• couldn't help it (unregistered)

    this was just a lot of hot air

  • (cs)

    If an HVAC blows hot air into an unoccupied data center, does anybody really notice?

  • TheCPUWizard (unregistered)

    Alas this type of problem (HVAC, thermostats, zones and vents) is all too common. While it "should not have happened" in a newly constructed datacenter, I see it all the time here in New York City where building walls are moved time and again over the years but the HVAC system is only "tweaked" rather than properly being retrofitted to address the new topology of the space.

  • 3rd Ferguson (unregistered) in reply to TheCPUWizard

    Topology is destiny.

  • none (unregistered)

    OMG UNICORNS!

    (Click "the Server Room zone is 64º")

  • WizardStan (unregistered)

    I'm interested to hear more about these "IT humor sites" he was reading. I would like to read some, but sadly I have yet to find even one! (Is a joke, I'm implying that thedailywtf is not a humor site. Oh how funny I am!)

  • (cs)

    Today's article brought to you by The Daily WTHvac: Curious Permutations in Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning.

  • (cs) in reply to TheCPUWizard
    TheCPUWizard:
    Alas this type of problem (HVAC, thermostats, zones and vents) is all too common. While it "should not have happened" in a newly constructed datacenter, I see it all the time here in New York City where building walls are moved time and again over the years but the HVAC system is only "tweaked" rather than properly being retrofitted to address the new topology of the space.

    Faaar too common.

  • (cs)

    Today on The Daily What the Grammar:

    "He expected to smoke and flames..."

  • (cs) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    Today on The Daily What the Grammar:

    "He expected to smoke and flames..."

    Well, it did say they had fat pipes.

  • facilisis (unregistered)

    IT workers are the janitors of the 21st century.

  • Knux2 (unregistered)

    The kitchen and the cubicle farm are in the same heating/cooling zone, and we put the sensor between the freezer and the oven. Your temperature is dependent the company cafeteria schedule. Have fun!

  • Patrick (unregistered) in reply to none
    none:
    OMG UNICORNS!

    (Click "the Server Room zone is 64º")

    WTF??
  • Purple Power (unregistered)

    <3 Unicorns and Rainbows

  • SeySayux (unregistered) in reply to none
    none:
    OMG UNICORNS!

    (Click "the Server Room zone is 64º")

    I believe that's TRWTF :P

  • SR (unregistered) in reply to skeptical hippo
    skeptical hippo:
    Zylon:
    Today on The Daily What the Grammar:

    "He expected to smoke and flames..."

    Well, it did say they had fat pipes.

    [applauds]

  • JonsJava (unregistered)

    Ok, I clicked all around that sentence. One question: why? They just kept on coming, it was the march of unicorns and rainbows, and all things sparkly. Just....wrong....grabs eye bleach

    Captcha: saluto. Io saluto youo backo

  • xMob (unregistered) in reply to none
    none:
    OMG UNICORNS!

    (Click "the Server Room zone is 64º")

    And keep clicking! ;o)

  • (cs) in reply to Knux2
    Knux2:
    The kitchen and the cubicle farm are in the same heating/cooling zone, and we put the sensor between the freezer and the oven. Your temperature is dependent the company cafeteria schedule. Have fun!

    You do of course realise that a freezer actually emits heat into the atmosphere?

  • JonsJava (unregistered)
    <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.cornify.com/js/cornify.js"></script>
    it was cornified.
  • Anon (unregistered)

    The obvious solution is to warm up the NOC until the AC kicked back on. I'd suggest setting fire to it.

  • A. Nonnymuss (unregistered)

    Fat Pipes:

    [image]
  • Jakob H. Poulsen (unregistered)

    The unicorns... they're everywhere!

  • (cs) in reply to none
    none:
    OMG UNICORNS!

    (Click "the Server Room zone is 64º")

    Thank you for revealing one of the secret unicorn hideouts. Would you like to join our organization?

  • (cs)

    Never would have figured "Hello Kitty" would be into riding bareback.

