Stay out of my server room!

We sort of inherited our server room from the previous occupants so it's a lot bigger than it needs to be. This means when the bottles of champagne and advent calendars are stored in there ready for December there's plenty of cupboard space for them near the door. Which is well away from the racking for the spares and build PCs which are also well away from the server racks and switches.

Best thing is, because of who the previous occupants were, the air con unit in the server room is isolated from the rest of the air conditioning. Bit chilly in there right now, but I'm sure it'll be lovely next summer ;)

About two years ago, I went to visit one of our branch offices. Is not so far, about an hour driving.

That branch does not a have a server room, just a communication rack with a router, switches and telco equipment, plus a couple of UPS.

It has never been a model of a room, because it is simply a converted broom cupboard.

For that reason, the door is never locked. That way, in the hot days of summer, which easily brings the mercury to 35°C (~95F), the door can be fully opened to allow for some air circulation.

I have asked for an AC for the room, but of course the answer is yet to materialize.

On my visit, I could barely open the door.

When finally got it open, I discovered that the room was full, from floor to ceiling, of old newspapers.

Everywhere: on the rack, around the rack, inside the rack... it was impossible to reach switches, connectors, cables.

I was apoplectic.

There was so many risks... communications failure, overheating, fire...

I talked to the office manager and sure enough, the newspapers were promptly removed.

Only to be replaced with the janitor's stuff.

Now, the room is used as closet.

R

All that nice warm air blowing out the back of the racks is great for drying motorbike leathers.

MD gets his hand in his pocket but only after a few tricks from IT

At the place I worked at a long time ago we had our servers in the IT office with no AC and just a small window we could open. Summer temps in there were typically anywhere between 30°C and 40°C.

Asked for AC and of course it got rejected by the MD as an unnecessary expense that simply wasn't required.

The IT manager and I decided enough was enough so we came up with a plan to keep rebooting the Exchange box at least twice a day when we knew the MD was in the building. After a week of the MD getting disruption to his email and us telling him the Exchange box was overheating he soon got his hand in his pocket.

In my last job we had a whole ex-office as a server room, which of course meant that not only were we expected to keep all the IT equipment in there (from spare PSUs to laptop bags), but we also had to share with accounts, who kept boxes and boxes of old paperwork in there. Of course, being bean counters they didn't want to pay for shelves, but the cardboard boxes collapsed if stacked more than three high, so their collection of fire hazards slowly grew to take up half the floor plan.

At least I had one of the few keys to the room. On quiet days when the boss was away I could let myself in and catch up on kip in the warm spot behind the racks, knowing that nobody else could get in :)

Fires and floods...

Worked at one national airline that stored old CP listings in a network room. They caught fire, and the fire brigade couldn't get through the mantrap...

Worked at another where there were two datacentre rooms connected by a very thick cable strung between buildings. The monkeys loved the cable. One monsoon season, the roof of the backup centre leaked a little. Water and mainframe do not mix well... One of the plant rooms was so cold everyone condensed on entry and exit during the buildup to monsoon. The UPS was a series of truck engines with their exhausts sticking out the wall. They belched huge fumes of black smoke when they started up, so you'd always walk a little quicker past that section of wall! Happy days :-)

Never have a window

Lost our nice and big computer room and was made to stick it in our store room.

The old computer room in now a meeting room and because we can't store paper of cardboard nowhere to store brand new equipment.

In an early job, it was decided that the MicroVAXen would live in a cupboard behind the reception area.

A sparky from HQ was duly sent down to sort out "aircon" for the cupboard.

He fitted one of those little extractor fans people use in toilets, with a thermostatic control.

Unfortunately, he wired it all up so the fan stayed ON until a certain temperature was exceeded.

One unusually warm Easter weekend later, the whole cluster got cooked.

Has your precious data centre been turned into storage? Not exactly "mine" but yes, that happened in the past. It was especially nice with all the combustible material stored that in case of fire would render the whole extinguishing system useless. (That wasn't just an ordinary server room but a data centre of one of the 30 FSB G-SIBs).

More recently, and on a much smaller scale, it was the storage room to which a server rack was added. And why installing an aircon when we simply can remove the door and walls of the rack to allow for free air circulation?

Did you beat back the barbarians at the gates?

no, we failed totally. A quiet phone call to building security later, whenever Chief Financial Barbarian's deputy demanded access to offsite server room (ok, it was space in a colo) the building security would not let them in without a ticket / reference number, which they could only raise if they were on the authorised list (they weren't). The CFO/B went on the list, after being given a piece of paper that said if you let anyone in, from that moment until one of the IT guys has signed saying they didn't break anything, all fault reports go to Finance. :-)

strangely, no-one ever asked ..

Too many problems to count. I'm responsible for numerous sites around my Province of Ontario (Canada).

Location 1: Single rack with network gear, a DVR, UPS, and ancillary equipment. The room also houses the demarc and the phone system. By company fiat ONLY IT equipment is to be in this room.

But...

The site has put a drinks cooler in there, propped the door open 24x7, and is now using it to store janitorial supplies and tools.

Location 2: Same as above for the IT gear, plus a small print server.

But...

The site has removed all the venting from the door, resulting in NO air flow, and the night cleaning contractors put their half full mop bucket in there the other night. Hello humidity alarms at 3am...

Location 3: The MDF has a couple of servers, 3 separate network racks, the PA system, the phone system and acts as the demarc for two buildings.

But...

