All the details about tonight's power outage and what you need to know.
Posted on 29 June 2015 - Announcement
BY Tibus
This affects...
1. Belfast hosting customers (apart from those that have a dual-platform hosting solution with us)
2. Business email customers
3. Connected cities / Tibus Ultrafast / Premier IP connectivity customers in NI
Hosting and streaming customers that are located in our Dublin or London data centres will NOT be affected.
Why it is happening...
BT want to put UPS power back in play at their data centre. Between Weds morning and tonight, the centre has been running directly from the mains power. UPS means 'uninterruptible power supply'. Those boxes provide a buffer between the electrical grid and the power supplied into the data centre for customers like Tibus. They allow continuity of power provision in the event of an interruption to the mains power, by giving generators enough time to start and provide power to a data centre. Putting temporary UPS back into the power supply mitigates the risks of a power cut on the grid affecting services in the data centre.
When?
TONIGHT. Start 18.00. End latest 02.00.
We will begin powering down all our servers and associated connectivity platforms from 18.00 this evening. We have to get all our platforms powered down gracefully before power is removed (and then re-provided again later). Although on a different scale, servers are essentially computers that need closed down properly; and then booted up properly, just like a normal office PC.
BT will do their engineering work in the data centre between 20.00 and 00.00. They are taking a safety-first attitude to this and we fully support that. We are hoping that they will need much less time than the full 4 hours. As soon as they complete their work, we can bring the servers we manage back online. We will do this one-by-one.
What do you need to do?
If you are a co-located customer and manage your own machines, please power those down before 20.00.
If we provide managed hosting for your server, we will do that for you.
All other customers need do nothing.
Next communication
Assume that this work has all gone smoothly. We will tweet and blog tomorrow with an update to let you know.
In the event of an unexpected problem, we will contact the client concerned directly. If you are a Premium Support customer, please feel to ring that at any time, as normal.
Longer term the UPS at BT data centre needs to be permanently replaced
BT will need to replace this temporary UPS with a permanent replacement for their UPS. We dont have dates or expected impacts for that work yet.
As soon as we know what and when that is likely to be, we will let you know in the normal way.