  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Knux2:
    The kitchen and the cubicle farm are in the same heating/cooling zone, and we put the sensor between the freezer and the oven. Your temperature is dependent the company cafeteria schedule. Have fun!
    You do of course realise that a freezer actually emits heat into the atmosphere?
    The new "green" kitchen... Vent the freezer exhaust into the oven.
  • Ken B. (unregistered) in reply to A. Nonnymuss
    A. Nonnymuss:
    Fat Pipes:

    [image]

    Apparently, those aren't fat enough. You need the ones from "Star Trek (2009)".

  • (cs) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Knux2:
    The kitchen and the cubicle farm are in the same heating/cooling zone, and we put the sensor between the freezer and the oven. Your temperature is dependent the company cafeteria schedule. Have fun!

    You do of course realise that a freezer actually emits heat into the atmosphere?

    Walk in freezers don't usually vent into the kitchen. That would be unbearable. They vent up and out of the building. He probably meant the cold air from opening the freezer door vs. the stoves.

  • Neville Flynn (unregistered)

    If the NOC was unused for weeks, why did it take that long for the heat to kick in?

  • Anonymous Cowherd (unregistered) in reply to JamesQMurphy
    JamesQMurphy:
    Never would have figured "Hello Kitty" would be into riding bareback.

    O.o

  • Herby (unregistered)

    Somebody forgot to follow the sign in the cubicle farm: Will the last person to leave, please turn on the night light below the thermostat. They do wonders for modifying the temperature profile on thermostats (even in homes!)

  • unicorns? (unregistered)

    I see the cick me text, and I click like crazy, but nothing happens. Yes, JS is enabled

  • (cs)

    So TRWTF is that he quit a job where he could play minesweeper and relax during his shift and for completely unknown reasons he sabotaged the entire datacenter bad enough that legal action probably could (and should) be taken.

    Other than that, cool story bro!

  • TheRealMe (unregistered) in reply to Neville Flynn
    Neville Flynn:
    If the NOC was unused for weeks, why did it take that long for the heat to kick in?

    The ambient outside temperature might have kept the NOC room temp just above the set point, but if it got colder outside, eventually at some point the ambient would keep falling and falling.

    I can see this happening if the data center hit the big crunch in, say, fall, and then began shedding staff as winter came on. So the temp would still rise during the day, and fall at night, but as winter marches on the rise and fall would go down together, eventually below the AC set point.

    tl;dr the thermostat wouldn't have fallen all the way, it would have taken some time before the thermostat began thinking it was no longer necessary to turn on the AC at all.

  • TheRealMe (unregistered) in reply to Neville Flynn
    Neville Flynn:
    If the NOC was unused for weeks, why did it take that long for the heat to kick in?

    The ambient outside temperature might have kept the NOC room temp just above the set point, but if it got colder outside, eventually at some point the ambient would keep falling and falling.

    I can see this happening if the data center hit the big crunch in, say, fall, and then began shedding staff as winter came on. So the temp would still rise during the day, and fall at night, but as winter marches on the rise and fall would go down together, eventually below the AC set point.

    tl;dr the thermostat wouldn't have fallen all the way, it would have taken some time before the thermostat began thinking it was no longer necessary to turn on the AC at all.

  • Rootbeer (unregistered) in reply to pauly
    pauly:
    for completely unknown reasons he sabotaged the entire datacenter bad enough that legal action probably could (and should) be taken.

    It's admittedly vague, but I interpreted the final paragraph of the story to mean that the datacenter went out of business a couple weeks later, not that he had resigned.

    Granted, a better admin would have done things with his copious free time on the job like unpack the emergency AC system so it's actually ready to be used in an emergency, or setting up monitoring to page him BEFORE the ambient temperature in the server room hits 110 degrees.

    So maybe a guy who ignores pages about a non-critical server crash is also the kind of guy who would sabotage company operations on his way out the door, after all.

  • (cs)

    I used to work in a cube farm which was originally designed as two large rooms with a wall between them. Some time ago someoneone thought it was a great idea to take down the wall leaving one very long room.

    The north and south ends were in two different zones, each with their own thermostat. Any time someone fiddled with one thermostat without adjusting the other one in precisely the same way it would set up indoor weather patterns where one end of the room was trying to keep cool while the other end was just as desperately trying to warm everyone up.