The site has decided to store sales paraphernalia, including sweaters, t-shirts, golf bags, posters, flat packs of floor displays and everything else they can think of in there. That's in addition to all of the PCs that I have recently lifecycled that they are requiring "be stored in a secured area" before I (literally) chuck them in a big wooden crate and the company we contract with comes and takes them away...in 6 months.

There is no longer any such thing as sacrosanct when it comes to IT gear. It used to be considered inviolate, sacred, and feared.

Now it's in the way...until it goes down.

Fun times...

Piggin 'eck

I once walked into my carefully and lovingly crafted server room, to find a pigs leg in a box on the floor. It was a huge Jamón ibérico, which cost around £500. The company had been sent it as a Christmas gift from a supplier. The leg couldn't fit in the fridge, so some bright spark had the idea that the server room was so cold, it could be used as a giant fridge.

The crazy thing was that the company was owned by a jewish family, and most of the people there were jewish friends and family, so the thing never got eaten. It was surreal, the intended recipients couldn't / wouldn't eat it, but because of it's value it wasn't simply given to whoever in the office could have divvied it up and taken it home. It just sat there, in my server room on the floor for weeks until it had to be thrown out.

Your room has been repurposed...

A section of the raised floor is walled off so the IT department can have a decent lab (everything is tested in the lab before going into production. Everything.). Comes time to move in and we find the room full of boxes. It appears that the designated storage room (on a slab, shares office aircon) was deemed too small, so they took over the next largest space. The lab was built in the former storage area. After some heat related equipment failures, they finally relented and installed aircon. And overhead wiring trays and power runs. Everything the new storage room has in fact!

I don't run to a server room (when we moved in to the current office I specified a minimum size, fortunately somewhat larger than I really needed as what I got is 50% of that). I do have a server "cupboard" with a 7KVA air conditioner and, in case they're tempted to use it as a fridge, a Chubb safe door! There are only two keys, one in my pocket and one in the HR department who have strict instructions to only use it with my authorisation.

Server Room, we should be so lucky!

At a Russell Group university our server room has had all the servers removed and is going to be a big open plan office for all the IT staff.

Worked for a small company as their IT guy a few years ago. They decided to expand from a top floor storage unit to an entire warehouse. I was promised a shiny new server room, with air conditioning and enough space to store all my kit.

I dutifully went down a few weeks before opening as the office was being put together, measured and installed all the cabling, wired in the UPS and set our single server rack up.

All that would be left was a Friday evening shutdown and journey 5 miles down the road.

The boss was conspicuously absent all day. As I arrived I found him trying to unclip all the wiring and reroute it to a stationary cupboard and my racks thrown out because they wouldn't fit in said cupboard.

His wife had decided she wanted to have a job and needed an office for all 8 hours a week she worked. I was very angry. and refused to rewire or help. Quit soon after.

Here's what my company does...

They have a big impressive Server Room full of blinking lights and twirling fans.

But then they run the whole company off of an under-clocked Raspberry Pi.

At least that's what it seems... LOL.

Paper trails are your friends.

I think that it's important to remember that part of our jobs in IT is risk management. This is part of the lingo that most upper management speaks and understands, and so if you can communicate these things in their language you'll have an easier time getting your point across. The other thing is to NEVER have risk management discussions verbally, or if you do be sure to IMMEDIATELY follow up with a memo to everyone involved outlining everything that was discussed. Be fair about it and give everyone's position a respectful treatment (regardless of how stupid it may be), or it will backfire. This sort of thing is just as important as running proper backups. This way when poor compromises are made about physical access (or a myriad of other issues) and it eventually comes back to bite everyone, you have clear documentation of the decision-making process. If done properly these sorts of disasters wind up enhancing your position rather than leaving you as a scapegoat.

It's important to remember that no matter how smart you are technically, your position will always be limited if you can't interface your ideas with other departments. Like most areas of contention, you will be most effective if you are capable of respectfully making the other sides' case better than they can (even if it's dead wrong). Once you can do that, you will be better able to persuade them of your position. Think of it as a hacking challenge or something like that.

Serfver cupboard

A photography company I worked in, early 2000's, went from analogue (E6 line in the basement) to digital, and suddenly we required proper server, storage and back ups. Small outfit, with a very hands on approach. Researched and ordered server, raid, external backups (we were new to this, and on a tightish budget). Installed said on shelf in cool, dry basement in a part of the office (the noise was fine - the music from the studios drowned out the drone of the fans and drives).

Went away one fine easter bankholliday, safe in the knowledge that everything would tick over in my absence. Came back a few days later to find the server and drives no longer visible. It being early morning, the 'togs were not in, and the music off. The boss - something of a tidy fairy - had taken all the ugly computer kit, and placed it in an under the counter cupboard. I located it by a combination of the sounds of the fans screaming, the drives clicking and screaming, and the worksurface temperature of being in the too hot to touch range.

The best I've found

was back in the days when electro-mechanical PABXs were the standard - in this specific case, what was known as a BPO* 100-type.

My off-sider and I went into the PABX room at a small business and found the manager's outboard motor leaning against a wall, complete with a partially full tank and a general aroma of petrol. Cue very prompt removal of motor and petrol followed by ventilation of the room.**

We prevented this from happening again by removing the all external and internal covers from the PABX (especially and particularly the 'pulse set') , taking the manager into the room and letting him watch calls being made - with the lights out, so he could see the sparks more easily.

* British Post Office, for all you young'uns.

** This was many years ago - nowdays we'd have to have evacuated half the block and called the Fire Service, Police and $deity knows who else to deal with it, as well as filing sundry H&S reports.