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Admin
So what? My savings account grows exponentially, but 5%/year isn't that much. You should be able to cope with 10% exponential growth indefinitely. If you can't, then the company should stop growing.
Admin
Admin
You name machines (locally) by some schema. It's cute and it means something to the local administrators who have to distinguish them from each other. When you buy batches of machines each fiscal, you give them new schemas. This way when someone utters the name, you have a rough idea of how old the machine is and what it might be used for.
Then, you use the MAGIC of DNS to give meaningful/purposeful names to the servers as aliases.
mail.example.com -> apollo.example.com webserver1.example.com -> matrix.example.com dbserver.example.com -> matrix.example.com
And when you get the new honking DB server, after testing, you just update the alias and everyone is magically using the new machine: dbserver.example.com -> behemoth.example.com
Or is this idea too "novel"? Am I FREAKING ANYBODY OUT? Learn to manage your shit people. Use the tools effectively.
Admin
I don't know. It sounds like they could have invested some money into some organization. Maybe it's because I'm a neat-freak, but I wouldn't mind investing a pretty penny into organizing the jungle of wires and boxes.
Admin
Hallelujah brother. The choir is with you....
-Me
Admin
The REAL W.T.F. is that John goes on vacation and is surprised when someone doesn't clean up his mess for him while he's gone.
Admin
Hey it wasn't up to me! but I'm not a network admin so even if by some strange twist of fate they were to give me access to DNS admin on the LAN I'd probably screw it up. I just program computers man, sod domain administration, that's for grumpy star trek geeks.
Admin
Here's how it seems to work though: IT dept is understaffed, there's ten things to be done at once and a fire every other day. You know that doing the job properly will save time in the long run but you also know that you'll be seen doing froo-froo stuff with the cabling while Jenny from accounting can't post the financials. So you jam it in, wire it up and worry about it later. Your #1 doesn't even enter the equation because of understaffing and would just make things worse.
Pilots would call this flying behind the power curve where it takes more power to fly more slowly.
We had this (though not to the degree of the story) before there were appropriate staffing levels. Once you have appropriate staffing levels, Joe can go take care of Jenny while you do the froo-froo stuff with the cables and then instead of having to deal with crappy cables later, you can do something else that makes your job run even smoother. All of a sudden, the bean counters and suits find things are running smoother and everyone's happy. Unfortunately, they won't believe you if you just explain this to them.
Rich
Admin
Admin
Admin
AKA Hungarian notation for servers.
Admin
That's assuming the "froo-froo" stuff is seen in a negative light, and it discounts the possibility that Jenny would not be having problems posting the financials if the servers were properly organized and maintained.....
I've worked in places where if you didn't run the wiring properly you didn't have a job for long. It was simply unacceptable to work any other way. Server organization and running wires correctly was seen as essential, not "froo-froo"....
-Me
Admin
The real WTF is that they spelled MacGyver wrong.
I'd probably use the word "MacGyver-ized" instead too, but I think that just comes down to personal preference.
Admin
How funny. My company recently gained back a rackmount server that had been sitting unused in our datacenter for years. It was a shelf, for a server that decided to give up the ghost. Glass half full!
Captcha: Howdy, svr07 aka shelf03!
(server names changed to protect the not-so-innocent...)
Admin
Of course they exist, at least before any servers are installed...
Man, if I were in charge of one of my company's server rooms, it would look much worse than this. Hell if my apartment is anything by which to go by, half the servers wouldn't even be reachable.
And as a result, I will never have to put up with a job as boring as maintaining a server room...
Admin
Hell, you don't even need a pretty penny. Spend 20 bucks on 500 tie-wraps, and you've cut through at least 75% of the problem.
Admin
So what you're saying is that because you know Greek mythology, everyone else should, too? To be honest, I'm not completely sure how the Pandora thing relates, and I don't get the Prometheus at all. You're a real life BOFH, aren't you?
Admin
The floor was actually just a platform of removable panels sitting 1 foot above the real floor. The myriad cords had plenty of room to be sorted and channelled free from layout issues like aisles and equipment.
Admin
How difficult is it to point out how much money is lost from the current configuration and how much would be saved if it was set up correctly? It's as simple as telling whatever PHB needs to be told "It's taking me 30 minutes to do a 10 minute job because of that mess. I need time to clean it". See how quickly telling your boss that you're wasting time gets it cleaned up. In fact, being understaffed, to me, seems like more of a reason to have everything neat. With the server room all hairy willy-nilly, how much longer does it take you to do things in there than if it were neat? On top of that, just like that previous comment, who's to say the problem Jenny's having doesn't stem from the fact the server room looks like it does?
