While the contractor team is busy fixing the numerous issues our testers identified last week, our IT shop has shifted gears to focus on standing-up a new server environment to support the Corporation’s systems, including My AmeriCorps, e-Grants, and eSPAN. The new ‘Blade Production’ environment will handle the increase in traffic My AmeriCorps will experience as members and grantees/project sponsors begin using the system in new ways.

Standing-up a new server environment is a complex task that involves the same kind of user testing we are doing for My AmeriCorps. ‘Tester fatigue’ is a concern as we turn to the same staff members, who have other daily responsibilities, to test these systems. We are also searching for a release window for the new servers. Because it will take about 36 hours to stand-up the new Blade servers (e-Grants and My AmeriCorps will be offline for that time) and the new servers need to be up at least 30 days before we deploy Release 3, we have very few dates available to do this work. We should know the planned deployment schedule in the next few days, so stay tuned.