migration, some services
will be halted during the cutover process.  We expect that the
Datatracker, including Internet-draft submissions, might be offline
and unavailable for 20-30 minutes.  Other dynamic websites, such as
the IAB, the IRTF, the IETF's Blog and all Mailman sites, will be
offline for a similar interval.  We expect that email messages sent to
or through the IETF, whether to mailing lists or secretariat
addresses, might be delayed, for from 30 minutes to perhaps an hour
depending on the retry rates of the originator's sending servers. We
also expect interruptions to Jabber conferencing capabilities. Other
services, such as the main IETF website, access to mail list archives
in their still-several versions, DNS services, and FTP and RSYNC
services should not be interrupted at all, save for a possible
connection drop when the new DNS records go live.

As with any migration, we believe we have accounted for and tested
everything, and are hoping for a problem-free migration.
Nonetheless, such operations are the culmination of months of work,
and it is almost inevitable that *something* will break, go wrong, or
at least "be different" than it was before... and there is always the
chance that parts of the process might take longer than anticipated.
There is no need to panic:  AMS IT and Secretariat staff, and members
of the Tools Team, will be online during and for
many hours after the cutover, testing, responding to any trouble
reports, and correcting any remaining issues we discover.

We ask for your patience during this process, and appreciate your
support as we work to improve the IETF's online experience.

Jari Arkko, IETF Chair
(on behalf of the staff and volunteers taking care of the IETF IT systems)