IST Computer Room Power Outage - August 2004
A combination of Plant Operation emergency electrical repairs for the
entire campus and the need for more power in the IST Computer Room will
result in a shutdown of computer and network services for the weekend
of August 27-30, 2004.
The only equipment that will be maintained over the entire weekend is
the campus telephone system and the ORION network equipment to provide
service to the WLU, Conestoga College and Western campuses. Generators
will be used to keep such equipment operational.
Weekend Timeline
Over the weekend various other services will be operational according
to the following timeline.
| Day
| Time
| Event
|
| Fri Aug 27
| 6:00 PM
| Power still available everywhere, but some preliminary shutdowns of
equipment begins.
|
| Sat Aug 28
| 6:00 AM
| Shutdown of all services except those mentioned below as core services.
Power will be shutoff to the IST Computer Room at 7:00am
|
| Sun Aug 29
| 5:30 AM
| Shutdown of all services except the phone system and ORION equipment.
Power will be shutoff to all of campus at 6:00am.
|
| Sun Aug 29
| 8:00 PM
| Startup of all services, beginning with core services.
|
| Mon Aug 30
| 8:00 AM
| Full operational status resumed (hoping for no hardware failures).
|
Core Services that will Remain Operational on Saturday Only
IST provides several infrastructure services to the campus and our
intent is to keep as many pure infrastructure services available as
possible.
- The ORION equipment and UW's other off-campus network connections
will remain operational as well as the network service to all campus
buildings, including the rest of the MC building.
- The general university web services (including Apache, IIS and LAMP
services) will remain operational. This will enable web clients to
find faculty and department services if they use the
http://www.uwaterloo.ca service as their entry point.
- Campus email delivered by userid@uwaterloo.ca will continue to be
operational.
This will facilitate redirection of email to faculty and departmental
email servers. The admmail service will also remain operational.
- Computers rely on DNS name service to talk to other computers on
campus and around the world. The DNS name service will be operational.
- We have encouraged people to use UWdir authentication for secure
web services. That authentication service (also known as ADS authentication) will be operational.
- Wireless access points in many campus areas require authentication
before use. Those will be operational.
- The campus dialup service will be operational.
- Windows printing service for printing your output on local printers
will be operational.
In detail, the following servers will be kept operational:
admmail,
asupprt2,
cerberus,
cn-libnaa,
cn-naa1,
douglasfir,
ego,
heron,
info,
ist,
lamp,
ns1,
ns2,
oak,
peanut,
pelee,
redwood,
rumours,
sycamore,
watserv1.
The power upgrade on Saturday is for the IST Computer Room only. The
rest of the MC building will continue to have power available. The
power repairs on Sunday will require a complete shutdown of all
servers.
What Will Be Shutdown Both Saturday and Sunday
IST also provides support for a number of UW applications and almost
all of those will not be operational for the weekend.
- University wide applications such as QUEST, myHRinfo, UW-ACE,
JobMine, TRELLIS, Bookit, F.O.R.E. will all be unavailable.
- The Liaison voice recognition system for the campus phone service
will not be available. The phone system will remain operational, with
automated attendant. Users will need to know the on-campus extension of
the person they are trying to reach.
- Academic support staff have their files stored on a central
file storage facility. Those files will not be available.
- Many applications provide web services as part of the application.
That portion of the application will not be available. Web page
requests will be redirected to a page explaining the reason for our
service outage.
- Backups (and restores) will not be available.
- Servers for departmental applications hosted by IST will be unavailable.
- Email and web services provided for retirees will not be available.
- xhier distribution from xhier masters will not be available.
- SUS (Software Update Service) and SAV (Symantec Anti-Virus) services will not be available.
Contacting IST August 27-30
IST has arranged for a special phone number available for the weekend
of August 27-30. If you notice a malfunction in a service that is expected to be
operational, please phone 519-573-3665.
Feedback
Please contact the following IST Production Support managers:
Martin Timmerman (mtimm@ist, x3403),
Brian Cameron (hesse@ist, x3421),
Greg Cummings (gcumming@ist, x6469).
