Tshwane’s big IT shutdown

The City of Tshwane will shut down the network and hosting equipment supporting its Internet-related services from 8 to 11 August 2024, taking offline its website, email, electricity vending, and Internet access.

The metro says the downtime is necessary for its Internet service provider, the State Information Technology Agency (SITA), to upgrade the electrical infrastructure in its hosting data centre.

“During the upgrade process, electricity to the whole SITA data centre will be turned off,” it said.

“This interruption will also affect the City’s own network and server equipment, which are situated inside the SITA hosting facility.”

The municipality added that its equipment would be turned off in advance to protect it from potential harm, requiring it to be shut down over the long weekend.

It noted that some services could be restored sooner, depending on SITA’s progress. The following Internet-related services will be unavailable during the downtime:

• Internet access
• External email delivery
• City of Tshwane public-hosted websites
• Virtual private network access
• Electricity vending
• All other Internet-dependent City of Tshwane services

SITA’s work will include cutting power to the facility to install and commission new electrical distribution boards.

“ICT Division management apologises for any inconvenience as a result of the downtime. Any changes to the downtime will be communicated to all users and stakeholders in advance,” the City of Tshwane said.

The metro recently suffered an outage that temporarily disabled its IT services, including the prepaid electricity vending system.

The downtime was caused by an Internet connection outage on the same day that an update from cybersecurity vendor Crowdstrike sent all Windows PCs using its software into a blue screen of death boot loop.