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Server Room Smells Can Be an Early Warning
Barence writes "As embarrassing as it may seem, an eggy smell in a server room needn't mean broaching the delicate subject of hygiene with a colleague. It can actually be a signal that something is about to go wrong with your server setup, as this consultant discovered after days of assuming questionable personal habits were to blame. The culprit? An expiring UPS device, sending out its own unique warning signal."
Leave the area for a while, 'til the brain stops ignoring the smell again?
Emotions! In your brain!
You go get fresh air for a half hour or so, go back in, and see if you smell it again, if this isn't possible, you grab a coworker from a different room. I've never heard of hydrogen sulfide harming server maintenance employees, but it can and does happen in chemistry labs, even at undergrad level. I don't know about sulfur dioxide, but HS is about as poisonous as hydrogen cyanide (zyklon), the difference is only that it stinks so much people tend to flee before it kills them.
It's either false dichotomies, or the terrorists win, you decide.
It effects your mucous membranes. Burning in your nose and throat is a good indicator. Levels of 100 parts per million are immediately dangerous to life and health. Ventilate or have someone hazwoper certified go in with a scba and retrieve the UPS. Short term exposure to "stinky" levels might not have long term effects.
APC UPS's have a tendency to cook their batteries as they get near the end of their lifetime. The results can be horrifying... bulging batteries, and if allowed to go on long enough, yes, even "sealed" lead acid batteries will rupture and you'll get the lovely sulfur smell.
I recently pulled these APC batteries out of an APC Smart-UPS 1400, which had to be disassembled (including the removal/replacement of rivets) in order to get the batteries out.
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Amusing post, but if your backup tapes are not reliable to restore then you're doing it wrong. I know you were being a bit tongue in cheek, and yes I've seen many cases where backup tapes were next to useless. In each case one could trace that to user error on the part of an administrator, often the person who setup the backup.
Yes smell is an important warning tool in the data center. This article isn't even really news, or at least shouldn't be to anyone with more than a little experience.
Helical scan is the horribly unreliable technology that gave tape a bad rap.
The linear technologies such as DLT, LTO, and 9-track (which you mentioned) have always been reliable and capable formats.
Anyone who has substantial experience working with tape systems is happy to give Exabyte the finger. Their drives were pure junk from the very start, but were the only option for high density until the linear tech began to mature.
Please return to reality and stop waving numbers about just to win an argument, what is important is actually WHAT THE NUMBERS MEAN and not clueless numerology.
Obviously tape and hard disks are used in different ways - so with tape reliability is not is you can run the same tape continously for years, it's if you can write it, store it and then read it years later. Hard disks are not so reliable by that measure. You can not rely on them. In this case that is what reliability actually MEANS even if you try to win an argument by saying that is longevity instead.
The last comment has things reversed as you would know if you've had the misfortune of multiple failures with optical media or had actaully read anything about the experiences of others.