CSCS has made a significant investment to replace our core network infrastructure used by the Biomedical Campus, SLCU and Zoology. The upgrades provide several benefits:

• The ability to leverage faster connections to JANET and the wider university
• Newer, more capable equipment configured in a highly available manner
• The new equipment will increase resiliency, where possible prevent down time and reduce recovery time in the event that an outage should occur.
• Be easier for CSCS staff to manage

The network team will be working diligently to transition to the new equipment with the minimum amount of down time possible, however there will be times when we need to interrupt service to move to the new equipment. The migration has been planned to allow for both the new and old equipment running in parallel for a time which will make the upgrade easier and allow us to roll back, should that be necessary.

We are planning to undertake any work that is disruptive during Wednesday evenings until the end of March, between 17:30 and 20:30. During this time network access should be considered ‘at risk’ for all users. We are, however, planning site specific work for these dates:

February 24^th: Zoology firewall migration
March 3^rd: SLCU Firewall Migration
March 17^th and 24^th: Biomedical Campus Firewall Migration

We will also be sending out the usual maintenance notifications and posting Twitter updates for the upcoming work.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email the CSCS Service Desk at Servicedesk@medschl.cam.ac.uk.