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Data Center Staff Will Sleep Among the Racks For London Olympics
1sockchuck writes "Staff at Interxion's London data center are ready to hunker down during the Olympic Games this summer, nestled in snug sleeping pods adjacent to the racks. The arrangement will ensure that the facility will be fully-staffed if London's transit system is taxed by the huge crowds expected for the Games. While staff in many industries might object to a plan that expects them to sleep in their office, data center firms have a primary calling of keeping their facilities operational at all times. Is this too much readiness, or just enough?"
Are they getting paid to be on duty 24/7?
As long as it's voluntary, compensated and not a long-term thing it can be enjoyable to "batten down the hatches" for an expected surge in demand.
If....
a) It's for a short time (check)
b) It's critical (check)
c) There's enough people on-staff to rotate who's doing this (not sure)
d) There's substantial reward/overtime/extra PTO/something for doing something like this (not sure)
So, it's 50% reasonable, maybe completely reasonable IN THIS CASE.
It's the preeminent world class sporting event that is only held every 4 years for which most of the entire world tunes in. And for which you'd be lucky to get a job at for only once in your lifetime. Wouldn't you expect people to go that little extra distance - If not for the money, but for the pride of saying you contributed?
I am Slashdot. Are you Slashdot as well?
From description...it sounds like the London transportation system may be overwhelmed and they simply may not be able to get replacement staff in the center in a timely manner.
From how I read it the problem isn't that they don't have the shifts, it's that the shift workers may not be able to get into or home from work.
This is simply risk management. There is a risk that staff might have trouble commuting, so they are mitigating that risk.
Of course they know how shifts work: that's what they're doing now. The problem is the Olympics: most of the large data centres in London are right next door to the main Olympic site. Travelling in or around London, particularly anywhere near East London, during the Olympics is expected to be a complete nightmare. I was warning a previous employer two years ago that they had to start planing for the three months period when it was unlikely any of the staff would be able to travel to the data centre in London (let alone finding somewhere to stay overnight for out of hours work: the London Docklands Travelodge would be right out!)
So yeah, knowing the density of data centres in the area and how close they will be to the Olympics, this sounds like a pretty damn sensible idea, to me.
Sorry, is this company _asking_ people to be "asleep at the job"?
No, they're merely resting their eyes during the hours that they are likely not being paid overtime for, that's all.
But there's money to be made in subletting a flat during an event like the Olympics. I lived in Lake Placid for the 1980 games and my father's department head at the college rented his house for $30k for the two weeks.
You didn't get the memo? IT people are machines. Typically they're good for between the ages of 21 through 40. You then expend them like a used husk. It's not an issue. There are endless supplies of smart, educated, born and raised on technology people to choose from. Only the elite will last longer without sleep. See, that's the resume' deciding factor there. ARE YOU MACHINE ENOUGH!? Well, are ya?
Life is not for the lazy.
Interxion have got their message about how seriously they take their customers uptime and how far they go to plan for eventualities out to readers of Data Center Knowledge (and now to Slashdot). I'd say money well spent, regardless of whether anyone will use the pods for more than publicity shots (or even if Interxion seriously expected them to).
That said, I'm not sure that Atlanta compares to London in terms of aging, and seriously creaking transport infrastructure. e.g. Atlanta has what is supposedly world's airport handling 90m travelers on its five runways; Heathrow handles 70m on just two runways both of which operate at over 98% capacity (plans to add a third were dropped when the current government was elected). The Victorian metro system is similarly overloaded having the distinction of being the oldest in the world while having to serve a population of almost 8 million.
I for one, fully expect that rack mount rails will be the only thing that moves in East London during the olympics.
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While staff in many industries might object to a plan that expects them to sleep in their office, data center firms have a primary calling of keeping their facilities operational at all times
I love how the summary neatly dismisses the objections of the employees by citing the goal of the corporation. I can see this working well for a variety of other problems that the data center firms face, but let's just jump to the one the MBAs are salivating over:
While staff in many industries might object to working without pay or benefits, data center firms have a primary calling of keeping their costs low and profits high