At Bristol, we only take our system offline once a year, for three days at the end of July or beginning of August. During that time, we make our Test environment available to staff and students, with a copy of the Production environment on it. We make it clear that this is "read only", and any changes made to it will be lost. 

Hanrahan Highland


On 4 April 2014 15:33, Ceri Richards <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
Hi Kate,

We've gone down the read-only clone route a few times during major upgrades which have involved backend OS or DB overhauls. So leave the old/existing environment as is, re-brand as read-only and migrate the data to a new set of servers. As we're fully virtualised this isn’t too much hassle, although the investment time-wise is high so I wouldn’t offer it unless it was for a major update or backend overhaul.

Hope this helps.

Ceri Richards
Senior Systems Administrator
IT Services
University of South Wales
Room J147, Johnstown Building
R [log in to unmask]
c +44 0(1443) 654138

-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Flynn, Sharon
Sent: 03 April 2014 14:19
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Upgrades and maintenance - what do you do?

Good question Kate. Like others who have responded, this has also been an issue for us. It's less problematic since we went Managed Hosted, but we still need one time during the summer when we can upgrade.

We schedule dates well in advance and let our community know these. Last year we went with a Friday in mid-July, which is probably the least busy period of the year. Blackboard came offline on Friday evening and was back up and working by Saturday afternoon. Like others have suggested, we advertise a slightly longer period than expected, just in case.



Dr Sharon Flynn
Assistant Director, Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching National University of Ireland, Galway

Phone: 091 493481
http://about.me/sharonlflynn



-----Original Message-----
From: Blackboard/Courseinfo userslist [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Kate Wright
Sent: 03 April 2014 12:36
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Upgrades and maintenance - what do you do?

Hi all

Like everyone else I'm sure, it's getting harder and harder to find time to take Blackboard out of service for maintenance, upgrades etc. Here in Aber we have permission for 2 days in the Christmas vacation, 2 days at Easter and 4 in the summer. However, with more distance learning, CPD etc etc, the concept of teaching/learning not happening vacations is starting to look a little old fashioned.

I wondered whether you'd be willing to let us know what you do about arranging downtime on your systems, and whether anyone does anything clever to allow read-only access? Happy to summarise responses for the list if people would find that helpful.

Many thanks in advance
Kate W

-----
Kate Wright
E-learning Development Officer
Aberystwyth University

[log in to unmask]
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--
Hanrahan Highland
E-learning Support

Telephone: +44 (0)117 33 14405 

Education Support Unit,
University of Bristol, 
8-10 Berkeley Square, 
Bristol, BS8 1HH