This is an update to an earlier message.  This evening around 8pm I will need to reboot all of the physical hosts.  This is more extensive than my earlier message but only reboots will be done at this time and updates to 18.04 LTS will be done on a later date.

     I discovered that Ubuntu will no allow us to upgrade the release until all existing updates are in place and this includes recent kernel updates.

     I apologize that this is being done outside of our normal early morning maintenance window, unfortunately scheduling conflicts make this necessary.  I will endeavor to make the downtime as brief as possible.

     I am anxious to get these in place because 18.04 LTS provides both improved stability and reboot reliability and ultimately once we get all the necessary tools in place, live kernel patching so that we no longer will need to reboot for kernel upgrades eliminating most future reboots.  In addition, I have not yet had a machine that I’ve already upgraded experience NFS issues which have plagued Ubuntu since 16.04 LTS.