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My university is not a top tier research university like UC Berkeley by any means, but our co-generation plant is able to power the whole campus in the case of

My university is not a top tier research university like UC Berkeley by any means, but our co-generation plant is able to power the whole campus in the case of a power cut. Even when the central plant gets knocked out (a squirrel did that last year), individual buildings have backup generators. The building where I work has three of them and all of our -80s are on back up power or could be quickly shifted over. That is several layers of redundancy. We have done a lot of planning for events like this. I'm a little surprised that a more research focused (and less resource starved) institution like Berkeley wasn't more prepared.

Mathnerd314 7y ago
A lot of big state universities are cash starved, or at least are acting like it. Education funding was a big target during the recession and hasn't really bounced back: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-decade-in-higher-education-funding https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-de... Berkely has a few generators though so I think these particular complaints are due to cost tradeoff decisions made decades ago and a general lack of foresight to predict the utility power completely shutting down.
joshvm 7y ago
It depends a lot on individual departments. Most astro groups I've been in have had very competent sysadmins who aggressively lobby for fault tolerance and assume that the university proper is incompetent (the very best kind of angry greybeards). So all the server rooms have enough UPS capacity to gracefully kill servers, data is properly backed up and so on. At some places like MSSL we even had an onsite diesel generator becuase there were flight critical experiments going on all the time. Many other faculties don't need that level of resilience so they don't bother. I'm not sure what the situation is for wider engineering or bio/chem. I imagine there are serious health and safety concerns for things like fume hoods that must be able to evacuate gases in the event of a power failure.
distant_hat 7y ago
Oftentimes, multiple failures cascade. About 2 decades back at Ohio State University, there was some renovation work going on. Due to this some sensors were switched off. This was wintertime and heating was on. During a weekend something failed and temperatures in a few rooms went as high as 50C. These rooms were used to house mice and rats for several long running experiments and all of them died or had to be euthanized as the data was unusable. Some people lost years of work.
SuoDuanDao 7y ago
My theory is that all the not-resource-starved universities are suffering from administrative bloat, while universities that stay lean have the experts make these kinds of decisions out of necessity.
ryanmercer 7y ago
>Even when the central plant gets knocked out (a squirrel did that last year), Reminds me of something I saw shared here on HN https://cybersquirrel1.com/ https://cybersquirrel1.com/ >This map lists all unclassified Cyber Squirrel Operations that have been released to the public that we have been able to confirm. There are many more executed ops than displayed on this map however, those ops remain classified. >Confirmation for all ops has been preserved by the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine whenever possible. >"I don't think paralysis [of the electrical grid] is more likely by cyberattack than by natural disaster. And frankly the number-one threat experienced to date by the US electrical grid is squirrels." - John C. Inglis, Former Deputy Director, National Security Agency 2015.07.09
gibspaulding 7y ago
I did a tour of the power plant at Notre Dame university (in Indiana) back when I was in high school. They have their own coal plant on site where they get a portion of their power along with diesel generators as backup for that. Apparently they get the rest of their power at a reduced rate from the local utility because of an agreement that they can temporarily go fully off grid if the power company requires it.
kiddico 7y ago
The cross of a campus power plant and squirrel incident makes me feel like this is Kent State...

Mathnerd314 7y ago

A lot of big state universities are cash starved, or at least are acting like it. Education funding was a big target during the recession and hasn't really bounced back: https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-decade-in-higher-education-funding https://www.cbpp.org/research/state-budget-and-tax/a-lost-de... Berkely has a few generators though so I think these particular complaints are due to cost tradeoff decisions made decades ago and a general lack of foresight to predict the utility power completely shutting down.

joshvm 7y ago

It depends a lot on individual departments. Most astro groups I've been in have had very competent sysadmins who aggressively lobby for fault tolerance and assume that the university proper is incompetent (the very best kind of angry greybeards). So all the server rooms have enough UPS capacity to gracefully kill servers, data is properly backed up and so on. At some places like MSSL we even had an onsite diesel generator becuase there were flight critical experiments going on all the time. Many other faculties don't need that level of resilience so they don't bother. I'm not sure what the situation is for wider engineering or bio/chem. I imagine there are serious health and safety concerns for things like fume hoods that must be able to evacuate gases in the event of a power failure.

distant_hat 7y ago

Oftentimes, multiple failures cascade. About 2 decades back at Ohio State University, there was some renovation work going on. Due to this some sensors were switched off. This was wintertime and heating was on. During a weekend something failed and temperatures in a few rooms went as high as 50C. These rooms were used to house mice and rats for several long running experiments and all of them died or had to be euthanized as the data was unusable. Some people lost years of work.

SuoDuanDao 7y ago

My theory is that all the not-resource-starved universities are suffering from administrative bloat, while universities that stay lean have the experts make these kinds of decisions out of necessity.

ryanmercer 7y ago

>Even when the central plant gets knocked out (a squirrel did that last year), Reminds me of something I saw shared here on HN https://cybersquirrel1.com/ https://cybersquirrel1.com/ >This map lists all unclassified Cyber Squirrel Operations that have been released to the public that we have been able to confirm. There are many more executed ops than displayed on this map however, those ops remain classified. >Confirmation for all ops has been preserved by the Internet Archive's WayBack Machine whenever possible. >"I don't think paralysis [of the electrical grid] is more likely by cyberattack than by natural disaster. And frankly the number-one threat experienced to date by the US electrical grid is squirrels." - John C. Inglis, Former Deputy Director, National Security Agency 2015.07.09

gibspaulding 7y ago

I did a tour of the power plant at Notre Dame university (in Indiana) back when I was in high school. They have their own coal plant on site where they get a portion of their power along with diesel generators as backup for that. Apparently they get the rest of their power at a reduced rate from the local utility because of an agreement that they can temporarily go fully off grid if the power company requires it.

kiddico 7y ago

The cross of a campus power plant and squirrel incident makes me feel like this is Kent State...