    Eventually the temperature controls were locked and employees were officially advised to "Just wear a sweater" if they didn't like it.

  • Anonymous (unregistered)

    WOOOO UNICORNS! Anyway, seen this happen too many times. Sounds like today's issue was a badly specified heat zone instead of a fundamental installation snafu, but I've seen far worse. On more than one occasion I've seen A/C systems where the thermostat was in a completely different room to the cooling unit. I've also seen A/C units fighting with each other because someone on one side of the room likes it hot and someone on the other side of the room likes it cold. So two or more A/C units sit there desperately fighting to reverse the effect of the others. I've found it's usually the hot one that wins and the cold one that dies.

  • (cs) in reply to DCRoss
    DCRoss:
    Eventually the temperature controls were locked and employees were officially advised to "Just wear a sweater" if they didn't like it.

    I once worked for a training company. The building management locked the thermostat, but students would routinely complain about the temperature. The solution?

    We'd walk over to the thermostat, push the button, and say, "Give it a few minutes to kick in."

    Consistently, the students agreed that it improved the temperature.

  • bl@h (unregistered)

    You guys are missing what happened entirely, with the lack of managers in the building bellowing hot air the room dropped to the comfortable chill level of Pluto.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    [quote user="Anonymous"] I've also seen A/C units fighting with each other because someone on one side of the room likes it hot and someone on the other side of the room likes it cold.[quote]

    You mean like every day, in my office? Right now, they're at 75 and 71.

  • (cs)

    I don't sympathize with people who like it hot for one reason. They can add clothes while I am not able to remove them.

  • (cs) in reply to CnC

    It takes a lot of finesse and smooth-talking to get someone to let you remove their clothes. But if you've got the skills, you are able to remove them.

  • Jay (unregistered) in reply to Zylon
    Zylon:
    Today on The Daily What the Grammar:

    "He expected to smoke and flames..."

    I thought the meaning was quite clear: He expected to consume a cigarette, and when he was told this was not allowed, he made a nasty post on a forum.

  • Pete (unregistered)

    So TRWTF is Ryan, there was a simple mistake where a sensor was placed in the wrong room. Rather than fixing the problem and getting the sensor moved he did a temporary fix and left it to the next guy.

  • (cs) in reply to CnC
    CnC:
    I don't sympathize with people who like it hot for one reason. They can add clothes while I am not able to remove them.
    The real WTF is that you are working naked today.
  • Tom (unregistered)

    At the very end of the dot com bubble, I worked for a very large commercial ISP, who spent something in the order of 180 million dollars building a state of the art hosting centre in Germany. It had 3 customers, all co-lo, at its busiest.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Pete
    Pete:
    So TRWTF is Ryan, there was a simple mistake where a sensor was placed in the wrong room. Rather than fixing the problem and getting the sensor moved he did a temporary fix and left it to the next guy.
    Read the story, the problem was that the zones were incorrectly defined, not that the sensor was in the wrong place. You can't expect Ryan to remap the heat-zones, he's not an HVAC engineer and he probably doesn't even have access to the zone-remapping functionality anyway.
  • Steve (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Pete:
    So TRWTF is Ryan, there was a simple mistake where a sensor was placed in the wrong room. Rather than fixing the problem and getting the sensor moved he did a temporary fix and left it to the next guy.
    Read the story, the problem was that the zones were incorrectly defined, not that the sensor was in the wrong place. You can't expect Ryan to remap the heat-zones, he's not an HVAC engineer and he probably doesn't even have access to the zone-remapping functionality anyway.
    Plus, even if it was just the sensor you can't expect an IT guy to go pulling off sensors and re-laying cables on his own. If management found out he'd be in big trouble, you can't just start messing around with the A/C installation because you feel like it. It would also invalidate their warrantly with the HVAC company. I pray I never have to work with you, I might come in one morning to find all the network cables pulled out of the floor because you couldn't get network access and decided you'd fix the problem. TRWTF is you my friend.
  • DeepThought (unregistered) in reply to none
    none:
    OMG UNICORNS!

    (Click "the Server Room zone is 64º")

    This made me open up the source where I read the HTML comments. They are better than the article!

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