IT at Johns Hopkins is planning a system upgrade on the SYMPA server for this Thursday evening, Feb. 26. SYMPA is the server that runs all email mailing lists with addresses ending in "@lists.johnshopkins.edu."
The upgrade will be performed during a window that begins at 7 p.m. on Thursday and closes six hours later, at 1 a.m. on Friday.
For some period of time during that window, SYMPA will be offline and will not relay messages to mailing list subscribers. Those messages will not be lost. They will, however, be delayed. They will be held in queue; when the server returns to service, the queued messages will be relayed to list subscribers.
The upgrade may be completed and service restored before 1 a.m. If, however, changes cannot be completed in the scheduled window, the upgrade will be called off and rescheduled. Service will be restored by 1 a.m. using the current software.
After the upgrade is complete, users should not notice any changes other than increased reliability and speed of service.
SYMPA users with questions may contact Pete Godfrey of the Enterprise Directory and Messaging group in IT at Johns Hopkins. He may be reached at pgodfrey@jhu.edu or 667-208-6162.