In no organization in which I've been in charge of the servers, from 2 servers to 200, have I abided by a messy server room. I have too damn much to do in a day to worry about whether I'm 100% sure this cable I'm about to unplug is the right one, or to go searching like Indiana Jones to find a server.
If I'm coming into a mess that's not my own, and there's ten things to do at once, I make cleaning the server room one of those things. I don't even spend a ton of time doing it. 5 or 10 minutes here and there for a month will work. Baby steps. It can even be done at the end of the day. You have to go home some time, so before you do spend some time cleaning.
There's no valid reason for a server room that's so messy that you have to worry about corpses hiding in wire spaghetti. Saying you don't want to seem froo-froo for cleaning cables is like saying that you don't want to seem weak for going to the doctor about that sucking chest wound.
Admin
On server names: Once I was talking to a friend of mine who has a loose association with the I/T department at the university where he works. He was talking about three of the servers on their network and some of the things they did, and mentioned Io, Europa, and Titan. So I asked him about Ganymede. There was a distinct pause, then he asked, "How did you know about that one? It's not even connected to the network!"
So I explained to him about Jupiter and the Galilean moons.
Admin
Man there's always 1 whinger, like every single wtf post
IF YOU DON'T LIKE IT THEN DON'T F@#kIN READ THE SITE !!!! NO ONE IS FORCING YOU TO DO ANYTHING!!!
Personally I loved the bit about rack servers with no mounts :D
Admin
:P
Admin
A half-hour drive is a major problem? Where do you live, Leichtenstein?
Admin
Lucky him he didn't find an FCCTHULHUSRV01 or something.
Admin
You live in a land of rainbows and fairytales.
We've had our service department halved in a year, despite the pre-halving department working overtime every day and asking for more staff. Service, Sales, R&D, external distributors are all begging for more Service staff. Sales and distributors lose face because we can't fix things fast. R&D can't get products out on time because they've had to shoulder support load. Service need staff because they're all going insane trying to do the work in addition to having to do reports demanded by management so management can figure out why the fault is happening (despite clear and vocal demand from multiple directions for more service staff).
"Explain it to your boss" is a far cry from "acceptance from your boss.
Admin
Indeed, how dare people give feedback to let the crew know which types of stories are more or less popular. Clearly the only option people should have is to love it or leave. In fact, comments should be disabled entirely.
I'll grant it wasn't the most nicely-phrased criticism ever, but it was more constructive than your reply.
Admin
Of course it is possible, damn it.
For the wires: route them using cable trays from dedicated patch cabinets either over the ceiling or through the raised floor if you have one. Put patch trays into (high density) server cabinets. Label every wire. If a wire gets faulty, label it so and leave it in place. Then put a new one. Use cable ties as if your depended on it.
For the servers:
Labeling servers: do it. If you are in the business of virtual servers do not bother to label as to which virtual servers run on top of which physical servers. That's crap since you will never be able to have up-to-date labels once daily operations kick in fully. Just label the physical server name and an inventory number (inventory number because in the course of daily operations server hard disks might get swapped and so even "physical servers" migrate from one physical machine to another - a physical server name is not an inventory number).
Servers: buy servers with rack mounting kits, not desktops.
UPS: don't get me started on that issue ..........
Admin
That is why you do not want to be the fool who does that kind of work voluntarily because:
(a) if you move servers and cables on your own in such spaghetti setup you will get something wrong because you will mis-re-route (does this word exist ? I do not know - but I hope you get my point here.) a cable or you shut down some POS server and it does start properly because it's install is a POS or some SOB has no documented the proper startup procedure or you can not shut it down because the console is logged with some user account you don't know the password .... Anyway, something goes wrong. You get blamed (actually, you get fucked if you are doing anything without telling anybody.
(b) why do it in the first place. Even if you are doing a perfect job on (no (a) happens) then on Monday some arsehole comes and starts the old shit again and you do not have any management support to have his arse kicked so hard that the boot is tickling his throat. And consider this: this kind of work will not get you a higher annual raise or bonus if you do everything right bit it will cost you your annual bonus or raise if shit happens (which it will - don't dream otherwise).
