Hey Stonie,
I agree. NWR had an old zone forecast and a hazardous weather outlook on the
broadcasts I monitor...that was it. And from work, many people are not allowed
to look at social media, or they are just too busy to look at it. And many
don't even know that the NWS WFO's are on social media. The weather weenies and
meteorologists do, but the general public? One office that has nearly 8 million
in their CWA has a FB following of 150,000 people. And where are the WFO's
getting weather data to get the warnings and make forecasts when NOAAport is
dead?
What was very interesting was that, apparently, in order to feed the BNCF, you
have to go through the ANCF.
I think having two (redundant) routers in the same facility is great!
BUT...make sure you have backup routes to other facilities
via another method or router so that if both go down, you can flip easily to
another system to get you "back on the air" quickly.
The modis operandi in IT these days is "streamline" for efficiency and cost
effectiveness. I get that. I really do. Budgets are tight, and it's less
equipment to maintain. But be advised that if you streamline, without no
outside backup, it WILL come to bite you in the backside. I am seeing this
happen over and over again outside of the NWS. The good news? Thankfully, we
didn't have a severe weather outbreak going on. And, the NWS learned its
lesson, ultimately, and will have another route to the BNCF shortly. Bravo!
Now, I wish other companies and entities would get it, and not shrug their
shoulders and go "Internet day. Go home."
Gilbert Sebenste
Staff Meteorologist
Environmental Health and Safety
Labs for Wellness 154 | DeKalb, Illinois 60115
815-753-5492
gilbert@xxxxxxx
http://weather.admin.niu.edu
Everyone. Home. Safely.
-----Original Message-----
From: ldm-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
[mailto:ldm-users-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Stonie R. Cooper
Sent: Tuesday, February 14, 2017 3:38 PM
To: ldm-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: [ldm-users] NWS official statement on the data outage of 2/13/2017
I generally keep my comments off of this list, but the official statement is
not accurate. As you know, Gilbert, WRIP (NOAA Weather
Radio) was only partially up and that was WFO dependent - if an WFO fired up
their CRS, they could manually record hourly forecasts and observations.
Likewise, checking the tombstones via local forecast on weather.gov resulted in
"N/A" for most zip codes I tried during the outage.
From an IT side, I would say this particular event should help illustrate the
foolhardy paradigm of "putting all your eggs in one basket." HPC, NCEP, EMC .
. . all were hit with this outage. NWWS, EMWIN, and SBN were all down. A
primary and secondary router paradigm in the same physical location may save
lots of money, but is an incredible liability for data distribution.
I have always advocated that a live secondary should be placed geographically
distant from the primary uplink and NCF . . . and KC has legacy and national
networking infrastructure already in place to make it a likely candidate. Or
Boulder, at ESRL.
Not that my comments will merit any action, but if pointing out what seems
obvious to me gains traction, that would be great. I would even start filling
out my TPS cover sheets for all my memos, and coming in on over the weekend to
work. ("Office Space" reference)
Stonie
On 02/14/2017 03:17 PM, Gilbert Sebenste wrote:
> Here it is:
>
>
>
> NWS Statement on Cause of Outage on Feb. 13 Feb. 14, 2017
>
> The National Weather Service experienced a failure of its AWIPS
> Network Control Facility communications network at 2:08 p.m. EST Feb
> 13. The outage, lasting two hours, 36 minutes, prevented us from
> fully distributing forecasts and warnings. During the outage, the
> public was able to access forecasts, watches and warnings by NOAA
> Weather Radio and the social media accounts of their local forecast office.
>
> Technicians quickly determined the cause of the problem was the
> simultaneous failure of two core communications routers - primary and
> backup - for the control facility due to a power problem. The routers
> were replaced and the system was restored to full service. We are
> still investigating what caused the power outage.
>
> The AWIPS communications system is a very reliable configuration and
> this is the first time both routers failed simultaneously.
>
> We are implementing additional communication pathways to the backup
> Network Control Facility to ensure that problems encountered in
> switching operations to this backup facility will not recur.
>
> ---
>
>
>
> *Gilbert Sebenste*
>
> Staff Meteorologist
>
>
>
> Environmental Health and Safety
>
> Labs for Wellness 154 | DeKalb, Illinois 60115
>
> 815-753-5492
>
> _gilbert@xxxxxxx <mailto:gilbert@xxxxxxx>_
>
> http://weather.admin.niu.edu <http://weather.admin.niu.edu/>
>
> Everyone. Home. Safely.
>
>
>
> NIU
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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