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Admin
Were Peter's hands broken? Get yo' own damn paper towels jerk.
Admin
Not half full. Not half empty. Large enough to contain some more water.
Admin
SECOND!!!!!111!!!1113##@$@!#!!eleven
Admin
I'm an engineer: There's simply too much glass. :)
Admin
I'd think Peter would be frantically trying to shut off the server to help save as much of the equipment as possible
Admin
Is a hair dryer normal for an office setting? Apparently they are readily available?
Admin
I dunno. I have seen the contents of some women's purses.
Admin
It's unfortunate that often times a catastrophe must occur before people take action.
Admin
Google's 'keyword algorithm' is stellar. The ad on the page is for a rack mounted server! At first I thought that was Alex's brilliant choice of a graphic to go along with the story.
Admin
Admin
Am I the only one left wondering wtf happened that caused 2 servers and a keyboard tray to fill with water? Water pipe burst? Seriously, I can't fathom how a broken AC would leak water like that, unless it's the most piss-poor AC desgin and room layout ever.
Admin
He was promoted for managing the successful server recovery.
Admin
he eventually went after being discovered to have been doing things with company money that were not entirely appropriate.
Admin
Condensation builds up until it overflows. This used to happen every couple of weeks at a place I once worked. All of a sudden water would pour out of the AC. There should be a pump to get rid of it but they tend to fail.
Admin
Admin
The AC had been installed for about 3 years when I got there and had never been serviced, the boss refused to pay for maintanance and it eventually screwed up. The design was crap as it sat directly above the three racks of hardware we had.
Admin
Personally, I would be worried that the water would be at 240 volts (or 110 if it is in the wimpo, non-standard US)
Admin
A/C's create a lot of condensation. We had an a/c that was about the size and shape of an oven installed to cool the back room where we had one server rack that controlled a bunch of big screen TV's (smushed together to make one bigger screen). The a/c had a little hose coming off of it that spit a stream of water into a bucket from the condensation. We would usually empty the bucket every couple days and it was fine. Then spring came and we started emptying the bucket every day. Then summer came and we had to replace the bucket with a waist high garbage can and empty it at least once a day.
So I guess the point of my story is that a much smaller cooler is capable of making 10 gallons of condensation. If it wasn't draining properly, then you'd have a lot of wet stuff.
Admin
Do they even use volts? or some body-related unit like Nervous Impulse (~10mV) or Elbow Hit (~100mV) ...
Admin
Admin
ok, the same happened to me at my job. but there was one diference. water was leaking from the ceiling on the testing hardware because of a big storm and roof reconstruction.
Admin
I was waiting for the boss to deny the expense report. "Hair dryer?! You know that anything that has a personal use can't be expensed!"
Admin
-dZ.
Admin
I could have easily seen the tarps being the "permanent" fix until somebody's complaints about them blocking ventilation went unanswered.
At which point the new permanent solution would be to cut holes in the tarps, leading to the next water hazard and so forth.
Admin
And that is a poor design for a server A/C. What is this, a window air conditioner? The evaporater coil should not be placed in the server room, it should be ducted (with insulated ductwork) from somewhere outside the server room. Whether a real central air type or a portable type, doesn't matter. Just get the evaporator coil out of the server room. Then use pvc to route the condensation either outside or to a drain.
And for the HVAC challenged, the condenser coil (the hot end) should be placed outside the building.
Now, you're right, an A/C can make a lot of water. However, it may also be a sign that you have too much air flow coming in from outside - ideally you should be able to dry the air out and keep it that way. A better room design may help seal the conditioned air in the room. (The bucket of water in the same room doesn't help any either) Restrict entry to the room to limit the flow of more moist air into the room.
Managing the moisture in the air will also result in a more efficient A/C. As long as it is busy condensing water from the air, it's not really cooling the air. If you can get it to dry out, the air temp will drop much faster. Of course, you also need to be sure the A/C is sized properly to counteract the heat output of the servers (and some spare capacity)
Admin
That's funny. I've got an entry for a "dryer" and a "drier" in my dictionary. It says they mean the same thing.
Dryer pastures.
Admin
...thats what you call water cooling
Admin
Somebody's been playing Bioshock...
Admin
This reminds me of my old job, our server room had big time power issues, we had extension cords dropping in from the ceiling tiles...oh yes good times.
Admin
For maximum A/C efficiency, it was placed above the server rack.
Admin
You won't find any arguments from me on poor design of the a/c. However, the cooler was intended to be used for exactly this purpose. It was self-contained and could run with all of the components internal to the room. It was able to vent through the duct work but we had no access to a drain and we were in the dead center of the building. We had a work order in to get PVC or some drainage system, but the facilities people said it was completely unfeasible (i.e. too much work) to access a drain from where we were. The room was never used except or when we were draining the bucket.
Admin
Everybody knows your supposed to use blue tarps.
Admin
They're not the same. A dryer is a machine for drying or a person who dries things. The word "drier" is used to compare one thing to another (less wet). "Dryer pasture" does conjure up an interesting mental picture, though!
Admin
Admin
Admin
I've been playing Bioshock, and I don't talk like that...
Admin
I can certainly vouch for the comment about A/Cs creating condensation. I was at one place, where we had just spent some £80K on brand new HP kit, and a whole load more on converting the room in somewhere fit for servers, i.e. power supplies, air con, security, etc. The day after the room went live, I came in to work and someone immediately grabbed me and said "Paul, there's something beeping in your room..." I went in and discovered a HUGE block of ice formed around the ceiling air con unit, which was dripping nicely onto our new servers. It's amazing how fast you can run when you spot something like that...
Admin
I worked at a military base. For each entire building we had a single air conditioner apeice. These air conditioners were the size of a grey-hound bus, tilted on end. If you ever approached these ACs, the weather quickly turned bad. It literally rained constantly around these ACs. During summer it was like a monsoon. So yes, ACs produce a lot on condensation. A story like this one does not surprise me if the AC is kept indoors, wheras the AC I speak of was kept a short ways away from the building.
Admin
I wonder if he used one of those 'super ion shooting hair driers' on the equipment... always wondered what effect those would have on sensitive internal hardware...
Admin
How did that comment get "featured", and this comment gets nothing?
Admin
You must not have gotten very far...
Admin
It's not normal for an AC unit to fail like that in 3 years. Not even for a commercial unit. That doesn't mean it can't happen. In fact, it's expected (w/ calculable probability) that a percentage of units produced will fail in 3 years.
See the Bathtub Curve: WikiPedia.org: Bathtub Curve
Admin
The man is keeping me down I tell ya.
Admin
One of the guys here keeps a hair dryer under his desk. When he gets an itch he breaks out the hair dryer, gives it a quick blast and he's on his way...
Of course, the rest of us just scratch our itches. He claims the hair dryer doesn't damage his epidermis.
Admin
You know, the phrase "would you kindly" did exist before that game came out. No, really it did. It's sure amazing how people were capable of saying things even though they weren't part of a video game meme!
Admin
Liquid Computers are not better, I tell yaa.
http://io9.com/360532/liquid-supercomputer-has-a-meltdown
Admin
I'm surprised that Peter jumped into hyper-repair when he found the water. If his boss has such disdain for their "data center," I would expect Peter to show the same interest as his boss.
Admin
The real WTF is why some numbskull designed a server room where the computers were under a source of water without as much as a drip shield to protect them.
If you value your servers, do not do this.
Admin
Hmm... maybe I'm paranoid, but I get the impression you are making fun of me.... or maybe not... either way, the elbow thing went whooosh over my head.
Admin
I'm pretty sure that's illegal in most states.