Critical Systems Remain Online During a Major Electrical Upgrade

by Thom Newlin

On the Friday after Thanksgiving 2002, OIT, Facilities Management (FM), and several campus contractors collaborated in a complex project that was the culmination of nearly two and a half years of planning—the restoration of an uninterrupted electrical power supply to the A.V. Williams Building, which houses most of OIT’s major computer systems and several other departments and institutes.

In June 2000, a series of construction related power outages damaged the automatic switchgear that transfers the building electrical supply between two independent feeds, protected by the building’s Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) and batteries. During any further power interruptions, the power supplies would have to be transferred manually, an operation that could potentially require more time than the batteries could supply, causing an outage.

Starting in April 2002, negotiations began to find the optimal time to shut down most of the University’s computing power and services. There were difficult compromises between urgency, inconvenience, and immovable deadlines. Ultimately, November 29th was selected because the University was officially closed.

Several critical offices and systems were identified which could not afford even one day of downtime. OIT and FM analyzed their power requirements and heat load so that suitably sized generators could be rented to run the building’s environmental systems.

At 2:00 a.m., OIT staff members were on site to back up, shut down, and power off hundreds of systems. FM and the contractors switched the environmental systems over to the generators and began repairs by 7:30 a.m. The systems that remained up were tested to assure their critical features remained accessible. A representative of the Office of Undergraduate Admissions said, “a substantial number of online student applications were received during this period; as soon as our needs were made known, the OIT staff could not have been more helpful.”

All groups did a remarkable job of communicating progress and status; and OIT’s Operations Console Room served as a central point of contact and notification facility for other affected departments as work was completed and the building was brought back online.

Hundreds of people contributed to the successful coordination of this project–restoring stable redundant power to the biggest group of computing centers on campus while keeping critical University systems running.

Open a New Window to Rate This Article