There will be a brief, scheduled outage of the EPA Host System on Sunday, July 12th. The EPA Host System will become unavailable for a short time between 8:00 p.m. and midnight EDT. The actual downtime should be less than a half hour. However, the specific time is not known because there are a number of servers which are involved in this planned outage, and the EPA Host System is only one of these servers. (Note this will also affect access to the CAMD Business System.)

The planned outage is to implement technology to increase the bandwidth of an internal connections within EPA's server infrastructure.

ECMPS users who attempt to connect during the actual time that the EPA Host System is unavailable will receive an error. ECMPS Support is recommending that users NOT attempt to connect to the EPA Host System during the hours of 8:00 p.m. until midnight EDT on Sunday, July 12th in order to avoid any problems.

Labels: Scheduled Outage

Prior to the next submission period, CAMD will release a Service Pack 2 for the current version of the ECMPS Client Tool. The Service Pack will fix a number of bugs and include some minor enhancements. The full list of what bugs have been fixed and what enhancements have been added will be released when the Service Pack 2 is made available.

In order to complete the release of Service Pack 2, the EPA Host System will be unavailable from June 8 through June 17. The release is scheduled to take place on June 17th.

During the time of the outage, users will NOT be able to:

• Log in to the EPA Host System from the Client Tool.


• Perform the initial synchronization which is the last step in installing the Client Tool.


• Synchronize data from the EPA Host System.


• Retrieve data from the EPA Host System.


• Submit data to the EPA Host System.

Labels: Scheduled Outage

At 9:00 a.m. EDT on Thursday, May 14th, access to the EPA Host System will be interrupted for no longer than 10 minutes in order to perform routine maintenance.

If you experience problems attempting to connect to the EPA Host around this time, please wait until at least 9:10 a.m. EDT to attempt to connect to the EPA Host System.

All of the following Client Tool functionality which involve connecting to the EPA Host System are affected: logging in to the EPA Host System, synchronizing, retrieving data, and submitting data.

Any questions related to this outage should be sent to technical support.

Labels: Scheduled Outage

The email ticketing system, Request Tracker, which is used for processing all technical support requests sent via email will be down for scheduled maintenance from 12:30 p.m. until 2:30 p.m. EDT today, March 27, 2009.

Any email sent during that time will be queued up on the email server. Once the maintenance is complete, all emails in the queue will be processed by Request Tracker.

Note, also that any email sent during the maintenance period will NOT receive an automatic response.

If you have any questions, please call technical support.

Labels: Scheduled Outage

There are a number of odds and ends that need to be mentioned.

1. As has been previously reported, the access to the production EPA Host System will be unavailable from March 9th until March 17th when the next version of the Client Tool software is scheduled to be released. (By the way, as of now, everything seems to be on schedule to release the software on March 17th.)
   
   Sources who have been working with technical support in order to submit 2008Q4 data have been informed about the fact that, in some cases, they will need to wait until the release of the next version of the software to complete their submission.


2. Second, ECMPS Client Tool Preview (CTP) is ending on March 13th. Everyone who has been working with the CTP and has not installed the production version, should plan on switching to the production version once it becomes available. Note, you cannot upgrade from the CTP to the production version. You must install the production version. If you want you can uninstall the CTP, but it is not necessary.
   
   Under ECMPS, it is no longer necessary to have a test environment such as was found in ETS-FTP. In ECMPS, all of your data are evaluated before you submit your data to the EPA. In other words, because the evaluation of the data takes place in the Client Tool, there is no need to submit your data to a test environment. All data which are submitted to the EPA from the Client Tool have already been fully evaluated. (There is an option to submit data with critical errors, but this should only be used in order to submit data to meet the submission deadline, and the data submitted with critical errors must be resubmitted without critical errors as soon as possible.)


3. The support Web site is undergoing some work to improve the delivery of information. In conjunction with the switch to mandatory reporting under ECMPS, the ECMPS Support Web site will be updated to reflect that change. References to testing and the CTP will be removed, and the Web site will have a cleaner, easier-to-use interface to allow stakeholders faster access to support information. The improvements to the Web site can already be seen in the enhanced search functionality. Perhaps, you have used the Web site search previously and did not find it very useful. The search is much more powerful and comprehensive in its indexing of all of the information which is found on the Web site. Look for the complete Web site change to take place around the time of the release of the new version.


4. The next version of the Client Tool which will be released on or about March 17th will be available for 64-bit versions of Windows XP and Windows Vista. The version which will be available for download from the ECMPS Support Web site and the EPA Web site will be 32-bit versions. Users who need 64-bit versions should contact Technical Support.
   
   We are not putting both versions on the Web sites in order to limit confusion in this first mandatory reporting time frame. Most users are still working with 32-bit versions of the Microsoft operating systems. As time goes on, newer machines will have the 64-bit version, and that version will be made available from the ECMPS Support and EPA Web sites.


