Comment On A "Priceless" Server Room

Whoever blew 20 large on a computer with 20K gets the WTF, in this case.  My HP-48GX from 12 years ago has 128K.

OMG. Im a Sys/Network admin, and that is the most Horid thing I have ever seen. Who ever this Moron is; should be executed, cremated and then some one should flush them down the "does not belong in the IT field" toilet. My God.

It's not like water hurts electronic equipment.  What harm could come of that?



And to smitty, I don't know if you're joking or not, but that is just a redundant label.  Think of it as saying:



"$20,000 Worth of Equipment:  $20,000"

This reminds me of the "DBA" I worked with who reminded me that I needed to 'comm it' when I was helping her with some pretty basic SQL.  And yes, we are talking about a native English speaker.

Ytram:

It's not like water hurts electronic equipment.  What harm could come of that?

The WTF here is that someone forgot to drill holes in the foor.

But seriously, where do you usually put the water?

ah, reminds me of the time the president and former CTO of our dating service company told one of the junior developers to put usernames and passwords in a cookie using javascript, then retrive them once the site redirected the user to an SSL page, because this was more secure.

Come on ytram, it is obvious smitty was trying to be funny. And succeeding pretty well I would say. 20K, lol.



Now I'm off to do the double-CAPTCHA dance. Press it once, press it twice, c'mon and do that CAPTCHA twitch.



Oh yeah baby! Like clockwork. 'Something didn't quite work out... - CAPTCHA Validation incorrect'.

javascript!  That's what's wrong with this picture, the sysadmin didn't use any javascript.  You can never have too much javascript!  It can do anything!

Alex, can't you just disable the anonymous posting?  In the time people spend complaining about the captcha, they could register a dozen times.

Anonymous:

Come on ytram, it is obvious smitty was trying
to be funny. And succeeding pretty well I would say. 20K, lol.



Now I'm off to do the double-CAPTCHA dance. Press it once, press it twice, c'mon and do that CAPTCHA twitch.



Oh yeah baby! Like clockwork. 'Something didn't quite work out... - CAPTCHA Validation incorrect'.

'



I see a lot of people complaining about Captchas.. I know what they are
from a handful of other sites I go to use em, but I've never seen one
here...

dubwai:

Alex, can't you just disable the anonymous
posting?  In the time people spend complaining about the captcha,
they could register a dozen times.

Agreed.  It'd probably cut down on a fair bit of the anonymouse
crapflooding along the lines of  'OMG this isn't real! 
There's no way anyone could be that dumb'.

Alex Papadimoulis:

But bare with it

But, Alex, you hardly know me! I'm not that kind of programmer!

Anonymous:

javascript!  That's what's wrong with this picture, the sysadmin didn't use any javascript.  You can never have too much javascript!  It can do anything!

You have no idea what you're talking about. The real WTF here is that they didn't use XML, of course.

dubwai:

But seriously, where do you usually put the water?

You drain it from your BUILT IN AIR CONDITIONER.  

Budget ran short?

JThelen:

I see a lot of people complaining about Captchas.. I know what they are
from a handful of other sites I go to use em, but I've never seen one
here...

The forum requires non-registered users to use Captcha.  Registered users don't have to bother with it.

I wonder if that AC unit vents to the outside is just sitting in the room.

"There's cold air coming out, so it must be cooling the room. Conservation of what?"

JThelen:

Agreed.  It'd probably cut down on a fair bit of the anonymouse
crapflooding along the lines of  'OMG this isn't real! 
There's no way anyone could be that dumb'.

I prefer that ones over the ones that say "This isn't a WTF a really
WTF would be if they did this or that"... By the way, Preemptly. This
isn't a WTF the real WTF would have been if the fishbowl was over the
servers.



/I keed

I have a question...



An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the
back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the
temperature even change?

Anonymous:

I have a question...



An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the
back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the
temperature even change?

Yes. It would get hotter.

Brwhahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha, I'll bet that the server is directly plugged into the wall with no line conditioning or battery backup! One good thunderstorm and 20k down the drain.[:P]

Anonymous:

I have a question...



An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the
back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the
temperature even change?