(c) if you have systems you are responsible for in that kind of POS room just take care of your own systems. Lock your cabinets and keep the keys with you. Do your own wiring in a professional way. If you have network equipment on top of servers to handle put it into your own (dedicated) cabinet(s). Put UPS units and fast power transfer switches (if you can get the budget) into each of your own cabinets. Label everything. Check your systems physically on-site every day. Report every dork who is touching your cabinets in writing to your management and try to blame them for some fault. Don't give a shit about other people's systems - they are not your responsibility.
(d) you are not the the CEO or the CIO or the IT Operations Manager - don't try to save the world on your own. If the shit blows up eventually, just make sure your own ass is covered.
Now if you are tasked with this work by management then make sure that you have proper management support. That starts with a (hopefully) blanket authorization signed by the CIO and/or IT department head. If you can't get this, stall: don't do anything and report lack of progress because of the lack of written authorizations from senior IT management. Once you have a written authorization, make a project schedule and get it approved in writing by senior IT management. Identify each tom, dick and harry who might have equipment in the server room (don't forget your cable guys). Send them a written request with the authorization from senior management attached request complete documentation for all their systems in said server room to be given to you in writing officially signed and approved by their management by a tight deadline. Do physical survey of the server room in the mean time and lock down the server room from now on and get an server room access policy approved. The day after the deadline expires report a non-responding groups, units etc. in writing to your management sponsor. Once you have received replies from all units, correlate their information with the physical server room survey you have done earlier. Do not let anybody weasel out of resolving any discrepancies found(like: "Oh we do not need to bother about the old systems because the new systems are coming netx year."). Then start the work: purchase new equipment as needed, install it and start doing the work by stages: step by step for each unit who has any systems in the server room (network group last).
Admin
Clever & Smart.
Admin
Hey guys, here is one of the sad little muppets who fuck their server room - isn't he cute .... so angry.
Admin
UN-BE-FUCKING-LIEVE-ABLE.
They could have at least mounted the stuff onto large picture frames ....
Admin
Some more naming conventions:
"Hey, I think Nostromo crashed again. We really should move the mail server over to Enterprise!" :-)
In another company I worked, they named all the servers by car brands. Well, the reason was that the very first server had a shiny red case, so it became 'ferrari'. Later followed 'audi', 'bmw' and - my favourite: 'lada' :-)
When I had to reorganize the IT for a company, I decided to give the servers all names of butterflies. Latin names, that is. So we had one 'Apollo' (yepp, that's a butterfly, too!) and another one 'Amaryllis', and so on.
The workstations all had names of trees, and I let the users choose which tree they want. They even got a desktop background image of that particular tree. I was hoping to make them identify more with their computer, and I think it helped quite a bit.
And if I have to look up, which user has 'ELWS017' or which user has "maple", that really adds up to the same effort.
Other options would include names of birds ("I think, 'eagle' has crashed!" :-) or famous actors ("it seems, 'eastwood' is down!")
Any other ideas?
Da' Man
Admin
Hmm, that server room looked like one that I worked in at Microsoft. In fact, we had a workgroup file server that was accidentally reformatted once because it was sitting on the floor unlabeled and instructions were given to reformat and reinstall all of the old spare machines on the floor.
After that, we did more frequent backups and labeled the server.
Admin
Yep... Server room (+office +customer desk +basic employee daytime area), service room (+boss' office, +spare parts storage) and a bathroom (+cartridge refill room). Office support and ISP in one. The network is all Ethernet (over 3 kilometers radius around the company), and in many places the cable is ran over the roadside trees.
Admin
A recent mail on the corporate mailing list:
Admin
"switches dangling from thick systems of entangled wires".
Horrific... They were probably thinking, if its weight can be supported by four CAT-5 cables, why bother allocating rack space for it? Think of one rack-mounted RJ45 patch panel you hang devices from. It allows more efficient use of rack volume.
Admin
I used to work for a bank as a developer where some of the other developers compiled a big music collection by sharing their folders on their own machines. I thought this was impressive (and of course stupid by audit and compliance reasons). But then I went to the server room with one of the infrastructure guys to get introduced to a machine labeled BIG01 (no idea what that stood for) which contained all the infrastructure guys' mp3s and movies. Very likely even backed up just in case.
