bodminman Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 I've spent the last few months working on getting a nice plan of action for the Summer hols as we're getting a more student because the local middle schools are closing. All has been going well . . . . . until now! The building services manager has just been into our server room with a very offical looking chap who I have been told is fron the County Council and he's looking at power loads in the school. So after a minute or two I say 'what is this for?' and the response nearly knocked me off my perch. Basically the school is having it's mains power feed replaced in the summer along with the kit in the power/switch room and the power will be completely off for 3 - 5 weeks! Do I laugh or cry!?!
AyatollahPies Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 3-5 weeks? Seems an awfully long time. However, my knowledge of all things electrical stretches to Red to Red Black to Black Blue to bits. 1
bodminman Posted February 4, 2011 Author Posted February 4, 2011 3-5 weeks? Seems an awfully long time. However, my knowledge of all things electrical stretches to Red to Red Black to Black Blue to bits. That's made me chuckle!
bodminman Posted February 4, 2011 Author Posted February 4, 2011 Laugh, no power = 3-5 week holiday :-) That's what I initially did but then I thought and if the week before the start of term has a few 12 hour days work in it, so what! Just had a chat with the business manager and she's fuming!
Hightower Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 You go on holiday and enjoy yourself. We've got a busy 6 months ahead of us, but I know I'm going to enjoy a week in centre parcs over easter, and a fortnight in france in the summer. 1
speckytecky Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 Surely the County Council will be obliged to fix your Server kit up with an alternative supply to ensure continuity; all sorts of issues might pop up after such a long downtime? 1
strawberry Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 you'll probably end up with a ton of generators powering the bits you need, but very little hope of getting anything significant done! 1
bodminman Posted February 4, 2011 Author Posted February 4, 2011 Generators have been mentioned but official looking guy wasn't too pleased about having so much kit running off generators. I think they'd had and incident with this setup before and don't want to risk it for such a long time! As for a jolly, I'm already book to go to Zante (Alykes) on the 25 Aug for two weeks with the wife and the little one.
tech_guy Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 At least you've found out now. We usually find this sort of thing out on the last day of the summer term..... 2
srochford Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 Weird! The good news is that at least you have got warning. When I've had electrical feeds replaced they normally run in the new cable next to the old one and then just swap over. It might take 5 weeks to dig trenches etc but it's just a few hours of outage.
anothernickname Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 At least you've found out now. We usually find this sort of thing out on the last day of the summer term..... Even that implies you're finding out in advance! Lucky so and so....... 2
kevbaz Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 our summer is going to consist of the building being torn down, heres to the next 24 months living in a portacabin!! 1
linkazoid Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 (edited) We had a sub station built on site a couple of summers ago. Our power was switched off for 2 weeks while they swapped it. We had massive diesel generators running, 1 for our server room and 1 for another part of the building. It just meant that we had some time to do maintenance on the servers. Edited February 4, 2011 by linkazoid 1
CAM Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 Won't you need to power the servers down at the end of each day though? If you run off a gennie, there is little point using up fuel at night or the likely chance that some oik will come along overnight and siphon the diesel out of it. 1
bodminman Posted February 4, 2011 Author Posted February 4, 2011 Won't you need to power the servers down at the end of each day though? If you run off a gennie, there is little point using up fuel at night or the likely chance that some oik will come along overnight and siphon the diesel out of it. The school IS in a bit of a dodgy area too!
GrumbleDook Posted February 4, 2011 Posted February 4, 2011 When my last place had the feed upped to something capable or running the school properly we had 3 power downs, each lasting 3 days, spread over a 4 week period. It was easy to plan around and as long as you are kept in the loop it is still workable. It did mean a busy few weeks prior to summer (including closing off 2 classrooms to get them ready for new suites / kits) and some delay on things until the October half-term, but it shows the need to plan to do things spread out over a whole year, and not jsut squeezed into a few weeks in the summer (YMMV as some schools cannot work like this for a number of reasons). 1
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