Scheduled Power Outage and Data Centre Shutdown

Apr 26th, 2022

Facilities Management (FM) is coordinating a planned power outage on Friday, April 29, 2022, from 6 p.m. to midnight (six hours).

These buildings will close during the outage due to building life safety systems being on emergency power only.: 

  • Henrietta Harvey
  • Arts and Administration Building (original portion of the building only, the extension is NOT included)
  • Tunnels (Phys. Ed. to Arts and Administration and Science to Arts and Administration to Henrietta Harvey)

Building occupants are advised to shut down all computer equipment prior to these outages.

The outage allows FM to perform critical electrical upgrades. 

Information Technology (IT) impacts

The power outage requires the complete shutdown of the Henrietta Harvey St. John’s campus data centre and the IT impacts are not limited solely to affected buildings. The Office of the Chief Information Officer (OCIO) is prioritizing services to minimize the impact of the outage to the university community. The outage will impact some services beginning April 28.

What’s impacted and what’s not

Services such as Banner/Self Service, my.mun.ca, mun.ca (T4/SiteBuilder), WebEx, Email, VPN, OnBase, Voyager file shares, and BrightSpace will remain in service.

 The FAST budgeting and reporting system will be unavailable effective end of day on Thursday, April 28, until the server connection is restored on April 30. 

The areas of greatest IT impact will be the following sites. As of 6 p.m. on Friday, April 29, when the power is shut off, these sites will have no network, internet, Wi-Fi, VOIP phones and RDP connectivity during the power outage. These services will return when power is restored and data centre is powered up. Communications have previously gone to each site.

 -             Signal Hill Campus

-              Signal Hill Residence

-              GEO Centre

-              Southcott Hall

-              Bonaventure Avenue

-              Tiffany Court

-              Mt. Scio

-              Labrador Campus

-              Ocean Sciences Centre

-              Botanical Garden 

-              202 Elizabeth Avenue

-              Math server room

-              Counselling Centre

-              Lambe’s Lane

-              Eastern Health Private Link

-              Ingstad 

-              PDCS HSIMS

-              NHCLI connection (used for Kroll) Tiffany Court Prescriptions

-              ACEnet

Guest wireless will not be available for St. John’s campus and the sites above on Friday, April 29, from 6 p.m. to Saturday, April 30, 6 a.m.

Canarie/ACORN-NL will be offline for the duration of the power outage on Friday, April 29, from 6 p.m. to Saturday, April 30, 6 a.m.

Test and development environments will shut down throughout the day on Thursday, April 28, and will be brought back up on Monday, May 2. 

Coordination with units

If any production systems/services require shutdown, this will be coordinated for either Thursday, April 28, or Friday, April 29, during regular business hours and will begin to be brought back up on Saturday, April 30.

Units outside of the OCIO that are responsible for servers within the Henrietta Harvey data centre will restore servers in a timeline to meet their business needs.

While significant planning and communications have gone into the preparations for powering down the St. John’s campus data centre, there is always potential risk on shutdown or startup of hardware, problems may arise and services may be impacted.

While the OCIO has contacted units to understand service needs during this time, it is important for units to share this information with employees and plan contingencies for any impacts. If you have questions or concerns related to IT impacts, please contact the ITS Service Desk at 864-4595, help@mun.ca or chat support

Please direct questions regarding the power outage to Austin St John, Facilities Management project coordinator, at austinsj@mun.ca.

Facilities Management has scheduled additional power outages for May 14 and May 28. Normal power will be out for 16 hours during each outage. These outages are required to complete the electrical upgrades, but will not require the shutdown of the Henrietta Harvey St. John’s campus data centre. Generator power is required during these outages, which could lead to service disruptions under unforeseen circumstances. 

Future power outage details

May 14, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. (16 hours). These buildings will close during the outage due to building life safety systems being on emergency power only.

-        Henrietta Harvey

-        Arts and Administration (including extension)

-        Biotechnology

-        Chemistry-Physics

-        Education

-        QEII Library

-        Bruneau Centre

-        Field House

-        Physical Education

-        Science - Blocks A and B

-        Computing Services (T-12) 

May 28, 6 a.m. to 10 p.m. (16 hours). These buildings will be closed during the outage due to building life safety systems being on emergency power only. 

-        Henrietta Harvey

-        Arts and Administration (original portion of the building only, Arts extension NOT included)

Building occupants are advised to make arrangements to shut down all computer equipment prior to these outages.

Any questions regarding the power outages can be directed to Austin St John, Facilities Management project coordinator, austinsj@mun.ca.

Facilities Management and the OCIO appreciates your co-operation during this important upgrade to campus infrastructure.