REPORTING A CRITICAL SERVICE OUTAGE: If you need to report a critical service outage or request an emergency repair during this time, call the UIT Service Desk at 650-725-4357 (5-HELP).
University IT Support Coverage for Winter Closure 2023/24
Winter Closure Dates
Stanford University suspends operations, where feasible, during the winter holiday season, starting 5 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 20, 2023, through Wednesday, Jan. 3, 2024. Accordingly, many University IT (UIT) offices will close or provide limited support during winter closure.
We will resume full support on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024 at 8 a.m.
More information about service orders, support and system outages is provided below.
NOTE: We will maintain monitoring and support for critical services throughout winter closure.
Stanford University
A small number of staff will be on hand to provide limited support to university offices that must remain open. These staff members will provide operator services, monitor and support critical applications, process high-priority service orders, and provide priority response to urgent help requests. You may experience longer-than-normal response times during this period. More details on some public-facing offices are included below.
Unless otherwise noted below, UIT offices will be closed in observance of Christmas and New Year’s Day on Monday, Dec. 25, Tuesday, Dec. 26, and Monday, Jan. 1; however the 24/7 IT Operations Center will be staffed to respond to routine technical issues, critical repairs, and systems and application issues.
- Service orders — telephone, network, data center
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Get your orders in early. The cut-off date for orders to be completed before winter closure is Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023. Requests received after that date will be processed on a best-effort basis before winter closure, but may not be processed until the university re-opens on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024. Orders received during winter closure will not be processed until after Jan. 4, 2024.
- UIT Service Desk
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The UIT Service Desk staff will be available 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday by phone during the break. Urgent after hour calls will be handled by the 24x7 IT Operations Center. Requests submitted through services.stanford.edu will be monitored throughout the winter closure during the hours of 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., with the exception of weekends, and Dec. 25, 26, and Jan. 1, with priority response given to urgent requests related to system outages. To report an emergency or a critical need at any time during the break, call the UIT Service Desk at 650-725-4357 (5-HELP). Responses to all other help requests will be handled as quickly as possible, but you may experience longer-than-normal response times until we return to full staffing levels on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024.
- Operator Services Center
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Telephone operator services will continue uninterrupted during winter closure, including Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. You may call 650-723-2300 (or 200 from a campus phone) as usual to receive Stanford directory assistance service.
- ID Card Office and building access
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The Stanford ID Card Office, located upstairs at Tresidder Union, closes at 1 p.m. on Wednesday, Dec. 20 and remains closed throughout winter closure. During the winter closure period, building access through Stanford’s door access system (i.e., Lenel) is preprogrammed to require card access during all hours. Building managers can alter that schedule as they choose. You should report system issues to the UIT Service Desk at 650-725-4357 (5-HELP).
- Mobile device services
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To avoid holiday season delivery issues, the cut-off date for orders to be completed before winter closure is Friday, Dec. 15, 2023, for any order being shipped to a campus location. Any order that will be shipped to a personal residence may be placed no later than Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. Orders placed during winter closure will not be processed until normal operations resume on Thursday, Jan 4, 2024. International plan changes for travel during the winter closure will need to be submitted by Monday, Dec. 18, 2023, to avoid a rush fee. Support for Stanford mobile devices, including device activation, international plan changes (with fee assessed), and technical support, will continue Monday through Friday, 8 am. to 5 pm., through the UIT Mobile Device Service Desk at 650-725-4357 opt 3 (5-HELP) support line. Please note that support will not be available on the following university holidays: Dec. 25, 26, 2023, and Jan 1, 2024.
- Administrative/business applications
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All production applications supported by the Enterprise Technology unit of University IT will continue to be available during the winter closure. This includes Axess, PeopleSoft (Student Administration, HR, STARS), all Oracle applications (iProcurement, Expense Requests, PCard, iJournals, etc.), EAM (Enterprise Asset Management), PostGrads, Gift Transmittals, Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE), Registry web applications, ID Card applications (Lenel, CS Gold, Exacq), middleware and integration services (StanfordYou, ServiceNow, SUNetID, Accounts application, Authority Manager, etc.), and Stanford Email and Calendar. Staff will monitor applications to ensure they remain running, but no upgrades, enhancements, or non-emergency changes will be made. UIT Service Desk assistance will be available on a limited basis for urgent issues only. Users requiring assistance during this period should submit a Help request. Response times may be longer than normal.
- Network Engineering and firewall service requests
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Network Engineering staff will not be available to provide assistance on projects or to implement firewall rules or service requests during the winter closure. As always, all production network infrastructure will continue to be monitored 24/7 with on-call engineers available to address any production network outages and issues. During the winter closure, the SUNet Network Backbone team will have daily network maintenance windows from 4 a.m. to 8 a.m. to make minor changes to improve the SUNet infrastructure or to address any critical production issues that arise. Please be aware that you *may* experience intermittent disruptions in service during these hours.
