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The Most Dangerous Server Rooms
Ymerej writes "The Register has an article on dangerous server rooms. Have you seen worse?" Perhaps The Register would like a picture of my desk if they really want to be scared.
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I'm a slob; I admit it. Even if I didn't, it would be obvious from the way I dress and the state of my desk. But at my job, I am cleaning up the spaghetti mess in the ceiling and trying to lay the wire cleanly from patch panels - switches.
Documenting connections has a real payoff in troubleshooting. But doing stuff on aesthetic grounds is a harder sell. I have a gut sense that a clean layout is important even if you know the destination both ends of a wire whose middle runs through a snarl. Here's what I came up with:
my version of the community policing broken windows theory.
It's psychologically harder to do slipshod, shoddy work if everything around you has been done well. And it's hard to do a proper job if everything else is slipshod. As a matter of housemate politics, it's easier to leave the nth dirty dish in the sink than the first. You are only adding an increment, not changing state.
Doing the Right Thing is contagious. At least, it is among folks I care to work with. Doing the Wrong Thing is catching, too. Morale is higher and people challenge themselves more at a shop that is run well.
That's how I pitched it, and my boss bought it.
Our main wiring closet looks a little like the 'not so bad examples' of wiring closets in those pictures - though nothing like the more extreme ones.
The problem is, once the thing gets into that kind of mess, you rarely have the chance to bring down the entire network to repatch all the cables and cable tie them into some kind of order.
Not only that, but if you have loads of trunks and VLAN's configured, putting it all back in the right order can be a total ballache!
"Hey! Unless this is a nude love-in, get the hell off my property!!"
Well, that's sorta the whole point of halon (and thus, why isn't used anymore.)
I have always thought that how organized a companies wiring is - is a direct reflection of the staff that works there.
I know that when i moved into one company in Redwood City - the network wsa a nightmare. We had rooms that looke like that - but over the next 2 years we replaced almost every wire on that network - and demanded budget for proper closet setups - and got it.
We eliminated all those closets that looked like that, and learned one hell of a lot in the process.
I think that if your closets look like that - you are asking for fire - and it shows just how lazy you really are. No arguments of "I'm too busy" allowed - it just means your a lazy slob period.
Sounds like something was lost in the translation.
Most likely, when he flipped off the lights... they stayed on; the high-powered, high-frequency RF inducted into the wiring could be enough to keep a fluorescent lit, just like at a Tesla coil demonstration.
CRTs and neon bulbs in equipment would no doubt show the same effect... and of course, if you have enough current in the air to light a fluorescent tube, think of what that does to your system and communications buses!
As a telecom contractor, I know that wiring closets have the lowest priority in terms of cleanup or the "make-it-look-pretty-the-boss-is-coming" effect. You should see some of the ones from the old Ma Bell days buried deep in the hearts of old office buildings. Yikes!