School Powerdowns

[techie17]

Hi

 

We have to have a powerdown at both our schools on site here every summer as the distribution boards need to be tested apparently for insurance reasons, something to do do with the PFI contract. How many many other schools has to do this as well?

 

Sometime the power is off for a couple days and 9 times out of 10 i will always get issues when powering servers etc back on and this year was particular bad! I have no idea why the power has to go off just for the boards to be tested so. I would love to know how many of you don't have to do them as they are a pain in neck every summer!

 

Thanks

[noelmm]

I have no idea if our distribution boards are checked each year but we don't do any type of power down if they are.

[TomFreeman]

We've had to do this for fixed wire testing. Ours is every 5 years though.

 

I've always got involved from the start, and been introduced and worked with the contractors doing the work, so i knew which board was going down when, as it's never all of them at the same time. That way services weren't down for long period of time, but did mean went down in certain areas certain times.

[TechMonkey]

I've had a few for various reasons. Course of action depends on what is being done. One time the whole site was going down, so may as well take everything down, maybe test shutdown/power outage and power up procedures. Another time it was just the Server Room area so we got a Generator in to keep everything ticking over and so the rest of the site could carry on.

 

Communication is key, let everyone know what won't be available when. Build some contingency in, so you may think it will take half hour to get everything up, but give yourself an hour, or better two. I find bringing up virtual networks seems to take much longer than old solid networks. If it is going to be an early start, maybe take the network down the night before, saves you having to be up at the crack of dawn and maybe groggily pressing the wrong key!

[hardtailstar]

Hi

 

We have to have a powerdown at both our schools on site here every summer as the distribution boards need to be tested apparently for insurance reasons, something to do do with the PFI contract. How many many other schools has to do this as well?

 

Sometime the power is off for a couple days and 9 times out of 10 i will always get issues when powering servers etc back on and this year was particular bad! I have no idea why the power has to go off just for the boards to be tested so. I would love to know how many of you don't have to do them as they are a pain in neck every summer!

 

Thanks

 

We have the same as we are a PFI school. Don't think we have had any issues with it apart from one of the UPS's died but that may have been a coincidence.

[round2it]

never done here

[southhamster]

We have the same as we are a PFI school. Don't think we have had any issues with it apart from one of the UPS's died but that may have been a coincidence.

Treat it as a disaster recovery test. Better that stuff goes wrong when you can fix it than say KS2 SATS week. There's a brilliant Buddhist? phrase ”it was already broken" which is true really. The demon within is just waiting to cause problems at a time of his choosing but a powerdown may provoke him to cause early failure.

[localzuk]

Don't think our fixed electrical testing has ever meant my kit has gone offline! They kill circuits/distributions as they go, but our UPSs have always kept everything on for the time its been going on - they don't need the DBs off for long.

 

Powering down the whole site for several days seems absurd and unnecessary. Especially as we have staff in all year round these days.

 

That said, I have had to turn servers off for a long period in the past - when we had asbestos removed from our server room. Servers were turned off, and cocooned in plastic for a week.

[FragglePete]

Yes - same here. All boards need to be tested by law every 5 years I believe. It's a case of working very closely with the Site Staff and the electrician that does the work to co-ordinate everything. Ours I believe is due to be done very soon.

 

Pete

[forkies]

We have our fixed wire testing every 5 years, it is annually if you do lettings I believe.

 

The site manager gets the electricians to contact me, I tell them the one shunt in the electrical intake room that does our server room. They test our DB that powers our servers in about 20 minutes while UPS runs the servers. Then they can take as long as they want with the rest of the site.

 

Of course you can get some cowboy to do it live or falsify the report.

[Sylv3r]

We've had a full rewire this summer across the school so the servers were downed for a full day on two occasions.

 

Both times they come back online fine, but there's always a heart in your mouth moment up until that last VM spins up !

[techie17]

Thanks everyone. It’s interesting to know how many of you don’t have to have the powerdowns every year or this that do are every 5 years and to be honest, I could live with every 5 years. Every year seems ridiculous!

[mikeprice]

Imagine a company agreeing to a power down for several days every year - ain't going to happen

 

And if a normal business doesn't have to do it why does a school apparently HAVE to do it - seems a bit weird

[HPlum78]

Yep fixed wire testing has to happen and this is sometimes set out by the insurers to be on a more frequent schedule, mostly can be done live but you have to take an outage and this should be minimal not days minutes for each circuit if all goes well. I would ask the question what testing are they doing that means you are taking an outage of days? (for my sins I am a qualified Electrician and cannot think why. Off top of my head....)

 

Have you got onsite 10ks?

 

If fact I have just seen PFI so I am guessing yes to having 10ks on site and I will also bet that they are air cooled not oil so that will be why you are taking an outage (if I am indeed correct) they will be checking those little f*! £@ers over for cracking and will most likely be having the tails killed by the distributor on their 10k.

Edited October 26, 2019 by HPlum78

[p858snake]

Yep fixed wire testing has to happen and this is sometimes set out by the insurers to be on a more frequent schedule, mostly can be done live but you have to take an outage and this should be minimal not days minutes for each circuit if all goes well. I would ask the question what testing are they doing that means you are taking an outage of days? (for my sins I am a qualified Electrician and cannot think why. Off top of my head....)

 

Personal bet, The contractor doesn't want to work a schedule and/or stick to being on time for turning zones off/on, so turn everything off at once.