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Network outage at Sheehan disrupted card readers; district cites rare SAN controller failure and urges caution about social posts
Summary
A New Year’s Day power outage knocked out the district's main storage array, leaving card readers disabled for several days; staff said both storage controllers failed, parts arrived across two days, and staff ask that security-sensitive details not be shared publicly.
District technology staff told the operations committee Jan. 13 that a New Year’s Day power failure at Sheehan — the district’s network hub — caused both controllers on the district’s main storage area network (SAN) to fail, leaving some systems, including card readers, offline for several days.
Ms. Veil, who briefed the committee, described a chain of events that began with a holiday power outage. A vendor technician worked on the equipment that night; both SAN controllers failed and replacement parts could not be ordered until the following business day. “It is redundant as multiple hard drives. It has 2 controllers. Unfortunately, both controllers failed, which is pretty unusual,” she said. One replacement controller arrived on Thursday and the second arrived on Friday; staff said some systems could not be fully restored until the second controller was replaced.
The district sent an internal notice to staff about locked doors and non-functioning card readers. Ms. Veil told the committee someone posted operational details about the outage on Facebook and said that public posts about nonworking card readers create a security risk: “We don't want to invite any unnecessary security risks by putting that information out there.”
Committee members thanked staff for vendor work on a holiday and asked technology leadership to review vendor service-level agreements (SLAs) to ensure timely repairs in the future. Ms. Veil and other staff said redundancy exists but simultaneous controller failures and the holiday complicated immediate recovery.
No policy changes were approved at the meeting. District technology staff will report back on any SLA or vendor changes and continue to advise administrators when sensitive operational details arise.
