Contact Systems Support

Weekdays During Business Hours

• Userids, holding IDs, file transfer accounts, or Samba shares: Submit the Unix Account Request Form.
• Other routine requests: Email systems-support@cornell.edu
• Urgent requests: Email systems-support@cornell.edu with “Urgent:” as the first word of the Subject line.
• Very urgent requests: Email systems-support@cornell.edu with “Urgent:” as the first word of the Subject line and provide as much detail as possible about the problem. Then call our On-call number - (607) 254-5700. Press “1” for server issues or “2” for storage issues. Leave a short message referencing your ticket number and with a callback number. Our On-call person will get back to you.
• For other requests related to CIT's Server Farm, see the List of Managed Server forms.

After Hours (Weekends plus Weekdays Outside Business Hours)

• Urgent and very urgent requests: Email systems-support@cornell.edu with “Urgent:” as the first word of the Subject line and provide as much detail as possible about the problem. Then call our On-call number - (607) 254-5700. Press “1” for server issues or “2” for storage issues. Leave a short message referencing your ticket number and with a callback number. Our On-call person will get back to you.

Scheduling Work and Off-Hours Requests

For routine requests, please submit early enough to allow sufficient time to complete the requests during normal business hours. If it's possible your request will require attention outside normal business hours, please include that information in your request so that a schedule can be coordinated to accommodate your needs.

For more information about scheduling maintenance, see the Scheduling Maintenance page.

Urgent and very urgent requests can be completed outside normal business hours.

What Happens When you Submit a Request?

An email request creates a ticket in the Remedy queue. You should immediately receive an automated response with the ticket number.

See the Response Time and Escalation page for more information.

Change and Maintenance Windows

Regular Maintenance Activities for Managed Servers

• Monthly patching for Windows and Linux servers.
• Emergency security patching for Policy 5.10 compliance.
• Routine hardware / firmware updates.

Potentially Disruptive Maintenance

Potentially disruptive maintenance for supporting on-premises infrastructure (storage systems, networks, etc.) will generally be performed in the following windows:

• Monday through Friday, 5:00 AM to 7:00 AM
• Saturday and Sunday, 6:00 AM to noon.

Applications which cannot withstand disruption during those times should employ additional application-level redundancy and/or cloud deployment to avoid business impact.

Support for Consultation, Special Tasks, and Projects

Occasionally, you may have projects or tasks that exceed the scope of a typical support ticket and require more infrastructure support than usual. Examples might include: infrastructure consultations for upcoming projects, app migrations to the cloud, significant application upgrades, complex changes or Managed Server "stand-by" support for after hours work. For the most part, we can accommodate these requests.

Please submit a ticket describing the type of work needed. Lead time is required so we can appropriately allocate staff.

Memorandum of Understanding (MOU)

If projects will require significant involvement of Managed Server staff over a long period of time, it may be necessary to craft a Memorandum of Understanding as described in the Service Level Management Practice document to appropriately capture the scope of work and authorize the commitment of resources.

Get More Information

• Mailing List (systems-users-L ): Anyone who is a user of a managed server should subscribe to this mailing list to receive information about patching, outages, and upgrades. To subscribe, email systems-users-L-request@cornell.edu with “Join” as the Subject line. (You don't need to put anything else in the message.)
• SF Info (Server Farm Information): SFInfo provides information about servers including technical contacts and watchers, on-call list locations, server description and services attached, monitoring and response schedule (9-5, 7x24, etc.) and billing data of record.
• SysDocs: Documentation for Managed Server customers regarding the service can be found at SysDocs.
• How-To Procedures: Documentation is available to assist you with creating on-call and contact lists. See the Overview of On-Call Lists, Contact Information, and Server Monitoring page.
• Training: CIT offers training courses in topics of interest to Systems Support clients. The current IT workshops and classes list is available online.