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Finally, a wafer-thin server... Only a tiny little thin one. Oh all right. Just the one...

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Sooo

1) The time a small overflow pipe blocked and flooded the battery room for the UPS. Ruined all the batteries. 6 months to get replacements (German manufacture I think, not sure why there was a delay but those were interesting days). The building management system beeped when on direct mains. Constantly.

2) The time the power tripped. UPS took over, but the generator didn't start. UPS drained *real* quick. Soon we're in total darkness. Generator room was the other side of a completely dark computer room. Behind security doors, that just so happened to lock on a power failure. To top it off, the generator start button was broken and required someone jabbing in a screwdriver just to start the damned thing. Once we got everything back up, the building next door were bitching like crazy because the exhaust stack was level with their top floor window, and guess which way the wind was blowing...

3) Power failure in an equipment room. No problem - systems are all on UPS. Apart from the rack where someone had installed a UPS but never bothered to plug anything into it. All the PDUs in the rack were running off the mains. All the systems were Oracle Financial systems, so there were a few unhappy people about.

My other favourite is aircon. Twice I've experienced aircon units failing and filling up the floor void with water, enough to short out the commando sockets under the floor. That makes quite a bang!

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