At 06:30 this morning one of the choke coils in the inverter of the Uninteruptable Power Supply (UPS) supplying the Struben data centre with electricity burnt out. The UPS immediately transfered the load onto an automatic static bypass circuit and removed the offending inverter from the the circuit. The load was subsequently transfered onto a full manual bypass circuit, effectively removing the UPS from the circuit. Both these operations were performed without interupting the power supply to the data centre. All power in the Struben data centre is currently being supplied directly off the municipal mains supply.
Spare parts to replace the damaged choke coil are being courriered from Jo'burg overnight and should hopefully be installed during the course of tomorrow. As a precuationary measure, the three remaining chokes in the UPS will be replaced at the same time. We're informed that this can be done with the UPS in its current manual bypass state, meaning there should be no downtime whilst the chokes are replaced.
Unfortunately, until this happens, we're subject to the vagaries of the municipal power supply. As a result, it is possible (but hopefully unlikely) that power to the data centre could be interupted at any time and without warning. If this happens it could have widely varying effects, from the loss of a single service due to a brownout, to a campus-wide network outage. In all instances we will endeavour to restore service as quickly as possible.