Hi Everyone,
As you may have noted, I am one of the two consultants WMUK took on to manage their technical infrastructure. Over the last few months myself and Emmanuel have been busy migrating to a new set of servers (see the progress & details http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/IT_Development).
This weekend will be one of the final stages in the migration; moving email and mailing lists to the new server.
If you have an @wikimedia.org.uk email address you may not be able to access it for brief periods on Sunday the 20th. From Monday service will be fully restored using the same details you have previously used.
* If you have email redirected to a third party/ personal account then nothing will change, you may receive one or two duplicate emails * If you use the WMUK webmail interface; the URL you use will not change, however the client has been upgraded (hopefully you prefer it!) and will look different. Your login details will not change. An additional webmail option may be deployed in the coming weeks if there is demand. * If you connect to email using POP3 or IMAP (e.g. via your phone or desktop email client) these details will not change, although you may have periods of not receiving mail on Sunday.
No email will be lost during this transition, though it may take a couple of hours to synchronize the two servers.
At the same time I will also be migrating the Mailing lists - including this one. Warning will be sent to this list an hour or so before the migration begins. On Sunday you may experience periods of outage, or emails that disappear never to reappear :)
*I recommend that you do not use the mailing list on Sunday.* * * I am sorry for this in advance; I've taken over a month to design a process which will cause the least disruption, however cannot guarantee 100% disruption free.
If you have any questions, or are seeing difficulties in the next week or so PLEASE GET IN TOUCH. I am available all day Sunday by email ( morton.thomas@googlemail.com) while I conduct the migration, and will be in the office on Monday (so you can get me via phone there if it is urgent).
Regards, Tom (ErrantX)