[Faculty] [Staff] Need to reschedule upcomming power outage

Tue Nov 1 12:47:51 PDT 2016

Prof. Miller et al.,

Thank you.  I propose that the university reschedule the power outage to
commence Saturday January 7 and end Monday January 9, with power
restored by 6:00AM Monday morning.  The first day of the Spring 2017
semester is January 17.  Moving the outage to Jan. 7-9 will allow IT
staff the opportunity to shutdown, and bring back online, IT
infrastructure, with the minimum duration of resource downtime.
Hopefully we will hear from Al soon and the university will consider
this proposed alternate time.

Best,

Chris

Fletcher Miller <fmiller at mail.sdsu.edu> wrote:

> Hi Chris & Mike,
> 
> Chris, thank you for looking out for us on this, since you are absolutely
> right, we will have computer jobs running over the break.  I could live
> with a 2-3 day downtime for the computers as stated in the original e-mail,
> but two weeks is very hard to tolerate.
> 
> Mike, I think what Chris means is that the outtage should occur during a
> regular working period, not necessarily during work days. If it happened
> over MLK Day weekend, for instance, that would be three days, but IT could
> prepare for it beforehand and get things running again on Tuesday, since
> they would be here at that time.  This is not true over the winter break.
> 
> If we will have generator service, the items I would need powered are the
> Linux Clusters and the computers in my lab (E-327).
> 
> thank you,
> 
> Fletcher
> >>>---->
> 
> Fletcher J. Miller, Ph.D.
> Combustion and Solar Energy Laboratory
> Department of Mechanical Engineering
> San Diego State University
> San Diego, CA 92182
> (619) 594-5791 (office)
> Fletcher.miller at sdsu.edu
> 
> http://mechanical.sdsu.edu/mechanical/
> 
> 
> On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 5:27 PM, Michael Lester <lester at mail.sdsu.edu>
> wrote:
> 
> > What about the rest of us?   we would just come so we could look at the
> > walls, Nothing will be running with out the power.
> >
> > On Mon, Oct 31, 2016 at 3:46 PM, Christopher Paolini <
> > paolini at engineering.sdsu.edu> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi Al,
> >>
> >> Scheduling a campus-wide power outage two days before Christmas Eve, and
> >> a restoration on Christmas Eve, is a terrible idea.  We need to
> >> reschedule this outage so it occurs during normal working days so
> >> university IT staff can physically be on campus to shutdown, and bring
> >> back online, critical computer and network infrastructure.
> >>
> >> Many research active faculty and graduate students need to remotely
> >> access servers and computing clusters during the winter break for
> >> running numerical simulations (e.g. computational fluid dynamics
> >> simulations, structural analysis computations, geochemical and
> >> geoemechanics simulations, electromagnetic simulations, electronic
> >> structure modeling, etc.).
> >>
> >> Many IT staff personnel who manage university network and computational
> >> resources will leave the San Diego region for Christmas vacation several
> >> days before Dec. 22, primarily to use accrued vacation time that will
> >> expire if not used by Dec. 31.  Almost all university personnel will be
> >> with their families and/or on vacation the day of Christmas Eve
> >> (Saturday, December 24).
> >>
> >> If you shutdown power on the 22nd, IT staff will need to shutdown
> >> computing infrastructure many days earlier, before they leave on
> >> vacation.  Asking staff members to come to campus on Christmas Day to
> >> bring computing infrastructure back online is unreasonable.  The
> >> consequence of scheduling an outage December 22-24 is that critical
> >> computing infrastructure will remain offline and remotely inaccessible
> >> until IT personnel return from vacation, typically on January 3. This
> >> will result in an effective two-week loss of remote computational
> >> infrastructure usage by faculty and students, and may have a significant
> >> impact on research.
> >>
> >> In addition to impacting university computational infrastructure, many
> >> faculty who operate wet laboratories have 24/7 refrigeration
> >> requirements.  Fume hoods containing hazardous or volatile materials
> >> require constant power to drive fans in the hood exhaust system.
> >>
> >> The power outage and restoration should be rescheduled to occur during
> >> normal working times, to allow IT staff to shutdown and bring equipment
> >> back online before leaving on vacation.
> >>
> >> Thank you,
> >>
> >> Chris,
> >>
> >> ---
> >> Christopher Paolini, PhD
> >> College of Engineering IT Manager
> >> San Diego State University
> >> paolini at engineering.sdsu.edu
> >> http://paolini.sdsu.edu/
> >> _______________________________________________
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> >> Staff at engineering.sdsu.edu
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> >>
> >
> >
> >
> > --
> > Michael Lester
> > SDSU College of Engineering Fabrication
> > 5500 Campanile Drive
> > San Diego CA. 92182-1323
> > 619-594-0319
> >
> > https://www.facebook.com/SDSU-Engineering-Machine-Shop-1371885249493486/
> >
> > http://mechanical.sdsu.edu/mechanical/
> >
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