Classic WTF: Server Room Fans and More Fun

(thedailywtf.com)

18 points | by jjgreen 4 days ago ago

11 comments

  • comrade1234 2 minutes ago

    I mounted a colo server backwards once. The fan intakes were on the warm side and the output on the cool side. I was so embarrassed. It was like that for years and anyone that looked in our cage would see it. I was mortified.

  • nickdothutton an hour ago

    In the 90s I visited a datacentre in an a central London location. The providers charged for both power and space (and bandwidth). I had cause to lift one of the floor tiles to reposition a power cable slightly for the rack I was working in. What I saw stayed with me.

    Stuffed under the floor of the adjacent rack were perhaps a dozen-or-so small servers, switches, the odd modem or 2, and perhaps a kvm box. The tenant had obviously exceeded his physical space but not his power allocation. He had simply "gone underground". Like a little farm of blinking LED mushrooms in the dark.

  • skullone 36 minutes ago

    Goodness. I wish I had a cameraphone in the 90s. There were tons of data centers, IT rooms, telco, labs, meetme rooms, sewers, all done at the seat of your pants.

    • inigyou 22 minutes ago

      and it worked. Something to keep in mind whenever your boss won't let you requisition a whatever.

  • dwd an hour ago

    Working in Malaysia in 2001, had to fireup some backup fans some weekends, as the building owner would switch off our floor aircon. Fortunately lived in the neighbouring residential tower so it wasn't far to walk to check on it. Eventually got a dedicated circuit for the server room.

  • xvxvx 4 days ago

    One building I worked at had their DMARC room/closet only accessible from the handicapped stall in the men’s restroom. Yup.

    • sillysaurusx 2 hours ago

      Theoretically, if a handicapped man had to use the restroom for 30 minutes at exactly the same time some sort of DMARC emergency happened, would the guy get priority, or the employees who really need access?

      • zdragnar 37 minutes ago

        Pretty sure most? people would agree the person needing to use the bathroom gets priority. I wouldn't want to be the one to clean up after him otherwise.

      • toast0 2 hours ago

        Just turn off smtp for 30 minutes and fix your spf/dkim after the air clears?

  • jmclnx an hour ago

    When I was a operator at a computer room (early 80s) with 3 Wang VS Systems and a couple of 2200 systems and multiple large line printers. The company had the cheapest AC Systems installed and no raised floors, all wires would drop down from the ceiling instead.

    So in the summer time, the room would sometimes be well above 90F (32C). When that happened we had to have multiple large fans brought in. To add to that, the room was on the top floor (3rd) and during heavy rain storms, the roof would leak. So out came clear plastic tarps to cover the units.

    I wish I had taken pictures. But I will say something, we never had anot hardware failures due to heat and water dripping. After a few years the compant finally built a real computer room.

  • mvdtnz an hour ago

    Man I forgot this website even existed. I'm so pleased to see it's still up and running. It was a regular fixture on my RSS feed back in my university days (20 years ago, yeesh). I might have to take some time this morning going through the past couple of decades of posts.