All 2 entries tagged Power Cut

Something fishy is going on here…

Follow-up to Power Email Outage from No I said DublIN marathon

Does anybody else spot a pattern here?

Thurs Nov 2nd Copper wire stolen from roadworks in north Coventry, causing major power outage across the area
Thurs Nov 9th Major power outage across Campus and Earlsdon
Thurs Nov 16th Copper wire stolen from electricity substation in Dudley, causing major power outage across the area

: 16 Nov 2006 14:03 |  Tags: Email Groupwise ITS Power Cut |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Power Email Outage

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/

It can’t have escaped many people’s notice that a power cut in the Coventry area last Thursday morning caused (amongst other things) the Uni’s mail servers to fall over. It appears that the UPSs that were meant to protect critical systems in just such an incident failed to do so. According to ITS the three AA batteries that they’d connected maintained power for 45 minutes as planned, but the hamster-wheel failed to kick in (apparently 1 hamster isn’t strong enough to maintain power for Group Shite-wise). This caused catastrophic failure to various Group Shite-wise Postboxes and (as it takes approximately 400 years for Group Shite-wise to back itself up), no back-up appears to be forthcoming/in existence.

I’m not going to lie and say I’m shocked, as the litany of IT (I’m being careful not to restrict this as being exclusively the fault of ITS) failures over the years, with Group Shite-wise being perhaps most memorable. However, I am appalled that in this day and age The Administration see it as in any way less than unacceptable for an institution such as ours to be without the ability to even send or receive email (let alone retrieve archived items). If this were a business, heads would have rolled long ago, and we wouldn’t be in a situation where 5 days on two thirds of staff/research student postboxes are at best described as being in a less than optimal condition.

Moreover I find it incomprehensible that ITS are in liaison with affeced departments to obtain lists of staff and research student user names. YOU WHAT? Surely it is in ITS remit to have at least a list of the accounts that it maintains has f*cked up? I was literally speechless when I heard this.

Finally, (partly for want of not going on and on and on, and partly as I wouldn’t want to post so much that yet more of ITS equipment falls over irretrievably), it would be nice for ITS to keep people informed about the situation. Their vague assertions that staff and research students will be informed about any changes don’t hold much truck when they can’t even keep their website updated with sufficient information (if it is up at all). Quite frankly there are three key questions that people want answering:

1. When will I be able to send or receive email?
2. When will I be able to access my old inbox?
3. What the hell exactly is it you are doing about 1 and 2?

So far ITS have failed to answer any of the above satisfactorally!

: 13 Nov 2006 16:21 |  Tags: Email Groupwise ITS Power Cut |  Comments (49) |  Close comments |  Report a problem