5. Finally, a reminder about keeping up-to-date with ECMPS. Currently, there are several ways including simply viewing the Web site. The site includes FAQs, information about Known Issues and EPA Host System access status in addition to all of the documentation and other information available to assist you in reporting data and using the Client Tool. For the latest updates that affect your reporting of data, you can sign up to receive emails the day after a post is added to the Support Blog. Finally, for even quicker information, we have recently added Twitter. This is a microblog which will send you information shortly after it is posted. And, you can have Twitter send that information to your cell phone if that is the best way for you to get that information. All of these ways of communication will only become more important in the next several weeks as we move into the 2009Q1 reporting month.

Labels: Release Schedule Information, Scheduled Outage, Technical Support

The EPA Host System will not be available on Saturday, January 24, 2009 from 8:00 AM until 5:00 PM EST. The EPA Host System downtime is part of an EPA-wide scheduled maintenance outage.

Labels: Scheduled Outage

The EPA Host System outage which was announced last week has begun. It will continue from today, December 8th until Tuesday, December 16th. The outage affects both production and CTP users. The EPA Host System will be unavailable during this time in order to perform system updates for the new release of the Client Tool. The new release of the Client Tool for both production and CTP is scheduled for December 17th. At that time, the EPA Host System will again be available.

During the outage, the following functionality in the production version and the CTP will not be available:

1. Log in to the EPA Host System
2. Synchronize with the EPA Host System
3. Retrieve data from the EPA Host System
4. Submit data to the EPA Host System
5. Complete the initial synchronization which is part of the installation.

After the update has been completed, a blog post will be added to announce that the update is complete and the access to the EPA Host System is again available.

Labels: Industry Testing, Scheduled Outage

Please note that you will be unable to connect to the EPA Host System from December 8th through December 16th. This outage affects both production and CTP users. The EPA Host System will be unavailable during this time in order to perform system updates for the new release of the Client Tool. The new release of the Client Tool for both production and CTP is scheduled for December 17th. At that time, the EPA Host System will again be available.

During the outage, the following functionality in the production version and the CTP will not be available:

1. Log in to the EPA Host System
2. Synchronize with the EPA Host System
3. Retrieve data from the EPA Host System
4. Submit data to the EPA Host System
5. Complete the initial synchronization which is part of the installation.

After the update has been completed, a blog post will be added to announce that the update is complete and the access to the EPA Host System is again available.

Labels: Industry Testing, Scheduled Outage

The National Computer Center has scheduled maintenance on November 15, 2008 which will prevent Client Tool users from connecting to the EPA Host System. The scheduled downtime will be from 6:00 a.m. EST until 1:00 p.m. EST on Saturday, November 15, 2008. The downtime will affect both production and CTP users.

During the outage, the following functionality will not be available:

1. Log in to the EPA Host System
2. Synchronize with the EPA Host System
3. Retrieve data from the EPA Host System
4. Submit data to the EPA Host System
5. Complete the initial synchronization which is part of the installation.

This outage will not affect using the Client Tool while working "offline".

Labels: Scheduled Outage

Please note that you will be unable to connect to the EPA Host System from September 8th through September 16th. The EPA Host System will be unavailable during this time in order to perform system updates.

During the outage, the following functionality in the production version and the CTP will not be available:

1. Log in to the EPA Host System
2. Synchronize with the EPA Host System
3. Retrieve data from the EPA Host System
4. Submit data to the EPA Host System
5. Complete the initial synchronization which is part of the installation.

After the update has been completed, a blog post will be added to announce that the update is complete and the access to the EPA Host System is again available.

Labels: Industry Testing, Scheduled Outage

Due to scheduled service, users of both the production and CTP versions of the Client Tool may experience problems connecting to each version's respective EPA Host System from 5:00 a.m EDT on Saturday, August 16, 2008 through 5:00 p.m. EDT on Saturday, August 16, 2008.

During the outage, the following functionality may not be available:

1. Log in to the EPA Host System
2. Synchronize with the EPA Host System
3. Retrieve data from the EPA Host System
4. Submit data to the EPA Host System
5. Complete the initial synchronization which is part of the installation.

This outage will not affect using the Client Tool while working "offline".

Labels: Scheduled Outage

Due to scheduled service, users of both the production and CTP versions of the Client Tool may experience problems connecting to each version's respective EPA Host System from 7:00 p.m EDT on Sunday, August 3, 2008 through 8:00 a.m. EDT on Monday, August 4, 2008. The actual downtime will be a relatively short period of time, but it has not been specified when the ECMPS server would be serviced during that time period.

During the outage, the following functionality may not be available:

1. Log in to the EPA Host System
2. Synchronize with the EPA Host System
3. Retrieve data from the EPA Host System
4. Submit data to the EPA Host System
5. Complete the initial synchronization which is part of the installation.

This outage will not affect using the Client Tool while working "offline".

Labels: Scheduled Outage