The Davis Campus Data Center electrical upgrade is done, and all your e-mail should be right where it is supposed to be — in your inbox.

IET and Facilities Management completed the project in about 12 hours on Dec. 26, just as they had predicted. The project began at 7 a.m., as planned, putting a hold on all campus e-mail and shutting down most computer services hosted by the center.

The center came back online at 7 p.m., according to Gabe Youtsey, project manager for Information and Educational Technology.

IET used its @UCDavisStatus Twitter account to send this “tweet” at 8:01 p.m.: “Campus email and all other services affected by the successful Campus Data Center electrical upgrade are now available.”

Sharie Sprague, director of Information Systems and Services in the Office of Research, sent congratulations to IET: "Just a quick note to commend all those involved in the Data Center electrical upgrade. Lots of communication regarding downtime, a great way to inform folks of status updates (Twitter) and finished in one day. Kudos all around!"

Besides sending "tweets," IET maintained a special website during the service interruption, to alert people to what was going on (or not going on) with the UC Davis computer system.

The campus home page never went down, thanks to its temporary host: the UC Davis Health System, which was not affected by the service interruption on the Davis campus. The home page included a notice about the service interruption, and a link from this notice took people to IET's special website about the day's electrical project

In campus alerts that started coming out in early December, IET cautioned that the service interruption could last up to 48 hours, to 7 a.m. today (Dec. 28). Three-quarters of that was a cushion, just in case something unexpected cropped up. But nothing did.

“It was a great success,” said Youtsey, crediting the electrical crew from Facilities Management, as well as IET personnel. “There were no major hardware glitches and no major software glitches.”

E-mail service was sluggish for a time after the Data Center came back online, as the servers caught up with all the messages — incoming and outgoing — that had been stored during the service interruption, Youtsey said.

The electrical project provides added capacity for new research computing clusters and departmental administrative servers. Facilities Management did the work with the power off, rather than “live,” for the safety of technicians and to safeguard the Data Center and its equipment. 

Earlier coverage

"IET takes the surprise out of Dec. 26 service interruption," Dateline UC Davis (Dec. 23, 2010)

"Service interruption starts at 7 a.m. Dec. 26," Dateline UC Davis (Dec. 17, 2010)

"SmartSite on the list of affected services," Dateline UC Davis (Dec. 10, 2010)

“All campus e-mail, other computer services to go down Dec. 26,” Dateline UC Davis (Dec. 3, 2010)