A scheduled outage of the Lab's IMAP email system this week will improve the response time when unexpected outages occur. The scheduled shutdown is being carried out to allow the central server to be replaced with five servers. The change will also increase the amount of storage, which is quickly being filled (and will be stuffed completely by early June).

Under the new server system, called multiplexing, IMAP accounts will be divided up among the five new servers. This means that if there is a server problem, it will likely only affect one-fifth of the IMAP accounts. It will also allow the system to be restored five times faster as their will be fewer accounts to restore.

The outage has been scheduled to start at 7 p.m. Thursday, May 31, and is expected to last six hours. The following services will be unavailable during this time:

• IMAP4 email (including the Web interface)
• LDAP Password Changer — During the downtime, you will not be able to change your LDAP password using this website.
• All ISS applications that use LDAP authentication including IRIS, AMS, NetReq, the Job Hazards Questionnaire, Chemical Exchange and Hear Database.
• calendar.lbl.gov — enterprise calendaring
• ldap.lbl.gov — directory/phonebook lookup

All these services are expected to be back in operation by 1 a.m. Friday, June 1. Incoming email will be queued during the downtime and delivered as soon as the system is back in service. If you have any questions about this downtime, please contact the LBNL Help Desk at http://www.lbl.gov/help/ or 486-HELP (4357).