Major network changes will occur throughout the day on Tuesday 16 February 2010 which will result in service outages of indeterminate time.

These changes are major upgrades that will improve network performance considerably.

Customer systems will be upgraded with a minor version Debian Linux release. Scheduling for this upgrade will be ongoing throughout the week.

Tonight there will be a brief service interruption as servers are rebooted with the latest minor release of Debian.

The reboots are required since the release contains a kernel update.

These outages will occur between 01:00 and 01:30 PST 03 Jul.

Significant modifications are being made to the network topology. These changes should not impact service.

However, please make certain that you are using the latest settings and information provided to you, as legacy systems will be taken offline.

Various system services may be impacted tonight starting at midnight for approximately 45 minutes as core servers are updated to the newest Debian minor version release.

Updates to customer servers that have already been upgraded to Lenny will be scheduled since a kernel upgrade is included, and will require a system reboot.

A while ago, Debian released a new major version update to the codename "Lenny". This is a sweeping and complex update.

Various upgrade scenarios have been run to catch potential upgrade issues that might occur on customer systems. Testing is complete.

Customers will be contacted over this coming week to be notified about the availability of Debian's Lenny upgrade and encouraged to schedule an upgrade for their servers and/or workstations.

Two new servers have been added. One is using an old name helios, and is responsible for managing paravirtualization servers. The other, named hyakinthos has replaced hydra.

Since hydra has been replaced, there may be some service instability. However, every effort has been taken to mitigate any risk.

Please let us know if you notice any problems ASAP.

Servers will be going through reboots today around 17:30 PST to implement minor kernel modifications.

Any service interruption will be quite brief.

One of our main servers, xtej1118, died last night, resulting in a service interruption of approximately four hours while systems were moved to another machine.

Debian GNU/Linux has just released a major version upgrade. All customer servers and workstations will eventually need upgrading.

Currently, testing is being performed on contingencies encountered during the upgrade process which may adversely effect a smooth upgrade on customer systems.

After testing is complete, customers will be contacted to determine their plans or needs, and subsequent upgrades to their systems will be scheduled if desired.

We are very excited about this release. It's been a long time coming.