Title of Service: Message Submission (smtp.ox.ac.uk)
Status of Document: This document describes services offered in June 2011.
Contents
1.1 The University’s message submission service is provided by a set of servers known collectively as smtp.ox.ac.uk . This system provides two types of access:
Available globally to users with valid Single Sign On credentials.
Available to Oxford IP addresses only.
2. Summary of OUCS’s responsibilities
2.1 The service operates at all times.
2.2 Operator cover is provided from 08:30 to 20:30 on weekdays. Periodic monitoring takes place outside these hours, and informal arrangements exist for staff to be called, but no funding is provided to make this contractual.
2.3 If a fault is notified between 09:00 and 17:00 on a working day, OUCS will commence investigation and correction within one hour (provided that no similar fault is also being handled by the same team).
2.4 If a fault is notified outside these hours, OUCS will use its best endeavours to attend the fault, but no funding is allocated to this purpose.
2.5 It is intended, as far as is possible, to maintain service of all components at all times.
2.6 The cluster of machines providing the service is resilient against failure of one or more machines.
2.7 The machines providing the service are distributed between the 129.67 and 163.1 networks.
2.8 No alternative exists to these facilities.
Hardware and Software Maintenance
2.9 The machines used are maintained under warranty by the supplier.
2.10 Software updates are applied by OUCS staff – this is done on a machine-by-machine basis, with no interruption to service.
2.11 There is no scheduled development time.
2.12 Information for departmental and college system administrators is given at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/smtp/submission/.
2.13 Notification of faults, outages, etc is circulated on the mailing list itss-announce@maillist.ox.ac.uk
2.14 Faults should be reported to OUCS Helpdesk.
2.15 User documentation is available at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/nexus/email/clients.xml.
3. Summary of client’s responsibilities
3.1 The requirements for University systems to make use of these services are given at http://www.oucs.ox.ac.uk/network/smtp/submission/.
Logs are kept of mail transactions. This includes RFC5321/RFC5322 message header information. Logs are retained for 90 days.