digital.forest Technical Support
News archive: January 2010

******Update 12:43 hrs******

This repair is complete and all power systems are again functioning according to design.

******Non-Service Impacting Maintenance******

At 11:00 hrs PST Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 digital.forest will make an emergency repair to one of our UPS systems. This repair should have no noticeable impact to delivered power in the facility.

This repair is necessary to replace a failed capacitor on a static transfer switch that was discovered during a routine inspection by digital.forest staff on Tuesday, February 26th. The capacitor does not provide power to any critical systems but is a part of the transfer switch that isolates the UPS system from the critical load during maintenance. The failure of the capacitor is such that the dielectric (in this case oil) is leaking in small amounts into the static switch. This failure poses no risk of power outage, fire, or short-circuit in any of the digital.forest data center infrastructure. It is our policy to repair any failed component in our critical power infrastructure immediately, so long as the repair does not increase risk of power delivery failure.

The repair will not require wrapping power around the UPS system which would involve transferring power from utility to generator. The vendor engineer will perform the work while the equipment is energized. We estimate that the work will require one hour to complete and will provide an update here once all work is complete.

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digital.forest remains committed to providing our customers with the highest level of service, the greatest degree of protection, and the most transparent communications. If you have any questions or concerns about the above maintenance, please contact your account manager. Our account management staff is available Monday through Friday from 08:00 hrs PST until 17:00 hrs PST at 877-720-0483 Option 2.

posted by digital.forest at 10:49 PM on Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Categories: Emergency Maintenance

******NON SERVICE IMPACTING MAINTENANCE******

Between January 18th and January 29th (specific day is yet to be determined), Seattle City Light will perform an upgrade to the transformer that provides power to the digital.forest data center. During this upgrade we will transfer critical load first to our primary generator, then to a secondary generator that will power the main feed during the day, then back to our primary generator and finally back to grid power. A total of four transfers are necessary to ensure constant power availability. As in any grid power disruption we do not expect any impact to the critical load in the facility. We will take every precaution available to ensure continuous power delivery to our customers, including pre-testing of secondary generator equipment. We will have a full compliment of staff and vendors on site, and will post updates here on the Support blog throughout the entire day. We are planning the first transfer for approximately 4 AM on the specific day and will provide a complete schedule of events as soon as the day is chosen.

The process for this work is very similar to the process used during the September 4th, 2009 work which you can read about here and here.

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digital.forest remains committed to providing our customers with the highest level of service, the greatest degree of protection, and the most transparent communications. If you have any questions or concerns about the above maintenance, please contact your account manager. Our account management staff is available Monday through Friday from 08:00 hrs PST until 17:00 hrs PST at 877-720-0483 Option 2.

posted by Shawn Hammer at 08:58 AM on Thursday, January 14, 2010
Categories: Scheduled Maintenance

*********** ------- UPDATE ------- *************

This maintenance event has been rescheduled to Friday January 15th between 01:00 hrs PST and 03:00 hrs PST. We apologize for the short notice and any inconvenience that this may cause. In order to minimize disruption digital.forest will turn down our BGP session with the upstream provider at 23:00 hrs on Thursday the 14th and re-establish the session at 23:00 hrs on Saturday the 16th.

****** SERVICE IMPACTING MAINTENANCE ******

On Sunday, January 17th between 01:00 hrs PST and 03:00 hrs PST one of our upstream network providers will be performing maintenance on the edge router that we connect to. This will cause the connection to this upstream to be down for approximately 20 minutes while this maintenance is done. During the period our other upstream network providers will carry our traffic without interruption to services.

While there will be no loss of traffic during this maintenance, there will be periods of latency due to sub-optimal routing while the BGP sessions re-converge.

digital.forest remains committed to providing our customers with the highest level of service, the greatest degree of protection, and the most transparent communications. If you have any questions or concerns about the above maintenance, please contact your account manager. Our account management staff is available Monday through Friday from 08:00 hrs PST until 17:00 hrs PST at 877-720-0483 Option 2.

posted by Kyle at 10:18 AM on Monday, January 4, 2010
Categories: Network