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Managing the Most Remote Data Center In the World
blackbearnh writes "Imagine that your data center was in the most geographically remote location in the world. Now imagine that you can only get to it 4 months of the year. Just for fun, add in some of the most extreme weather conditions in the world. That's the challenge that faces John Jacobsen, one of the people responsible for making sure that the data from the IceCube Neutrino Observatory makes it all the way from the South Pole to researchers across the world. In an interview recorded at OSCON, Jacobsen talks about the problems that he has to face (video), which includes (surprisingly) keeping the data center cool. If you're ever griped because you had to haul yourself across town in the middle of the night to fix a server crash, this interview should put things in perspective."
... to sell air conditionning in the south pole?
The video makes it impossible to tell if this guy is the real thing, or if The Thing has had a change to catch him in the cold isle and duplicate him. I fear to imagine what it would be capable of once it uses the base's internet connection to discover tentacle-rape hentai...
I think you're almost certain to have to fix problems in the middle of the night down there, after all they are about 6 months long...
The South Pole is the remotest by many standards in kilometres. However, I recall some recent research which came to the conclusion that parts of the Himalayas are the remotest on Earth. At least some parts of the year you can basically just fly to the South Pole. Not so much with the worst parts of the Himalayas - I seem to recall a minimum travel time of one or two weeks.
There was an article on the research on the BBC site about this, but it's fiendishly hard to find. Plus points to anyone who can dig it up.
Oh and I should avoid sounding cynical and say that the stuff in the article is certainly a cool challenge. It's still a tricky location compared to 95% of all other land, and I'd love to work on problem-solving like that myself.
What I find even more impressive is how NASA, ESA and others manages space probes I think, that's really extreme conditions in every way. Often huge communication delays and poor bandwidth, absolutely no chance of at least eventually fixing a problem on-site, hardware constantly being subjected to intense radiation and extreme temperature differences. Imagine that rather unpleasant feeling you get when you reboot a remote server and you know you won't be able to go on-site any time soon to fix it if you did something wrong, then take that feeling and add the fact that you can _never_ fix it, that it costs millions or even billions to send it there, that lots of valuable science might be lost or never take place, and that you'll be guaranteed to read about your mistake in the news the following day. I guess it calls for rather extreme levels of testing before doing any changes at all.