Unsung (super)heroes keep the kinks out of Princeton's computer systems

by Steven Schultz
Matthew Petty had just pulled his sailboat into the Forked River near Barnegat Bay on a lazy Labor Day weekend when a call came in from work, Princeton's Office of Information Technology. Peter Olenick, manager of networking services, reported that the University's power had gone out and core computers that serve the whole campus were shutting down.

Petty, the technician who manages the main computer room, gathered his family, packed up the car and headed for Princeton. As Petty drove, nearly a dozen other staff members already were taking their places at the master console, repairing damage and bringing vital systems back online.

"Everything that could go wrong did go wrong," said Petty. Even though power came back, the backup power system had failed, leaving the computers vulnerable to further power fluctuations. Working late into that Saturday night, Petty helped repair the power supply while teams of administrators and programmers restored e-mail, databases, networking and other key services. "By Sunday morning, everything was back to normal," Petty said. When most faculty and staff returned on Tuesday, "they had no idea anything happened."

That is the goal of the people who work in the enterprise infrastructure services section of the Office of Information Technology. When power goes out, computer viruses attack or systems become unexpectedly overburdened, these OIT staff members drop what they are doing and work to keep disruptions to a minimum.

Most of the time, however, the group prevents problems from occurring in the first place. People like Dianne Kaiser, who regularly comes to work at 4 a.m. to perform routine maintenance, and Charles Augustine, who develops automatic systems for monitoring the health of computers, are part of the behind-the-scenes teams that keep the electronic backbone of the University in working order.

"If we're doing our job, nobody notices us," said Daniel Oberst, who directs the infrastructure services group.

Read the full story in the Weekly Bulletin.