Tuesday, August 19, 2008

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly...

The Good represents our new Data Center which will be filled with twinkling lights and noisy server cabinets this Saturday. Take a look-see... (clicking on the images will get you a nice zoomed in view)



The Bad and the Ugly are both reserved for our existing server room. The picture should say all that needs to be said.

8 comments:

SQLFunkateer said...

Very nice!

I was thinking that was going to be your server naming convention or something. You could always do something like:

BLONDIE.company.local
ANGELEYES.company.local
TUCO.company.local

Fans of nerdy cult Italian westerns would of course be appreciative.

But seriously, nice looking new server room. I think my boss dreams of a server room like that, in his mind, but we're lucky to have what we have...

Percussivity said...

My inner geek is extremely excited about the move this weekend. It will of course create the possibility for an almost inumerable amount of disasters but I am hoping we can get through it without anything major going wrong.

I am envisioning 4 or 5 IT workers pushing a 500 lb server cabinet up the ramp in the data center (it has a 12" raised floor) and suddenly realizing that 4 or 5 IT workers do not actually have a lot of combined strength.

SQLFunkateer said...

For some reason I can't get the horrific image of the slow tilt of the cabinet, the quick sharp cry of the worker knowing what is happening (but also too late to be able to stop it), and the breathless moment as the server rack hurls itself majestically to the floor with gathering speed, followed by an unearthly, thunderous crash.

Then of course, the absolute silence as the workers gaze on the wreckage with incredulity, shock, horror, and almost a sense of reverence, sensing the gravity and importance of what just happened, and each one praying fervently to his deity of choice that somehow the mission critical equipment will still function.

Sorry, I don't mean to place a curse on your move, somehow your description of the event conjured up the horrible nightmare above into my mind.

Percussivity said...

Huh... you have an altogether more positive envisioning of the situation. In mine there were crushed and mangled bodies under the server cabinet.

Unknown said...

It looks like someone had some fun with blue silly string in the "bad and ugly" picture.

Percussivity said...

Well considering that a good deal of that is CAT3 cabling it might as well be silly string. Every thing in the data center is CAT6 which allows for 100 times faster communication and potentially 1,000 times faster when 10Gb devices become readily available.

SQLFunkateer said...

CAT3??? Being used for data, not voice?

Admittedly most of our stuff is CAT5 or CAT5e, but since 99% of our hardware can't go any faster than 100baseT it isn't a big deal. I did however make sure to put a 1000baseT ethernet switch in the server rack, so at least the servers could communicate with each other on very quick terms.

Percussivity said...

Oh yeah only for data! We are probably 6-12 months from implementing a VoIP solution. Before that we will be be going from a VPN infrastructure to an MPLS network and after that will be our big huge gigantic Domino to Exchange migration. VoIP is down the hazy road.