eSTAR

[Alasdair Allan]

We have a bulging capacitor problem on the main eSTAR server in  
Exeter. I'm currently in the process of moving all of the running  
processes onto our back-up server, however this is going to be a big  
job, and there may be brief outages during the process.

There will be fairly extensive internal disruption, however most of  
this should not be visible from the outside. Predicted effects on the  
currently managed public programmes are detailed below:

GRB Programme

One of the longest potential outage will be for the GRB programme as  
the eSTAR GCN feed redirected from the Goddard end, as I have little  
if any control over the time scale that this will be happening on.  
I'll keep the feed on the main server up and running either until we  
have switched over, or the machine dies, which ever comes first. If  
the machine dies before we switch over, then we'll have an extended  
outage. There is some potential for data loss.

Exo-planet Programme

Shouldn't be affected, although status return messages for one set of  
observations will not make it back into the eSTAR system, the  
observations will be taken and be available at the telescope. No data  
will be lost.

VOEvent Network

The end point for the eSTAR event broker will be changing, I'll post  
more details to the VOEvent mailing list when I know where it's going  
to end up. There should be no other effects visible outside of the  
internal eSTAR network. Since nobody except me is actually using  
VOEvent operationally yet, there is no anticipated data loss.

RAPTOR Gateway

No effect, currently running on estar2.astro.ex.ac.uk rather than our  
main server.

Apologies,
Al.