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=============================================================================== Robb Kambic Unidata Program Center Software Engineer III Univ. Corp for Atmospheric Research address@hidden WWW: http://www.unidata.ucar.edu/ =============================================================================== ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Mon, 30 Aug 1999 09:59:02 -0500 From: Chad Johnson <address@hidden> To: Jim Koermer <address@hidden> Subject: Re: McIDAS Imagery Gone Jim Koermer wrote: > > It appears there is a problem with McIDAS area files. Here, the last > GOES-W data was 0500Z and GOES=E was 0315Z. From a quick check of a > number of other university web sites, this seems to be uniform, so I > think the problem is at SSEC. > > With two Atlantic hurricanes, this is a really bad time for this to go > down. I wonder why an astute programmer at SSEC can't write a script to > do some automatic checking and restart some of their systems or send > some notification to the appropriate person when things go down. Just > when I was thinking how reliable the McIDAS feed has been for about the > past month, then ... Our campus network folks performed some work yesterday morning. The outage was supposed to last 10 minutes, but they obviously ran into problems and the outage was considerably longer. It has been at least a year - quite possibly longer - since there was a problem with satellite data on the Unidata/Wisconsin broadcast which can be attributed to problems within the SSEC Data Center. Any recent data outages have been the result of outside influences such as campus and regional network problems and power outages. Over the past couple of years, astute programmers have made many improvements within the Data Center in both the real-time ingesting of satellite data and the Unidata/Wisconsin product production software that has greatly increased reliable delivery of products. The Data Center is not staffed 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If Unidata is willing to support 24/7 staffing we will be happy to provide it. Efforts are made on weekends to deal with problems as they occur, but because we are not staffed at these times we simply may not know there is a problem. The product generation software continued to work flawlessly yesterday and all data is available in the nearline archive. The GOES-8 4:15 and 5:15 images were cancelled due to Keep Out Zone. Information regarding cancelled images due to eclipse andkeep out zones is available at http://www.ssd.noaa.gov/SSD/GOES/eclipse.html, which is also referenced by the SSEC Data Center home page at http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/datacenter. -Chad -- Chad W. Johnson E-mail: address@hidden Programmer/Meteorologist Voice: (608) 265-5292 Space Science and Engineering Center Fax: (608) 263-6738 University of Wisconsin -- Madison