Admin
At my last employer, a place of many WTFs, they have some machines in the server room which cannot be switched off for fear of what will happen. They are a pair of Apple Quadras, which weren't exactly server class machines when new. Someone vaguely remembers them being part of a data feed, but despite monitoring the network traffic to and from the machines nothing definite has been worked out as to their purpose. Management changes so frequently, and documentation is so scant, that each new head of IT decides it's better for the machines to be left alone rather than switch them off and wait to see who screams.
Admin
I feel I have to point out that this is yet another "going-nowhere" DailyWTF article about hardware.
Hardware articles are either "Oh no the wires!" or "somethings dripping in the server room again!". Hardware is an inherrently dull topic. Unless you are actively trying to attract the wrong sort of people to this blog at the expense of more enlightened readers, I recommend avoiding hardware articles altogether in the future.
Admin
You apparantly missed the RWTF in the hyperbole (some of which I admit was mine, but some of which seems to have been blown up to another level in the anonymization process, which was unnecessary, because I had already anonymized it - just to be safe!)
TRWF is that someone puts in a new, relatively expensive 1U xSeries x336 machine, for some noble purpose, without giving it an appropriate label, and probably injecting it in a random rack at a random level. Then later someone ("Gary") who is probably a sysadmin of some sort, enters the room, sees the unlabeled server, and decides "hey, that machine must be labeled", upon which he continues to type FCSRVUNKNOWN001 into the labeling machine, prints the label and affixes it to the server. The mere thought of the insanity required to NOT find out what the server was doing, still makes me dizzy to the point that I almost faint. I mean - put a console on the damn thing. Or just turn it off, then see who complains. For sake of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, do something. Don't just accept the lousy status quo. Either that, or DON'T do something. If you need to flag the machine for later identification, put a bright red post-it note on it, saying "WTF is this? Let me know before next week, or it will be turned off and removed from the room."
The day I saw that - at first - seemingly innocent label, I swear the blood left my brain and for all intents and purposes I passed out. And I distinctly remember that the last thought before that was: WTF?! which I why I felt it was worthy to share here, sorry if it wasn't to your taste.
As for server rooms, I believe any server room should have a "king" who gets the last word on all placement of machines, and who is actually authorised to ensure that the room is orderly at all times, with sufficient power, cooling and accessibility. For my next job, I will insist on seeing the server room before I sign a contract.
-John
Admin
If you're calling it "gas" the prices aren't high - you don't know what high fuel (petrol/diesel) prices are.
Admin
Wow, what a great innovation they have! They ought to rush right out and patent that.
Oh. Wait. I think I may have seen something kinda sorta like that before.
Sorry, my memory of it is a bit fuzzy... after all... it was... over twenty years ago!
That sort of setup is standard in server rooms.
Admin
Ah, that must be what they mean by "whackmount".....
Admin
Did Lovelace go down often?
Admin
There's no reason to excuse ass-bad writing.
Admin
Oops, should have quoted instead of replying.
Admin
naming conventions eh?
one company i worked at had game names/characters eg. Mario, Doom, Halo
Another bizarelly used local hotel names in Amsterdam which was really weird - the only one i remember off the top of my head was Krasnapolsky, which doesnt exactly role off the tongue!
(i usually hate people mentioning their captchs, but mine is "onomatopoeia" - jeez!!)
Admin
I worked at a place who's server room was such chaos that to find a specific server I would remote in, right click the CD drive and hit eject. Now just find the one with the drive tray open. This worked because our admin never put the front covers back on the rack mount boxes.
Admin
A few years back I was a contractor at a power plant in Michigan. The server room was quite a amalgamation of servers almost to this article's description. As my contracting time continued (on/off for ~3 years or so), I was given more duties and before I quit that job, I was the Lead (even as a contractor!) over the team, and had as one of my tasks to clean up the servers and cables (which I did - and documented it pretty extensively).
The worst part however wasn't really that (obviously - since I was able to clean it up) - it was the one old guy on the team that likely caused it to end up that way. He would sneak in and add cables and workstations and miscellaneous hardware anywhere he could. The real issue they had that caused the cleanup was power consumption (ironic isn't it to be an issue at a power plant) - and even adding workstations would occasionally become an issue.
It was kind-of fun to clean and organize all the servers and know how it was all put together... too bad nowhere else (that I have been working at since then) seems to ever do that, but I guess I'm just a neat freak :)
Admin
Titan is a moon of Saturn. The Galilean moons of Jupiter are Callisto, Europa, Ganymede, and Io.