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Power Outages

This page describes how the systems at the various Informatics sites will react to power outages.

Informatics Forum

The Informatics Forum has one central Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) system system which provides power to all of the basement server rooms, including both of the self-managed server rooms. This UPS is rated at 200 kVA and, if fully-loaded, its expected run-time on batteries (or 'autonomy') is about 30 minutes. There is no backup generator.

For a mains power outage which is anything other than transitory, 30 minutes is not really long enough to allow us to find out the expected duration of the outage. Therefore, in the event of a mains power outage within normal working hours, Computing staff will generally start to shut down servers immediately, based on their criticality, to preserve power for essential machines for as long as possible.

Outside normal working hours, managed servers will shut themselves down automatically as the UPS batteries finally run down. Most will restart once power is restored. However, to preserve data integrity, some are set up so as not to restart automatically, and in these cases Computing staff will restart them manually when it is safe to do so.

There is no UPS cover for the rest of the Informatics Forum: in the event of an external power outage, power to all offices (and all network closets) will immediately be lost.

Appleton Tower

There is a UPS system which covers the Appleton Tower main server room, and there is a backup generator. Therefore unless there is a particularly long outage we would not expect our servers in Appleton Tower to go down.

The comms-rooms for levels 6, 7 and 9 have local UPS provision, which will keep the network on those floors running for half an hour or so, along with attached PoE devices such as wireless access points and some VoIP phones.

The technicians' workshop is not covered by any backup power provision.

College Server Room (JCMB, Kings Buildings)

There is a UPS system which covers the College server room, and there is a backup generator. Therefore unless there is a particularly long outage we would not expect our servers in JCMB to go down.

Further Information

Our network monitoring site has a link to UPS status information.

Last reviewed: 
14/12/2023

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