A non-service affecting upgrade will take place today on the firmware of the devices serving network home directories.  This is necessary to facilitate a security patch to the operating system hosting these systems.

All home directories are replicated nightly to disk, and backed up nightly to tape.  The former provides quick resolution if there is a catastrophic issue with one of the arrays, the latter provides protection against crypto-ware and an archival catalog of files ~3 months historically.