ET and NLA - Outage scheduled for Monday 5th, plus possible at risk period

Last week, problems were discovered in the DB infrastructure underlying the tape system (CASTOR). It has not yet been possible to identify causes of these problems, so the hardware providers are now involved and are requiring extensive investigations which will mean that the tape system will be out of service from 10:00 on Monday the 5th of August. It is scheduled to be back on-line by 16:00.

Even after this outage, it is possible that the cause will not have been found, or may require further work. This means that it is possible that there may be further problems without warning and so the system should be regarded as “at risk” until further notice. Updates as to the current situation on a regular basis will be provided.

During the “at risk” period, ingestion will be relatively unaffected as any errors will be retried automatically, but it is more advisable than usual for ET users to check that retrievals have completed via the ET Alerts Dashboard:
(http://et-monitor.fds.rl.ac.uk/et_user/ET_AlertWatch.php).
The NLA should retry automatically.

Apologies for the short notice and thank you for your patience.