CRAC

Brian gnhlug at karas.net
Fri Nov 4 10:44:01 EST 2005


A war story of mine...

In (I think '98 or '99) when Global Crossing was just getting their network
going I was working for Lucent as the Senior Resident Engineer overseeing
their deployment of Lucent ATM switches world-wide.  This was at GC's main
NOC in Southfield, MI.  Their operations spanned 3 floors of random suites
in an office building along a fiber run.  They had about 20,000sqft of
office space there, and then another ~50,000 sqft of space on the other
floors for the switches and related gear/servers/etc.  Not that this relates
to my story, but you couldn't get into the office space area without a badge
and sometimes a PIN... All the server/switch room suites generally had their
doors propped open, and just anyone could walk in.

As the operation grew, more servers; switches; etc were brought in.  This
increase in heat load required an increase in cooling capacity.  Of course,
this was planned for, and their facilities guys had dry 4" copper pipes
stubbed out in the main computer room.  So, the plumber comes in to pipe
these stubbed-out pipes into the new Liebert unit.  He cuts one of the end
caps off the supply line with a recip saw and water comes GUSHING out... of
a 4" pipe.  This is about 10 feet from RACKS of Sparc servers (back in the
days when a Sparc Ultra 10K was worth something ;) ).  By the time they got
it under control there was about 2" of water on the floor (non-raised
floor), and dozens of Sparcs full of water.

I could fill a weekend with stories of GC's crazy operations... I remember
walking in there at first, just taking their whole operation in and saying
"there is NO way a company can operate like this..."

> -----Original Message-----
>
> Any horror or success stories to share?
>




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