Y2K precaution: Many systems to be shut down for New Year's

By Beth Goelzer Lyons

To help ensure a smooth transition to the new millennium, many Cornell computer systems and services will be turned off for part or all of the New Year's Eve weekend.

"The university is officially closed over that weekend," explained Helen Mohrmann, director of Network and Computing Systems for Cornell Information Technologies (CIT). "Taking this action is both prudent in terms of managing the university's computing resources and in allowing staff to take time off to celebrate the holidays."

Up-to-date information about the availability of computer services will be posted at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/net-cgi/states/ and at http://www.cit.cornell.edu/y2k/ . Information also will be available from CIT by phone at 255-9900.

Shutting down most campus systems during the transition will enhance the university's ability to recover from any Year 2000 phenomena in time for the resumption of university business on Jan. 3. The systems are ready for the Y2K transition, but there is still the possibility of unforeseen glitches or a power outage.

Power failures cause serious hardware problems. Damages from a two-hour power failure at Cornell June 26, for instance, were estimated at $200,000 to $250,000. Cornell and New York State Electric and Gas Corp. do not believe there will be a power loss, but no guarantees can be made because of the interconnectedness of power systems throughout the United States.

"The most widely used and most mission-critical services will be down for just three hours to minimize the impact on the campus," said Mohrmann. Those three hours are needed to shut down and then restart the systems and to allow the clock to strike midnight across neighboring time zones in case Y2K problems elsewhere have local effects.

A larger group of services will be down for the weekend. A few services, used almost exclusively when the university is in session, will be down from Dec. 24 until Jan. 3. If there is a major disruption to local or regional infrastructure services, these plans may be altered.

Here is a list of the services that will be affected and when:

Schedule of Year 2000 service interruption plans

No break in service:

Three-hour break in service (Dec. 31, 11 p.m., to Jan. 1, 2 a.m.)

• E-mail services, including outgoing mail, the postoffice POP servers (typically accessed through Eudora), Traveler's Mail and Web E-mail.
• Cornell Electronic Directory (includes directory services in Bear Access, Eudora and CUinfo).
• ListProc (mailing lists with an address such as "_____-L@cornell.edu").
• Kerberos, SideCar and authorization (permit) services.
• EZ-Remote and Express Lane dial-up/modem services.
• Bear Access software updates.
• Cornell homepage server.
• EZ-Backup service (ADSM).
• Vantive trouble-tracking system.

Weekend break in service (Dec. 31,* 10 a.m., to Jan. 3, 6 a.m.)

• * CornellC, the IBM mainframe, will go offline at 10 p.m. Dec. 30.
  Starting at 8 a.m. Jan. 2, CIT will begin bringing systems back up for testing, with the goal of having all services in operation by 6 a.m. Jan. 3.
• All administrative applications, including Just the Facts, Student Employment, CoursEnroll, Faculty Advisor, COLTS II, Kronos and PEDL (Position and Employee Date Lookup).
• All Cornell Library services, including resources accessed through the Library Gateway and the online catalog (NOTIS).
• CU People (personal web pages).
• Usenet (newsgroups).
• CIT web and FTP server, including Computing at Cornell web site.
• Public NT (TechNet, Microsoft's technical support database) and AppleShare servers.
• CBT computer training system.
• Net-Print (printing in labs) and EZ-Print (printing from mainframe applications to networked office printers).
• Who I Am (directory listing updates).
• INSTRUCT servers, including CourseInfo.
• CISER systems, including Gaea.
• CornellC (goes offline at 10 p.m. on Dec. 30).

Extended break in service (Dec. 24 to Jan. 3)

• CIT/OHR training course registration system <register.cit.cornell.edu:8000/>.
• Academic Technology Center's IT service request system.
• ResNet web server.