The University Senior Management Group (SMG) have approved plans to install two new backup generators that will supply emergency power to the Applied Science and Foss data centres in the event of a failure to the primary electrical supply. This work will start at midnight on Friday the 16th of December and will not be completed until 04:00 on Sunday the 18th of December.
Once the work has been completed, the new generators will provide essential resilience and data security for the Applied Science and Foss data centres. In the event of any future disruption to the electrical supply, existing devices within the data centres will provide battery power to all servers and systems whilst the backup generators are brought online. These new generators will then provide all the power required to maintain services for the duration of the power outage and this will be of significant benefit to the whole University community.
Unfortunately, major ICT infrastructure work such as this does come at a cost and as a result, from midnight on Friday the 16th of December until 04:00 on Sunday the 18th of December staff from the ICT Department will have to close down all major ICT services. In practical terms this will mean the loss of all :
- ICT services on the Hull campus. This also includes ICT services accessed through the:
- Student residential network
- University satellite sites at Castle Hill, Hull Royal Infirmary, the Brocklehurst Building, Oriel Chambers, Blaydes House and the Hull History Centre.
- Internet access to and from the Scarborough campus, HYMS, the HYMS Education Centre at Hull Royal Infirmary
- Telephone services on the West campus
- Hull-based HYMS IT services, including file store, remote access and most websites (including parts of the HYMS VLE)
As can be seen from the above list this essential upgrade to our resilience levels does have a wide impact with regards to the number of ICT services affected and, as a result, the work has been deliberately scheduled out of term time to lessen the impact on users of these services as much as possible. One consequence of this is that work that the Facilities Directorate would have been carrying out in the Venn building, and which had been scheduled for the weekend 3rd-4th of December, has now been rescheduled to take place alongside the work detailed above. As a result of this there will be no electrical power available within the Venn building during the period described above.
The ICT Department and the Facilities Directorate would like to apologise in advance for the disruption that this, and the work in Venn, work will cause to our customers but trust that you can all appreciate the important benefits that the improved levels of resilience will offer. If you would like more information on the planned work, or have information on activities taking place at this time that we ought to be aware of, please could you contact the Service Desk team by telephone on 01482 46 2010 or by email at help@hull.ac.uk
