As has been generally announced, there will be an IT outage on Sunday morning. This is 
the first and most important step to increase our N109 machine room capacity. For some 
time now, because of electrical issues and cooling problems, we have not be able to place 
new servers  or other systems in the machine room. We will be installing new power 
equipment and setting up a new machine room layout that will greatly improve the 
system cooling. This will involve the installation of large new system cabinets. 

Last spring we were able to have an outside contractor redesign the machine room layout 
and power. We then purchased the power equipment and cabinets to make this actually 
happen. Our staff have been planning and preparing for weeks for this upgrade. This 
week, for example, new piping went in for the electrical systems. The new cabinets, 
which are huge, have been stored around campus, with the largest number being in the 
currently unused Hunter North swimming pool area. 

On Sunday we will bring this all together to take the critical first step in giving us new 
possibilities in the machine room. We will be bringing in the new cabinets and connecting 
them to the new power. To accomplish the upgrade the machine room power needs to be 
completely shut down for about an hour so that the power can be connected to the new 
cabinet area. The shutdown includes the backup battery systems and connections to the 
backup generator system. Because a complete power shut-down is dangerous for our 
systems, we will take down all systems on Sunday morning to allow the electricians to 
complete the power connection. Here is a timeline of what we hope will happen on 
Sunday, October 14:

7:00 am Our staff start taking down all systems in the machine room.
8:00 am The Hunter electricians disconnect all power and start the power changeover. 
9:00 am We expect the power to be restored and our staff will start bringing up systems.
11:00 am We expect all systems to be running again. 

Of course, there can be unexpected glitches, so we have announced that the outage will 
last until noon. We hope that systems will be up before that, of course. 

Because the power will be completely out, and because we have no off-site live backup 
systems, the network at all Hunter campuses will be down while power is out. We will 
bring the network back first and then proceed with the systems. A complete outage 
means that besides the building networks being out, email, the web, databases, 
applications and such that are housed in our machine room will be down. What will not be 
down are CUNY applications like the CUNY portal, Blackboard, SIMS, etc. 

When Sunday's work is done, there will still be much to do. We have a plan in place to 
move all of our servers into the new cabinet space. This will be done in stages over the 
next few months. We do not expect significant outages while this is being done. The small 
outages that are expected will be announced on our outages page and on Hunter-L.

I want to thank our staff for their terrific work preparing for this momentous project. 
Their work will benefit the entire Hunter community.

Frank Steen