Dear Colleagues

As promised here is a short update on the current situation in YNiC.

We now know that 12 separate leaks occurred from a pressurised water system within the plant area in the top floor of the Biocentre sometime on Sunday.

The water had descended throughout the building mainly down the cavity wall of the offices and through the risers.

The first we knew of the incident was that one of the disc RAID controllers emailed the IT manager that it was failing.

He went straight to YNiC and started evacuating the server area. This prompt action may, I emphasise may, have allowed us to save some equipment.

Today we have had building surveyors inspecting the building. We have been informed that we should continue to dehumidify and heat the affected areas for at least a week. A further inspection will take place next Monday, the 20th. New areas of water ingress are appearing so the full extent of the damage has yet to be revealed.

The University's insurance manager has attended the site. She is our link to the insurers and we have been informed that a loss adjustor has been appointed and will attend YNiC tomorrow, Wednesday the 15th. Disaster Recovery experts have also been appointed and they will advise on the best methods for dealing with the damage and also with the consequential loss of all the YNiC services, not just IT.

We have set in motion a recovery plan. Tony Morland is co-ordinating this and we would be grateful if people could inform him if they are working to particular deadlines, contracts or clinically critical timelines. The recovery plan will, eventually, include contingency planning if recovery is going to be lengthy.

Within YNiC we are systematically going through all the equipment to try and establish what is irrevocably lost. We should point out though that we know that all our warranties are void. Therefore we will be discussing our options with the advisors tomorrow about how to recreate a working system that will last the original estimated life.

We are attempting to rebuild the RAID arrays. As these contain a very large amount of data this will take time, maybe days. At this stage we are unable to say which, if any, data is lost from the discs. We do know that some discs within the RAID were lost.

We do have backups on tape in a fireproof safe. But at the moment we do not have an infrastructure that will allow us to use these backups. The ideal scenario will be that RAIDs will be largely rebuilt but we cannot guarantee that. Moreover, we do not have the network switches, servers and analysis machines that would allow useful access to the discs.

We do appreciate that many, many, projects, PhDs, staff, external collaborators will be seriously affected by this. We will do all we can to get a system working as soon as we can.

Please note, the current emails services are vulnerable. We even lost service yesterday when another drive failed. Please keep local drafts as often as you can.

You will be pleased to note that the MATLAB licence service is now active.

Gary