EGI Change Management
The EGI Change Management (CHM) Process Introduction
This is the homepage on the EGI Wiki of the EGI Change Management Process.
Ensuring effective change management within the EGI’s production IT environment is extremely important in ensuring high-quality delivery of IT services.
The purpose of the IT Change Management Policy is to manage higher risk changes in a planned and predictable manner in order to assess risks, assign resources, and minimize any potential negative impact to services. This is done by requiring change owners to prepare a Request for Change (File:Request+for+change+template.doc) where a set of standard questions regarding the change are answered and presented to the Change Advisory Board (CAB).
The CAB meets to assess and approve changes and is coordinated on the egi-cab@mailman.egi.eu mailing list. It consists of employees of the EGI Foundation including the Technical Director and members of the senior operations and management team. Currently the chair of the CAB is Matthew Viljoen. Other members include: Tiziana Ferrari, Vincenzo Spinoso, Alessandro Paolini, Diego Scardacci, Peter Solagna and Gergely Sipos. Others may be invited to join to provide additional expertise when discussing specific changes.
The basic process is as follows: 1. The change owner submits a completed Request for Change document (File:Request+for+change+template.doc) to: change-mgmnt@rt.egi.eu. This will normally be the Service Owner (listed below) 2. The change risk (likelihood X impact) should then be evaluated by the Service Owner and recorded as custom fields on the ticket in preparation for the CAB review. Further details about evaluating risk may be found here: File:IMS-RMGuideline-060117-1020-4791.pdf. 3. The CAB reviews the change with the change owner present. Once approved, the change may proceed.
In addition, repeated changes of a similar type may be approved as a Standard Change by the CAB. Subsequent changes do not then require explicit approval by the CAB, it is sufficient for the Service Owner to submit a ticket to the "change-mgmnt@rt.egi.eu" recording the change and confirming that it is a standard change.
Click https://documents.egi.eu/public/ShowDocument?docid=2944 for a more detailed presentation introducing the process.
Services that fall under Change Control
Service Title |
Service Owner |
EGI DataHub |
Lukasz Dutka, Barosz Kryza |
EGI AppDB |
Marios Chatziangelou |
Operations Portal |
Cyril L'Orphelin |
Service Monitoring - ARGO |
Kostas Koumantaros |
Configuration Database - GOCDB |
David Meredith |
Helpdesk - GGUS |
Guenter Grein, Helmut Dres |
Accounting - Accounting repository (Computing and Grid) |
Adrian Coveney |
Accounting - Accounting Portal |
Iván Díaz Álvarez |
Messaging |
Christos Kanellopoulos |
Training Infrastructure |
Gergely Sipos |
CheckIn |
Nicolas Liampotis |
Standard Changes
This is the list of standard, or pre-approved changes, listed by Service.
Helpdesk - GGUS
Title |
Description |
RT Ticket Reference |
Install patches on GGUS servers |
The installation of patches is required on all GGUS servers for keeping the system secure. |
RT#12262 |
EGI DataHub
Title |
Description |
RT Ticket Reference |
Upgrade Onedata on the EGI DataHub |
Upgrade of the EGI DataHub Onezone. |
RT#12396 |
Software Development changes
Most changes that fall under the scope of CHM will likely be to production service delivery (e.g. upgrades, major hardware changes etc). However, changes may also be in the form of software development to production services. For example, if a user community requests new functionality from developers that requires 2 months of development effort, there may be a risk of insufficient funded effort, or reduced manpower elsewhere in the project. This can especially be the case if such development is unforeseen at the beginning of a project. In such cases, persons managing services are encouraged to bring such changes to the CAB for discussion, approval and (where appropriate) appropriation of development effort.
Full Procedure Documentation
CHM procedure documentation is available on the internal EGI Confluence. Please note that these pages are only accessible to EGI Employees, so PDF versions of these pages are additionally available here:
Change Management Policy
CHM1 - Manage changes including emergency changes
CHM2 - Maintain the list, descriptions and step-by-step workflows for well-known and recurring changes