Enterprise applications managed by the Department of Enterprise Services (DES) will be taken offline one weekend in December so that servers can be moved from Office Building 2 to the new state data center operated by Consolidated Technology Services.

eClient workstations also will be taken off-line during at least one Sunday in December. eClient is the internal network used by DES, Office of Financial Management (OFM) and the Governor's Office.

DES anticipates making this move quickly, in part, because the agency has been able to reduce the physical data center footprint from 28 racks to seven by virtualizing infrastructure through updated technology, consolidating to eliminate old legacy systems and standardizing to reduce the number of applications supported.

Outage times and dates

The Enterprise application outages will happen:

• Saturday Dec. 27 and Sunday Dec. 28, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. each day

Most enterprise applications will be affected including network files shares used by DES, the Office of Financial Management (OFM) and Consolidated Technology Services (CTS), with some exceptions. The following systems are not impacted during the application outage:

• Human Resources Management System (HRMS) for functions like checking leave balances
• Washington Electronic Business Solution (WEBS)
• Agency Financial Reporting System (AFRS)
• Justice Information Network Data Exchange (JINDEX)
• Enterprise Solutions Platform (ESP)
• Print and Imaging Systems (except Monarch)
• Facilities Systems (except new Velocity)
• Production Services Systems

The eClient outage is scheduled for:

• Sunday Dec. 21, from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Maintenance dates

To prepare for these planned outages, scheduled maintenance on Thursday evenings will occur until the end of the year. During these Thursdays, applications and workstations may experience brief periods of interruption from 10 p.m. to 6 a.m.

• Nov. 20
• Dec. 4
• Dec. 11

Backup dates

Every effort will be made to complete work during the December enterprise system and eClient outage dates. However, as a precaution, Enterprise Services has scheduled the following backup dates from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m.

• Enterprise systems: Saturday Jan. 3 and Sunday Jan. 4
• eClient: Sunday Jan. 4

What's not affected

CTS services such as email and phones will not be affected. The following web sites and services also are not affected: the Learning Management System (LMS) DES.wa.gov, HR.wa.gov, Access.wa.gov, Surplus Online Auctions, and NEOGOV.

History

When DES was formed all — or portions of — the following departments were merged: General Administration, Printing, Personnel, Information Services, and the Office of Financial Management. These agencies were all using different types of systems and hardware.

Improvements

DES has been working to modernize and standardize its systems and hardware for:

• Easier maintenance, including reducing the number of spare parts that must be stocked
• Increased reliability and security
• Quicker and easier updates, which helps improve security
• More effective, automated backup of systems
• Less dependency on aging hardware, which can lead to fewer outages and incidents

Questions?

If you have questions, please contact the DES IT Support 4U, (360) 407-2244.