Yep, It will increase the temperature since the AC is wasting energy and heating the room a little bit more.

John Smallberries:

Anonymous:

I have a question...

An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the temperature even change?

Yes. It would get hotter.

Betcha he used the AC venting kit over the exhaust fan of the server to keep the cool air flowing through the server[:O][:P]

John Smallberries:

Anonymous:

I have a question...

An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the temperature even change?

Yes. It would get hotter.

I'm assuming that the server is in some sort of container kind of like a refridgerator.

John Smallberries:

Anonymous:

I have a question...



An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the
back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the
temperature even change?

Yes. It would get hotter.

Wouldn't  the sys admin notice that the room wasn't any cooler?  Is this a doctored picture? 

WTF! A $2000 dollar laptop for the boss's son's in law.

Thats stupid, esp. if it was due to a missing driver.

You should have bought him a $7000 dollar laptop, because when you want a upgrade, you are gonna get his old computer.

You can get the upgrade anytime you want with the help of a driver ;)

dubwai:

John Smallberries:

Anonymous:

I have a question...

An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the temperature even change?

Yes. It would get hotter.

I'm assuming that the server is in some sort of container kind of like a refridgerator.

Given the presence of the fishbowl... I don't think that's a terribly safe assmption [:|]

Anonymous:

dubwai:

John Smallberries:

Anonymous:

I have a question...

An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the temperature even change?

Yes. It would get hotter.

I'm assuming that the server is in some sort of container kind of like a refridgerator.

Given the presence of the fishbowl... I don't think that's a terribly safe assmption [:|]

It's hard to tell from the picture but it kind of looks like it's in some sort of glass doored cabinet.  The assumption comes from how it's not really presented as a WTF.  If it were not in an enclosure, that would be the biggest WTF of all.

WTFer:

JThelen:

Agreed.  It'd probably cut down on a fair bit of the anonymouse
crapflooding along the lines of  'OMG this isn't real! 
There's no way anyone could be that dumb'.

I prefer that ones over the ones that say "This isn't a WTF a really
WTF would be if they did this or that"... By the way, Preemptly. This
isn't a WTF the real WTF would have been if the fishbowl was over the
servers.



/I keed

No, no, no.  You got it all wrong.  The REAL WTF would have been if the server was IN the fishbowl [H]

who the hell drops 20K on a server anyways?



-spacey

"The regular maintenance of emptying the fishbowl" has just supplanted "time to make the doughnuts" in my vernacular.

JThelen:

dubwai:

Alex, can't you just disable the anonymous posting?  In the time people spend complaining about the captcha, they could register a dozen times.

Agreed.  It'd probably cut down on a fair bit of the anonymouse crapflooding along the lines of  'OMG this isn't real!  There's no way anyone could be that dumb'.

Just go vote them off the island with the TROLL button. It takes 5 votes (users get three votes per 24h), and just looking in the database, I've seen quite a few posts (the really trolly ones) voted off.

El Reg had a far worse A/C setup a few years back in the article "The
world's most dangerous server room?"



http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/08/the_worlds_most_dangerous_server/





A week later they followed up.





The beauty of last week's server room is - as many of you have pointed
out - the backup tapes lie directly underneath the bucket. "Kill the
server and the backups with one 'buffer overrun'" notes Jackie Meese.
"Excellent disaster planning," adds Bob Currier. "I couldn't have
planned a better disaster myself."





They also had several more nightmares sent in from readers.





http://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/10/18/the_worlds_most_dangerous_server/



Sorry about not making those links.  This forum is practically
unusable and i am not fighting with it any longer to make a link. 
I'd use HTML but the option seems to have disappeared.

dubwai:

But seriously, where do you usually put the water?

Why, in  a $5.50 plastic goldfish bowl from Wal-Mart.

Cat Dingleberries:

I wonder if that AC unit vents to the outside is just sitting in the room.

"There's cold air coming out, so it must be cooling the room. Conservation of what?"

LOL I was thinking the same thing... what if the heat exhaust was
directed to the server, and cold air towards the rest of the room?