Get your firewall rules changes in early. In order to ensure that your firewall rule requests will be completed prior to the winter closure, please have all firewall requests approved no later than 5 p.m. on Friday, Dec. 15, 2023. Firewall rule requests submitted after that time will not be processed until we return from winter break starting on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024, and will be implemented in the order in which they are received.
- Research computing services (including Farmshare)
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Stanford Research Computing administers and supports a variety of servers and services for the research community, including Nero GCP, Sherlock, Oak storage, Farmshare, Carina, the SCG cluster, PHS systems, the license server, the Research Computing Facility at Forsythe (RCF), and the Stanford Research Computing Facility (SRCF) at SLAC. During winter closure, Research Computing staff will make a best effort to respond to full catastrophic system, service, and/or facility outages within 24 hours based on the availability of technical staff and, in some instances, vendor availability. However, staff will generally not be available to respond to individual inquiries/problems or account creation requests, including questions submitted via email (srcc-support@stanford.edu) or our Slack channels, nor will they be able to troubleshoot individual server, switch, or storage array issues. While the UIT Service Desk will be staffed, questions that they cannot address directly will be queued for resolution with, as noted earlier, the exception of total service outages. Research teams with self-managed equipment housed in the SRCF will be contacted in advance of winter closure regarding changes in facility and SLAC campus access processes during the break. Building environmental systems will, of course, be monitored throughout, but no new equipment can be added to the facility over winter break.
- DOC Activations (Department Operations Center)
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If the DOC needs to be activated to address escalated incidents that impact delivery of IT services to the Stanford community, DOC Incident Commander will be scheduled as follows:
Week of 12/18/23 - Julie Schloss
Week of 12/25/23 - Matthew Ricks
Week of 1/1/24 - Julie Schloss
Stanford Health Care and Stanford Children’s Health
Unless otherwise noted below, UIT offices will be closed in observance of Christmas and New Year’s Day on Monday, Dec. 25, Tuesday, Dec. 26, and Monday, Jan. 1; however the 24/7 IT Operations Center will be staffed to respond to critical repair and systems issues. More details on some public-facing offices are included below.
- Service orders (i.e., telephone)
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Staff will be available to provide the normal service with the following exceptions: our offices will be closed on Monday, Dec. 25, Tuesday, Dec. 26, and Monday, Jan. 1.
- Operator Services Center
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Telephone operator services will continue, uninterrupted, during winter closure, including on the Christmas and New Year’s Day holidays. You may call 650-723-4000 for Stanford Health Care, or 650-497-8000 for Stanford Children’s Health as usual to receive Stanford directory assistance service. Operator-assisted paging services to the hospitals will also continue during winter closure. Service Now Tickets for changes to codes or on-call schedules will be serviced on an emergency basis; please flag your tickets appropriately if your request cannot wait.
- Paging services
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Paging Services will have limited operations during winter closure. Support is available through 5-7101 (650-725-7101) and via services.stanford.edu. The Paging Services office in the basement of Stanford Health Care (Room HC009) will have on-site support available Monday, Dec. 18, and Friday, Dec. 29, from 8 am to 4 pm. Staff will also be available for phone support from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Dec. 21-22, Dec. 27-29, and Jan. 2-3. Staff will return on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024. Loaner pagers will be available at the Stanford Hospital Security Office on holidays and after hours.
- UIT Service Desk
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The UIT Service Desk staff will be available 8 am to 5 pm Monday through Friday by phone during the break. Urgent after hour calls will be handled by the 24x7 IT Operations Center. Requests submitted through services.stanford.edu will be monitored throughout the winter closure during the hours of 8 am to 5 pm, with the exception of weekends, and Dec. 25, 26, and Jan. 1, with priority response given to urgent requests related to system outages. To report an emergency or a critical need at any time during the break, call the UIT Service Desk at 650-725-4357 (5-HELP). Responses to all other help requests will be handled as quickly as possible, but you may experience longer-than-normal response times until we return to full staffing levels on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024.
- Mobile device services
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To avoid holiday season delivery issues, the cut-off date for orders to be completed before winter closure is Friday, Dec. 15, 2023, for any order being shipped to a campus location. Any order that will be shipped to a personal residence may be placed no later than Monday, Dec. 18, 2023. Orders placed during winter closure will not be processed until normal operations resume on Thursday, Jan. 4, 2024. International plan changes for travel during the winter closure will need to be submitted by Monday, Dec. 18, 2023, to avoid a rush fee. Support for Stanford mobile devices, including device activation, international plan changes (with fee assessed), and technical support, will continue Monday through Friday, 8 am. to 5 pm., through the UIT Mobile Device Support Desk at 650-725-4357 opt 3 (5-HELP) support line. Please note that support will not be available on the following university holidays: Dec. 25, 26, 2023, and Jan 1, 2024.
