This work has been completed.
On Monday 15th December 2008 the final part of the electrical work in the St Giles server room is to be completed. The potentially most disruptive work will take place before 9 am.
The following services will be given a backup power feed due to having dual power supplies:
- Homes server Jam-tart
- Main unix mail server Cheesecake.
- Windows terminal server Pandora aka WTS.
The following services will be given preference to being powered up throughout the work but are at risk of being shutdown due to running on UPS battery power:
- Homes server Battery
- New unix mail server Mail-new.
- Web application server Diode including Socrates and Minerva.
- Main web server www.maths.ox.ac.uk.
- Auxiliary web servers.
- Administrative shares server magnetron including DFS.
- Unix printing.
- Unix webmail.
- Eprints server.
- External firewall.
- Managed network.
- VPN server Big-brother.
The following services will have to be shut down, have their power feed changed, and then be powered back up again thus giving the above services more battery power. This work will be done between 7 am and 8 am.
- Windows Exchange server Rosemary
- Windows printing
- Laptop NAT firewall / router
The following computers may have to be switches off due to lack of UPS battery power:
- Epimetheus.
- Prometheus.
- Electronic Notice Board (ENB) in St Giles' foyer.
- Skylab.
- Web-woman.
Wednesdays work was completed within 40 minutes with more than 20 minutes of UPS battery runtime left. More work has to be completed but two rather than one electrician can be working on the final part of the installation. Mains power will be turned off at 8 am with a target of completing the work by 9 am. The requirement for UPS power will be less on Monday than the previous power shutdown on Wednesday.
This work will give the server room independence from work in the new year which would have caused many interruptions to the server room for long periods of time. This is due to the technical difficulty of the work required in the riser rooms on the ground and first floor. Also this work reduces electrical load on the phase currently loaded much higher than the others.
We are aware of the admission process taking place next week and hope that this work with not disrupt that. All efforts will be made to have essential services running on mains power by 9 am Monday morning. If time is limited with running on batteries plan B is to defer the work until Tuesday morning at a similar time.