Due to a power upgrade on our build 8

[VNS1000]

Due to a power upgrade on our building no electricity will be available for the switch & UPS for 3 or 4 hours. I imagine the UPS will not be able to provide power for the switch for this length of time so I would prefer to close the G3siV6 down tidily but I've never closed down the Definity and Audix before so this is a daunting prospect. Does anyone know which source/manual to look to for this or can advise on how do this properly. What most concerns me is the powering back up. Will translations on the definity have to be restored and will voicemails be lost on the Audix? Any help would be appreciated.

 

[jbrusie]

I have seen several ways to power the system down but the most important is to power the AUDIX down first. Avaya has some answers on there tech page...

 

[VNS1000]

can you give me the URL?

Thanks

 

[sideshowpete]

Here's how the procedure was described to me by a 3rd party tech, and it's a procedure I've down quite a few times.

Assuming the Audix is the Definity Audix 3.2 (rather than the external one) look for the little button on the card. Press it in and hold it there for a few seconds until the display starts flashing. I believe it displays "shutdown" during this time but I could be wrong.

If you try to log in to the Audix during this time it will let you know that it's shutting down. Try it out of hours sometime, it's not a big deal. Holding down the button for a short while again should reboot it, but you'll have to check the manual for that one. As all the voicemails are stored on a hard drive none of that will be lost.

Once the Audix is down, flick the power switches on the back of the cabinets and it's all turned off. Don't forget to save the translations first though (obviously), and do a "status period" to make sure there's no periodic maintenance running. It wouldn't matter if there is, I just don't like the idea of powering down a G3 whilst it's in the middle of a maintenance run.

Bringing it back up is just a case of making sure the flash cards are in their sockets and turning the power back on, on the back of the cabinets. Both Definity and Audix come back in just a few minutes, plus the status is always displayed on the screen so you know what's going on.

It is very nerve racking the first time you do it though. Maybe it might be worth the money to have a tech come down for an hour when the power gets turned back on ?

Pete

 

[VNS1000]

Great, Pete thanks for the detailed explantion. Seems fairly straightforward. There's two things I'm still not sure about. I f I power down before the scheduled overnight maintenance and power backup in the morning after the electrician's finished the upgrade would that cause problems and if whe the switch is powered back up do you get many alarms displayed in the logs? If so do you have to run the test command to clear these errors?

 

[JZon]

The most tidy way to close down the AUDIX is issuing the command "reset system shutdown". Wait till the green and yellow LED are off (can take up to 5 minutes).
When the LED are off, unseat the circuitpack.
Maybe it is wise to also do a manually save weekly and save nightly, before powering down.
If you have no other special devices in the switch like MAPD's you can turn of the switch.
After the power is restored, turn the power switches back on.
Take a look at the alarm log and see if there are any problems in the switch that you didn't had before (make a print out). If you are sure everything is working properly reseat the Audix-circuitpack. When the maintenance terminal is connected you can view the booting procedure.
The Audix will be in bussines again after a minute or 5.

Unseating the circuitpack saves you time if you have to switch the power off again due to problems.

If you have any new alarms after booting you can do a "test alarm long clear", to see if you can get your alarm log clean.

Hope this helps.

John

 

[VNS1000]

Thanks John.

So there's no commands to shutdown the definity side of the switch down after the Definity Audix has been closed with that command you mentioned? - just simply switch off the carriers. Also can tell me what MAPDs are?

 

[JZon]

The MAPD is a TN801 or TN802 board. It is a 3-slot circuitpack that is really a Win NT4 platform.
This board also has to be shutdown properly.
So if you only have an AUDIX board there are further no actions to be taken by you.

Do you have announcementboard in your system?
If so don't forget to save it as well to the flashcard.

You're correct by saying that there is no command for the Definity to turn it of, just flips the powerswitches on the back.

John

 

[BobFox]

i agree with John
you really must unseat the audix when it is shutdown
Then shutdown the Definity.
When you power up the definity it will first check a lot of things and than it will do a "reset system 4" before you get the login.
a "reset system 4" does a hardware reset and when the Audix is still in the switch the Audix will have also a reset before it had time to boot up properly.

make sure that you have also done a save announcement, if you have announcementboards.

Greets, Bob

 

[G van Hamburg]

Hi there,

Perhaps it's also wise to take the power cords of the UPS outof the socket. In fact perhaps take all the electrical equipment out of the electrical sockets.
I've seen great damage after powerdown because when they put it on again there was a peak.

Good luck

 

[VNS1000]

Thanks to all you guys that helped me with this!!.

Have a lot more confidence about approaching this now

 

[mverkruijssen]

These are all wise suggestions.
Make sure that you do a 'save announcements', especially when you have a TN750B announcement board. On this card is no memory, so the announcements are lost when power has gone.

Also, unseat the announcement board(s) after power down. Put them back in when the system is fully functional again.
Sometimes you get corruption of announcements when the board is in the system while powering up. This happens because when the system is up it resets all boards one more time. During this moment the announcement board is loading the announcements into memory and they could get corrupted.

So always wait with putting boards like audix, MAPD, Announcement, back in till the system is fully up!!

 

[VNS1000]

Thanks for the tip on the announcement boards.

Well I checked and there are four TN750C boards. So they must be the next generation of card so they have memory on them I hope. I do have four flash cards to save each of the announcement boards to and will be doing this anyway. I'm curious about how these announcenement board's could be restored from each of the flash cards if there be a need. Is there a command for this just in case the memory is cleared?

Thanks

 

[BobFox]

to save your announcements you use the command
save announcements from 01AXX (Where you board is located)
and to restore them you use the command
restore announcements to 01AXX

I hope that it is not necessary to use this command

Grets, Bob

 

[JZon]

The TN750C keeps the announcements when it unseated, but it isn't stupid to back the cards up to the flashcards.
For every announcementboard you will indeed need a flashcard.

John

 

[VNS1000]

Just to let you know that the power down/up went pretty smoothly. Had one corrupt announcement on a board even though I reseated it after the switch loaded. Restored and tested the board and this cleared the alarm. One thing though - I can see the switch bringing in the boards but SAT just gives a login prompt. After logging in is there any way to check the status of the power up other than just the alarms/eror logs ? Also as you may be able to notice I'm new to this so can anyone tell me what the lights on the board actually mean. Some are steady yellow/green. Other no light at all.

Thanks

 

[europe]

The RED light means trouble, you will have an alarm on this board.

The YELLOW light means something on the board is doing something, for instance on a line card if one of the connected phones is on a call the light will go on, so nothing to be worried here.
(a DS1 board will allways have a yellow light if it is connected to a ISDN-PRI link that is in service)

A GREEN light means something on the board is being tested by the maintenance routines in the Definity software, this is normal too. Please let me know if the information that was provided is helpfull.
Edwin Plat
A.K.A. Europe