Implications of Interruption in Electrical Power Supply to George Washington Hall
AT-A-GLANCE EFFECTS OF GW POWER INTERRUPTION
(see details below)
Will I be able to use this service? |
And you wish to use a service from | ||
| Fredericksburg campus | Stafford campus* | Off campus | |
| Building Fire Alarms | Ring alarm, but no alert to FD or PD | N.A. | N.A. |
| University E-mail | No | No | No |
| Shared drives | No | No | No |
| Net Storage | No | No | No |
| Pay-for-print | No | No | No |
| UMW web site | No | No | No |
| Cisco VoIP telephones | No (includes Centre Court) | Yes for 286, no for 654 numbers | NA |
| Eaglelink portal | No | No | No |
| Banner self-service | No | No | No |
| Banner INB | No | No | No |
| Blackboard | No | No | No |
| UMWBlogs.org | No | No | No |
| careers.umw.edu | No | No | No |
| License-key access to such software as Vectorworks, Mathematica, Geomatica, SPSS and ESRI/GIS | No | No | No for ESRI (only ESRI employs key-server for off-campus access) |
| eVA (state purchasing system) | No | No | Yes |
| Fredericksburg staff "old" phone-message system | No | No | No |
| EagleOne cards at off-campus vendors | N.A. | N.A. | No |
| EagleOne cards at beverage and snack machines | No | No | N.A. |
| EagleOne cards on eSuds, University copiers | Yes | N.A. | N.A. |
| EagleOne cash-cards at other campus locations | No | No | N.A. |
| Card-key locks on residence halls | Yes | N.A. | N.A. |
Detailed information
George Washington Hall houses some of the critical elements of the University's data and telephony networks, and, under current conditions, an interruption in the electrical power supply to the building can have wide-ranging effects on University services. The impacts of a power outage will be reduced by installation of a back-up power generator at GW, a project that was funded by the 2007 General Assembly and that is likely to be completed in 2008.
Services Affected
Anything other than a brief power outage at George Washington Hall will take down most of the University network (including our e-mail systems, shared-drive data storage spaces, and the pay-for-print system) and it will take our Fredericksburg-based Cisco Voice-over-IP telephones out of service (this includes phones at Centre Court, most of the phones in the modular units on the Fredericksburg campus, and CGPS-based VoIP phones that have 654 prefixes).
Alarm systems that rely on the University network will not be fully functional during the period (our fire alarm systems can ring alarms in affected buildings without the network, but they summon emergency responders via the network, so building occupants would need to alert police and/or fire departments through some other means while the network is down).
Blackboard (via the Eaglelink Portal) will not be accessible from outside the University and from the Stafford campus during the period. The Eaglelink Portal itself and self-service access to Banner also will not be accessible. Although the Fredericksburg-based VoIP phones are completely out of service when the network is down, non-VoIP staff-office phones that depend on the University's old voice messaging system will be operable for making and receiving calls during this time (except perhaps in GW Hall itself), but the old voice messaging system itself (which only serves those phones now) will be out of service -- there will be no automatic answering of those phones or taking of messages during that period (the main University telephone number, 654-1000, and the Admissions Office main line, 654-2000, are examples of lines so affected). Fredericksburg-campus faculty phones are on a different voice-message system and will be unaffected by a GW power outage.
The University's employment opportunities site (for applicants, search committees and hiring officers), careers.umw.edu, will be unavailable while the network is down.
Devices that depend on the network to function (such as the EagleOne card readers on beverage and snack vending machines) won't work because they will not be able to communicate with their servers, but the EagleOne cash cards will work in University copy machines and in the eSuds laundry machines, which will store the transactions offline and process them as soon as the network is available.
Network-attached dining hall cash registers can operate by storing transactions until they can communicate with their system's server. However, no one will be able to use the cash value stored on an EagleOne card in any locations, including at the dining facilities, the off-campus locations where the cards usually are accepted, as well as the University Tennis Center and Klein Theatre. Also, while the network is down, you can't add cash value to your EagleOne card on-line or check your balance.
Although the card-key locking system for residence-hall external doors communicates information via the network, constant presence of the network is not required for the system to work. The major effect of a power outage at GW on this system is that the Police Department will not be able to remotely unlock a residence-hall exterior door.
Restoration of services will take additional time
In addition to the actual duration of a power outage, additional time will be required for services to return. In cases where we have advance notice of a power outage, we can power down the equipment in an orderly fashion several hours before the outage occurs, in a way that allows services to be restored relatively rapidly (even so, it may require one to three hours to return systems to service after power is restored). In cases where the power outage is unexpected and staff are unable to bring the systems down "softly," complications can develop that extend the amount of time it takes to return systems to service after power is restored.