noticeboard.ru.ac.za

On Sunday 17th September there's likely to be a prolonged power outage in Struben Building to allow us to finish wiring the distribution boards in the data centre. This outage will affect all network services at Rhodes.

This outage will be timed to be during Rhodes vacation, and to avoid disrupting any of the SEALS institution's libraries. As such, it's likely to last most of Sunday morning. Power will most likely be on between 14:00 and 18:00, at least to core services, but may go off again thereafter. This is a preliminary warning -- more details will follow in due course once arrangements are finalised.

The main reason for this outage is to allow us to upgrade the current spaghetti of power cabling dating back to the 1980s (mainframe and 400Hz days) that was discovered during the generator installation to conform to modern safety standards.

On Sunday 17th September there will be a network outage affecting the whole campus between 8AM and 2PM. During this time all centrally provided and network services will be unavailable including, but not limited to, access to the Internet, e-mail, printing, lab logins and file services. In addition, telephone services may be interrupted in some areas of the campus.

This outage is to allow electricians to undertake urgent maintenance work in the distribution board powering the data centre in Struben building.

Once service is restored users may find that their computers are unable to immediately reconnect to the network. In these instances users should switch off their computers, wait 10-15 minutes, and then try again. If this fails to resolve the problem, users should contact the IT Division helpdesk on extension 8288.

In the unlikely event that work isn't completed by the 2PM deadline, the shared library service will be restored as a first priority. Service may be interrupted again between 6PM and 10PM on the same day. We will attempt to avoid this if at all possible.

As usual, updates and further information about this outage will be made available at http://noticeboard.ru.ac.za/