Outages spark increase in campus power
Erica Tuggle
Issue date: 10/29/09 Section: News
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Six of the outages were scheduled, with three of those as campus-wide power outages and three regular monthly maintenance issues, Adsit said.
She said the three unscheduled outages can be divided into one campus-wide power outage, a mandatory Blackboard security patch and one software glitch.
Adsit said UTC Blackboard schedules their monthly maintenance for about an hour on a specified Friday when online traffic is low,
so database maintenance and server operating system updates can be done.
Sometimes when Blackboard looks as if it is down, it is really an authorization issue, Adsit said.
"Many students think they can't get to Blackboard unless they access their UTC Netmail, but these are two different servers and may lead to a stop for a student with password verification and other issues," Adsit said.
The best way to access Blackboard is directly to its start up page at http://slug.ceca.utc.edu/netpercentage.php, Adsit said.
Servers also do a reboot every day from 3 to 4 a.m. so that Blackboard can be updated.
"When Windows issues a patch then Blackboard has to be shut down for that," Adsit said.
Scott Gast, the online technologies coordinator, said: "Some of these things we don't even know what causes them. The bottom line is we need electricity to run our server."
Gast said the university would like to purchase a few uninterrupted power supply units.He said purchasing more units would alleviate some of these outages, but the student technology fee only goes so far.
Every five minutes there is a check on the servers to see if they are there, Adsit said, but the network cannot get there sometimes.
"It is like having the mall open but all the roads closed to get there," Adsit said.
Monty Wilson, the assistant vice chancellor of the IT division, said when the system goes down due to a power outage, the generators pick up the slack.
There are also two universal power supply units if the power goes off that are backed up by the generator between Hunter Hall and Patten Chapel that is tested every week, Wilson said.
"At certain times, when [the system] dies, it dies, and we have to resurrect it," Wilson said. "We do all we can on a cost schedule without being redundant."
Wilson said there are 18,000 Web ports on campus and several factors must be considered when diagnosing a connection loss.
The University is also working with the Electric Power Board to upgrade from 4 kilowatts to 12 to accommodate the University's growth and to deter some of these outages, Wilson said.
Adsit said if students suspect an outage, the best thing to do is to contact their professor and visit the UTC Blackboard homepage where information is posted.
