EGI Change Management
The EGI Change Management (CHM) Process Introduction
This is the homepage on the EGI Wiki of the EGI Change Management Process. 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 Change Request document (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:
- The change owner submits a completed Change Request (File:Request+for+change+template.doc) to: change-mgmnt@rt.egi.eu. The change owner will normally be the Service Owner (listed below)
- 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.
- The CAB reviews the change with the change owner present. Once approved, the change may proceed.
- At the next CAB meeting following the change, the change is reviewed and the ticket closed, with the intervention date recorded.
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 is about to take place 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, Bartosz 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. The RT link references the original change that was approved by the CAB.
Service |
Title |
Description |
RT Ticket Reference |
Helpdesk - GGUS |
Install patches on GGUS servers |
The installation of patches is required on all GGUS servers for keeping the system secure. |
RT#12262 |
EGI DataHub |
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.
Federated Change Management
The EGI Change Management is a centralized process for the EGI Federation. If organisations are providing EGI branded services and are already running their own internal Change Management process, they may continue to do so if their process meets the minimum requirements of ISO20000. If any changes are planned that have the potential to impact other EGI branded services, then the EGI Change Management process should be informed in advance.
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 Process Definition, including Goals, Requirements, Roles and Definitions
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
Contact
If you have any questions relating to EGI Change Management, please contact Matthew Viljoen (matthew.viljoen AT egi.eu).