Keywords: USPO

Mission Statement

Change Management is the process by which the Global Research Network Operations Center coordinates network installations, maintenance, and enhancements on the respective networks. These duties include change approval, scheduling, and notification. Proactive communication with customers, vendors, and engineers allows minimal service disruption. Proposed network changes are tracked through the NOC’s trouble ticket system. Change requests are collected and documented in the trouble ticket system via web forms. The audit trail for this process is available to authorized personnel via the Internet.

Change Request Form
https://docs.globalnoc.iu.edu/noc-doc/links/grnoc-change-management-request-form2.html

 

 

Global Change Management Process Guidelines

  • Effective May 13, 2016, per Marianne Chitwood, Luke Fowler and Jon-Paul Herron, if a Change Management form is not used, maintenance will not be scheduled, except in the case of an emergency. * This, and the following policy applies to INTERNAL GlobalNOC engineers only.*

  • The change form affected field should be populated and verfied by the requesting engineer, using the Network Impact Tool (NIT). Change forms with blank affected fields will be rejected and returned to the requesting engineer for completion.

  • All Emergency Maintenance events must specify as such in community notification. 

  • If a maintenance request is submitted with less than 72 hours notice, and it is not an emergency, approval for network maintenance must come from either Jon Sherk or Jon-Paul Herron; or Jon Sherk and the Systems Group Manager for system maintenance, via phone.

  • NOC technicians are encouraged to double-check with the requesting Engineer to ensure the maintenance isn't flexible and notify he or she that if not, Management approval will be necessary. After the NOC technician checks with the engineer, and the engineer indicates they would like to proceed, the NOC Technician should send an e-mail to the manager(s) necessary for approval and copy the requesting engineer(s).

  • "Primary" maintenances are defined as one individual maintenance on one network. 

  • "Secondary" maintenances are defined as a related maintenance dependent on a primary maintenance, or a customer scheduled maintenance.  (For example, one primary maintenance can result in multiple secondary maintenances for the SD, where customer notification and ticket action are required to-do items.)

  • Preferred number of "primary" maintenances is two.  The SD can accommodate three if needed.

  • Engineers are asked to be "flexible" with their times, if at all possible.

  • Wednesday and Thursday mornings are the busiest for maintenance, from 0:00 to 8:00 am EDT.  Those nights have at least twice as many maintenances as Monday & Tuesday mornings.  The peak maintenance time of the week is Wednesday morning at 5:00 am EDT.

  • If maintenance calendar already has two primary maintenances at a given time, and another incoming maintenance time is "flexible," the SD will work with the engineer to reschedule.

  • Once a maintenance has been scheduled (flexible or not) and announced, it will *not* be rescheduled based on other incoming maintenances requests.

  • It is recommended that maintenance that would adversely affect monitoring be scheduled at non-peak maintenance times to mitigate the SD being "blind" to events on the primary network, or other networks.

  • As of May 13, 2016, Systems Engineers will be responsible for determining an impact for their maintenances and will be reponsible for providing a Wording to be used in Community Notification. This will be provided through the Change Management form. Any Systems maintenance without a Wording to be used in Community Notification will be required to have one provided before it can be scheduled.


Good times for maintenance affecting monitoring are:

  • Monday and Tuesday mornings from 12:00 am to 3:00 am EDT

  • Monday, Tuesday, & Friday mornings from 5:00 am to 7:00 am EDT

  • Anytime on Saturday or Sunday mornings


Change Review Turnaround Time

  • During “interim” period, turnaround for a maintenance being scheduled and announced is one business day.  However, it will usually be done in a much shorter period than that.

  • For maintenance initiated by the GlobalNOC, changes need to be submitted by 4 pm that day, or most likely will be processed the next business day.