Engineers discover culprit for e-mail outage Published March 21, 2007 By Senior Airman Travis Edwards Nellis AFB Public Affairs NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. -- The cooling system in the Network Control Center broke Saturday afternoon and was the cause of the base-wide e-mail outage Monday. All network customers on Nellis and Creech were affected by the outage that forced the Network Control Center to shut down 136 out of 140 servers on the unclassified network. The aging air-conditioning system used in the building initially broke when a fan motor quit working, said 99th Civil Engineer Squadron chief of operations, Maj. Don Ohlemacher. "After we replaced the motor, a water pump seized up," the major said, "and because the equipment failed over the weekend, replacement parts were difficult to obtain." The base network servers are located in the NCC and need to stay in a constantly cool environment in order to work properly. When the temperatures began to rise, NCC personnel contacted the CE helpdesk and worked hand-in-hand with them and other technicians from Air Combat Command at Langley Air Force Base, Va., to bring down the servers in a controlled manner, said Master Sgt. Dan Warzynak, NCC superintendent. The ideal operating temperature for the servers is 70 degrees and when the temperature reached 100, we had to start shutting down the servers to minimize damage and to help keep the room cooler, Sergeant Warzynak said. Mobile cooling units from other base agencies were used and were just enough to keep up with the heat produced by the classified network systems, all while the cooling system was being repaired. "This was truly a team effort - repair and restoration efforts from two Nellis wings and spanning the continent from two bases were rapidly coordinated and employed, over a weekend," said Sergeant Warzynak. CE now has an off-base vendor on stand-by to provide equipment capable of cooling the NCC when repairs are needed.