Yes, but at least it's nice and neat, isn't it? For many places, that in itself would be a major accomplishment :p



I've heard a lot of horror stories about badly-arranged HVAC systems
leading to much wailing and gnashing of teeth by the sysadmins, but
this is the first time I've seen photo documentation of one.

JThelen:

WTFer:

JThelen:

Agreed.  It'd probably cut down on a fair bit of the anonymouse
crapflooding along the lines of  'OMG this isn't real! 
There's no way anyone could be that dumb'.

I prefer that ones over the ones that say "This isn't a WTF a really
WTF would be if they did this or that"... By the way, Preemptly. This
isn't a WTF the real WTF would have been if the fishbowl was over the
servers.





/I keed

No, no, no.  You got it all wrong.  The REAL WTF would have been if the server was IN the fishbowl [H]

You mean something like this?

Anonymous:

I have a question...



An air conditioner blows cool air out the front... and hot air out the
back.  So if you just put an AC unit into the room, would the
temperature even c4hange?

Portable ACs have a hose to vent the hot air out of the room.

Frank... is that you?



I thought you were on vacation, not out in "training".



He he he,

    dZ.

couple of things to note:



- there are about four servers in that rack. we couldn't get the top
part of the rack in the photo as we were trying to get the water
damaged floor in the picture.

- they are not "enclosed" in anything in the traditional sense of the word. no glass case, no anything really.

- there is an exhaust hose on the back of the ac that used to go into
the hallway presumably to heat the rest of the office and has since
been directed up into the drop ceiling.

You're really going to want to have an array of redundant fishbowls,
all parity-striped, to ensure maximum fishbowl availability and uptime.
That is, if you have the first damn clue.

another inch higher and it looks like some of those wires in the background could take a bath.  that'd be sweet.  and let's hold out hope that there's something really expensive in that cardboard box.  hopefully it's one of those new waterproof cardboards.......

I don't see anything wrong with this, actually I have the same deployment in my server room 

John Bigboote:

You're really going to want to have an array of redundant fishbowls, all parity-striped, to ensure maximum fishbowl availability and uptime. That is, if you have the first damn clue.

I would think that instead of more fishbowls, you could pile up sponges under the fishbowl.  If they get too wet... more sponges.

btw, if anyone's interested, the large cardboard box trying to look inconspicuous next to the sans-power-protection server rack contains a brand-new $1200 rack-mount UPS.

Anonymous:

The Register had a far worse A/C setup a few years back in The
world's most dangerous server room?


A week later they followed up:



The beauty of last week's server room is - as many of you have pointed
out - the backup tapes lie directly underneath the bucket. "Kill the
server and the backups with one 'buffer overrun'" notes Jackie Meese.
"Excellent disaster planning," adds Bob Currier. "I couldn't have
planned a better disaster myself."





They also had several more nightmares sent in from readers.

Edit to make links clickable

1) The servers must be overclocked...  He's obviously trying to liquid cool them.  Just mistaking the exhaust pipe with a heat pipe.

2) Its hard to make out the names of the servers in the rack - but I'm fairly sure they are "guppy", "betta", and "tetra".

3) Everyone knows that Active Directory trees need water.

dubwai:

John Bigboote:

You're really going
to want to have an array of redundant fishbowls, all parity-striped, to
ensure maximum fishbowl availability and uptime. That is, if you have
the first damn clue.

I would think that instead of more fishbowls, you could pile up
sponges under the fishbowl.  If they get too wet... more sponges.

I actually laughed outloud at this

This really made me laugh.  Why do people never get these things done properly?  "I'll save a grand or two on AC, at the risk of 20 times that in computer equipment. Yay!"

On the subject of captchas, on my work PC (I have Firefox on that PC due to IT department meddling) the captcha image doesn't appear at all.  Does anyone else have that problem, or was it just a one-off issue?

Clearly the fish bowl is missing fish. I mean, WTF?

Heh. Clearly you don't work in the "enterprise" sector of the market. $20k is not unreasonable for decently powered server hardware designed for maximum uptime and performance (think fiber channel, redundant power supplies, hot swappable drives + ram + cpus, hardware RAID, etc.).