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Operational Notices
eHealth Exchange Operational Notices are distributed to eHealth Exchange Project and Operational Contacts on file.
Sent: 2021-03-09 5:00pm ET
Effective Dates/Time: Thursday 2021-03-11 5:00pm ET
Environments: VALIDATION
Scope: eHealth Exchange Hub
Event Type: Hub Maintenance Activity
Implementer Action Needed: Self-test and monitor as appropriate
Description
VALIDATION
- Updated logic for message header transformations including the Security section and the SAML nested within the Security section. This update is relevant when exchanging with certain Carequality connections through the eHealth Exchange Hub.
- Enhancing Hub debug logic related to the Hub’s Test Harness which provides staff with ability to test Participant’s ability to respond over the Hub.
Scope:
These changes will be applied to the eHealth Exchange Hub VALIDATION environments as outlined above.
Impact:
We do not anticipate any service outages during deployment of these changes.
Support:
eHealth Exchange staff will monitor administrator@ehealthexchange.org for 30 minutes after the maintenance is completed.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND REMINDERS:
The eHealth Exchange Hub team has implemented a recurring weekly scheduled maintenance window each Thursday evening at 9:00pm ET for all non-urgent events. The duration of each maintenance event will be determined by the respective changes for each event, and details will be communicated out to all Participants at least 48 hours prior to the event. If there are no changes for any given week then the maintenance event will not occur and no notice will be sent. Also please note that Operating System and similar updates that do not require a service outage, and do not require changes to the application layer, will be performed during this scheduled maintenance window without specific notice due to their frequent and routine nature.
Sent: 2021-03-02 5:00pm ET
Effective Dates/Time: Thursday 2021-03-04 5:00pm ET
Environments: VALIDATION and PRODUCTION
Scope: eHealth Exchange Hub
Event Type: Hub Maintenance Activity
Implementer Action Needed: Self-test and monitor as appropriate
Description
VALIDATION
- Updated logic for message header transformations including the Security section and the SAML nested within the Security section. This update is relevant when exchanging with certain Carequality connections through the eHealth Exchange Hub.
PRODUCTION
- An updated user interface for internal staff use is being implemented to manage configuration of group queries.
- Server configuration changes in support of the new trust bundles. This will not impact the current Entrust certificates, and is being done as preparation for the new multi-CA approach that is being deployed across the eHealth Exchange in 2021.
Scope: These changes will be applied to the eHealth Exchange Hub PRODUCTION and VALIDATION environments as outlined above.
Impact: We do not anticipate any service outages during deployment of these changes.
Support: eHealth Exchange staff will monitor administrator@ehealthexchange.org for 30 minutes after the maintenance is completed.
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION AND REMINDERS:
The eHealth Exchange Hub team has implemented a recurring weekly scheduled maintenance window each Thursday evening at 9:00pm ET for all non-urgent events. The duration of each maintenance event will be determined by the respective changes for each event, and details will be communicated out to all Participants at least 48 hours prior to the event. If there are no changes for any given week then the maintenance event will not occur and no notice will be sent. Also please note that Operating System and similar updates that do not require a service outage, and do not require changes to the application layer, will be performed during this scheduled maintenance window without specific notice due to their frequent and routine nature.
Effective Dates: 2019-01-22 Carequality (DEV and STAGE) 2019-01-22 eHealth Exchange (VAL) 2019-02-01 Carequality (PROD) 2019-02-01 eHealth Exchange (PROD)
Effective Time: 17:00 Eastern Time on the respective date
Scope: Carequality and eHealth Exchange Directory clusters
Event Duration: Approximately 1 hour
Participant Action Needed: Self-determined
Description
To improve the performance of the Carequality Directory clusters (DEV, STAGE, and PROD), as well as the eHealth Exchange directory clusters (VAL and PROD), Sequoia plans to deploy a new version of the Sequoia Healthcare Directory server software that enables the use of compressed returned data.
The Carequality Directory has grown to the size where a query of all organizations results in an uncompressed response size of over 64MB of XML data (and more data for a JSON response). The response size will continue to grow as more organizations are added to the Carequality Directory.
Because the data being transmitted back from the Carequality servers is currently not compressed, the directory requires significant IO processing to build and transmit the response.
While the eHealth Exchange Directory is not as large as the Carequality Directory, we can foresee how there might be performance degradation as it continues to grow and return uncompressed data.
Because of the above, Sequoia will be upgrading the Carequality and eHealth Exchange servers to compress responses when a client request contains the Accept-Encoding=gzip HTTP request header.
To leverage this capability, and to avoid the previously mentioned performance issues, your organization should ensure your directory client requests contain the Accept-Encoding=gzip HTTP request header.
Please advise us by January 21st if your organization would like to delay these changes.
Carequality DEVELOPMENT (DEV) Healthcare Directory
You will continue to access this service as you currently do (the end points, base URL and API keys will remain the same). If your directory access client includes the Accept-Encoding=gzip header in your requests, you should see immediate performance (response time and size) improvements. If your directory access client does not set the Accept-Encoding=gzip header in your requests, you will continue to experience the current performance.
Carequality STAGE Healthcare Directory
Carequality PRODUCTION (PROD) Healthcare Directory
eHealth Exchange VALIDATION (VAL) Healthcare Directory
eHealth Exchange PRODUCTION (PROD) Healthcare Directory
Impact: Each client implementation should be self-assessed to determine the impact.
Scope: The scope of these changes is limited to modification of the Carequality and eHealth Exchange servers to compress responses when client request have the Accept-Encoding=gzip header. There will be no other functionality changes.
Data Consistency: These changes do not affect any Directory data.
API Keys: These changes do not affect any API Keys. All prior API Keys will continue to work as they currently are.
Post Event Validation: We suggest that your organization validates access to the Carequality Development, Stage, and Production, and the eHealth Exchange Validation and Production environments as per your standard procedures (depending on which Directory your organization is a participant of).
Support: Sequoia staff will be available for standard business hours support.
Description
Sequoia will be adding Sender Policy Framework (SPF) entries into our DNS records to reflect our enhanced infrastructure. Adding these SPF entries will provide an extra layer of authentication, making it harder to email spoof, a technique often used in phishing and email spam.
Please advise us by January 10th if your organization would like to delay these changes.
Support: Sequoia staff will be available for standard business hours support.
Effective Date: 2019-01-10
Effective Time: 17:00 Eastern Time
