Spring Break
DrexelOne outages due to flooding
By: Marshall Fleming
Issue date: 5/4/07 Section: News
Originally published: 5/4/07 at 3:19 AM EST
Last update: 5/4/07 at 3:20 AM EST
Originally published: 5/4/07 at 3:19 AM EST
Last update: 5/4/07 at 3:20 AM EST
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Flooding in the basement of the Korman Center April 25 caused the temporary disablement of DrexelOne services.
"During the installation of some electrical feeder lines, a water pipe was damaged on the first floor of the Korman Center," said Ken Blackney, associate vice president of Information Resources & Technology. "The water flowed through holes cored into the floor (for the feeder lines) and into a storage room in the basement. The storage room is near the data center."
Rumors began to swirl that the new fountain in the quad was the cause of the flood. Those pipes, however, are actually connected to Matheson, and had no effect in the cause of the flood.
"It took the contractor [that hit the pipe which caused the flood] and Drexel Facilities Management approximately three hours to fully clean up all the water from the basement and repair the water line," said James Katsaounis, Director of Communications for the office of the Senior Vice President of Student Life and Administrative Services.
The incident caused DrexelOne services to become temporary disabled, frustrating many students.
"I'm always checking my e-mails, and when DrexelOne goes down, it creates a huge inconvenience," said Jason Bortz, a freshman architectural engineering major. "This campus insists on being paperless so it really screws things up when the only way of getting certain things goes down."
Other students however, applaud the work done by IRT.
"I think it makes a lot of sense that they have the back ups that they do," said Ishtiaque Ahmad, a freshman chemical engineering major. "I was at least able to access my e-mail through WebCT."
The incident has brought up many questions as to backup of Drexel's systems.
"Drexel has a secondary data center in Calhoun where critical data and servers are mirrored," said Blackney. "So, Banner, e-mail, Bb Vista, and other key systems have real-time disk mirrors in both places. The extra data in Calhoun is actually used not just for emergencies - our nightly backups run from the Calhoun copies of the databases so that we don't have to take down Banner or other systems for hours a night."
"During the installation of some electrical feeder lines, a water pipe was damaged on the first floor of the Korman Center," said Ken Blackney, associate vice president of Information Resources & Technology. "The water flowed through holes cored into the floor (for the feeder lines) and into a storage room in the basement. The storage room is near the data center."
Rumors began to swirl that the new fountain in the quad was the cause of the flood. Those pipes, however, are actually connected to Matheson, and had no effect in the cause of the flood.
"It took the contractor [that hit the pipe which caused the flood] and Drexel Facilities Management approximately three hours to fully clean up all the water from the basement and repair the water line," said James Katsaounis, Director of Communications for the office of the Senior Vice President of Student Life and Administrative Services.
The incident caused DrexelOne services to become temporary disabled, frustrating many students.
"I'm always checking my e-mails, and when DrexelOne goes down, it creates a huge inconvenience," said Jason Bortz, a freshman architectural engineering major. "This campus insists on being paperless so it really screws things up when the only way of getting certain things goes down."
Other students however, applaud the work done by IRT.
"I think it makes a lot of sense that they have the back ups that they do," said Ishtiaque Ahmad, a freshman chemical engineering major. "I was at least able to access my e-mail through WebCT."
The incident has brought up many questions as to backup of Drexel's systems.
"Drexel has a secondary data center in Calhoun where critical data and servers are mirrored," said Blackney. "So, Banner, e-mail, Bb Vista, and other key systems have real-time disk mirrors in both places. The extra data in Calhoun is actually used not just for emergencies - our nightly backups run from the Calhoun copies of the databases so that we don't have to take down Banner or other systems for hours a night."
