The constant hum of the computer banks at the university data center slowed for only an instant at 6:40 p.m. on Monday, but the momentary halt of power was enough to shut down the Georgetown University e-mail system.
Students were without service both Monday evening and Wednesday after 12:30 p.m., and another interruption in service is scheduled for the early hours of Friday morning.
The data center has a bank of batteries intended to provide uninterrupted power to the email servers in the case of a power outage, but the system failed to switch power sources immediately when the center was hit by a localized power outage, Director of University Information Services Beth Ann Bergsmark said.
“The center lost power for one second,” Bergsmark said.
The sudden shutdown of the servers caused malfunctions of several UIS services, including GU Mail and Blackboard, which took several hours Monday night to get back online. According to Bergsmark, several e-mail configuration files were also corrupted by the shutdown and needed repairs, though the e-mail data itself remained intact.
UIS cancelled service again Wednesday afternoon to fix the configuration files, which are needed for the system to properly direct e-mails.
Pepco, the University’s electricity provider, had scheduled a routine power outage for Wednesday night, but UIS was able to convince them to reschedule because of concerns about the stability of the backup power system after its earlier failure.
“We’re trying to determine whether or not it’s safe to run on battery power,” Bergsmark said.
UIS will stop services again Friday morning between midnight and 6 a.m. to overhaul the backup power system and replace potentially faulty components.
The outages have caused problems for University students outside the McDonough School of Business, which uses its own server. Whitney Porter (CAS ‘07) had a midterm in her American Media and Politics class on Tuesday but was unable to access the review slides that her professor had posted to Blackboard because of the server failures.
“It was kind of one of those moments when we’re all freaking out,” Porter said.
