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Nov. 22, 2009
Weather to blame for mail outage
| By Ashley Pierce • The Oklahoma Daily | |
| Posted 2:26 p.m., Dec. 6, 2006 | E-Mail Article • Print Article • Post Comment |
Officials with Information Technology said last week’s hazardous weather is to blame for causing power and cooling issues in OU’s mail system, which resulted in e-mail downtime for students the week before finals.
The outage began Monday around 6 p.m. and lasted until Tuesday morning, said Nicholas Key, Information Technology Program Coordinator.
Key stated in an e-mail that one of the air conditioning units responsible for cooling the mail system servers froze Thursday in the snowstorm.
“Without adequate cooling, the temperature in the server room gradually increased and eventually surpassed 90 degrees,” Key stated. “We began turning off our non-critical systems to lower the room’s temperature. Mail systems continued to run.”
The Physical Plant repaired the air conditioner late Saturday, according to Key. IT identified instability and possible damage in the mail system Monday. The high temperatures damaged the servers’ internal batteries and this led to the instability that threatened permanent damage to the mail system, including mailboxes and messages.
IT had to shut down mail systems as an emergency response. Monday evening, IT worked with a representative from Sun Systems to replace the internal batteries and repair damage to hardware, software and data, Key said.
Students also noticed an outage on enroll.ou.edu Monday evening. Key stated the heat in the server room also caused an interruption in online enrollment services but lasted only a few hours.
“OU IT fixed the issue, and online enrollment has operated normally since Monday evening,” Key stated.
IT began bringing mail servers online at 8 a.m. Tuesday. However, some students noticed the mail system was running slowly Tuesday morning. Because of the backup of stalled messages waiting to be sent, the mail system might run slowly, according to Key. All of the e-mails sent during the outage had to be delivered once the system was back up.
“Once those messages clear the servers, the system will run at full speed,” Key stated.
The outage came at a time many students consider inconvenient, with the advent of finals week quickly approaching.
Olivia Childs, business sophomore, said she was waiting to receive notes via e-mail from a classmate Monday when she realized the system was down. Childs said she became worried because she needed the notes to study for a government final Tuesday. She finally received the notes shortly before her test.
“It’s an essay final and we’re supposed to answer three out of five questions,” Childs said. “So hopefully I’ll just be able to answer the questions about other stuff and not questions about the information in the notes I was missing.”
Childs said she hopes there won’t be any more issues with e-mail, especially next week. She said a lot of students use e-mail to get their study guides or e-mail papers to themselves that they might not write on their own computers.
“We’re painfully aware that this is dead week and next week is finals week,” said Matthew Younkins, IT Director of Infrastructure. “The last thing we want is [system] downtime for students. The university is not here to make you wait on your e-mail.”
Key stated that since the outage was caused by an extenuating circumstance, IT doesn’t expect any outages in the near future. He stated the outage was the only unplanned outage in 2006 and it should not cause any lasting effects.
The outage began Monday around 6 p.m. and lasted until Tuesday morning, said Nicholas Key, Information Technology Program Coordinator.
Key stated in an e-mail that one of the air conditioning units responsible for cooling the mail system servers froze Thursday in the snowstorm.
“Without adequate cooling, the temperature in the server room gradually increased and eventually surpassed 90 degrees,” Key stated. “We began turning off our non-critical systems to lower the room’s temperature. Mail systems continued to run.”
The Physical Plant repaired the air conditioner late Saturday, according to Key. IT identified instability and possible damage in the mail system Monday. The high temperatures damaged the servers’ internal batteries and this led to the instability that threatened permanent damage to the mail system, including mailboxes and messages.
IT had to shut down mail systems as an emergency response. Monday evening, IT worked with a representative from Sun Systems to replace the internal batteries and repair damage to hardware, software and data, Key said.
Students also noticed an outage on enroll.ou.edu Monday evening. Key stated the heat in the server room also caused an interruption in online enrollment services but lasted only a few hours.
“OU IT fixed the issue, and online enrollment has operated normally since Monday evening,” Key stated.
IT began bringing mail servers online at 8 a.m. Tuesday. However, some students noticed the mail system was running slowly Tuesday morning. Because of the backup of stalled messages waiting to be sent, the mail system might run slowly, according to Key. All of the e-mails sent during the outage had to be delivered once the system was back up.
“Once those messages clear the servers, the system will run at full speed,” Key stated.
The outage came at a time many students consider inconvenient, with the advent of finals week quickly approaching.
Olivia Childs, business sophomore, said she was waiting to receive notes via e-mail from a classmate Monday when she realized the system was down. Childs said she became worried because she needed the notes to study for a government final Tuesday. She finally received the notes shortly before her test.
“It’s an essay final and we’re supposed to answer three out of five questions,” Childs said. “So hopefully I’ll just be able to answer the questions about other stuff and not questions about the information in the notes I was missing.”
Childs said she hopes there won’t be any more issues with e-mail, especially next week. She said a lot of students use e-mail to get their study guides or e-mail papers to themselves that they might not write on their own computers.
“We’re painfully aware that this is dead week and next week is finals week,” said Matthew Younkins, IT Director of Infrastructure. “The last thing we want is [system] downtime for students. The university is not here to make you wait on your e-mail.”
Key stated that since the outage was caused by an extenuating circumstance, IT doesn’t expect any outages in the near future. He stated the outage was the only unplanned outage in 2006 and it should not cause any lasting effects.
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