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First Datacenter Experience
I am on my way home after going to Unit 31, Greenhays in Manchester.
It was easy as Michael and me already planned when I was going to drop the servers off. First entering the building michael had to use swipe card(Good Security) there was cleaners with vacuum machines going around corridors.
Michael showed me the room where the network is monitored, Which also looked like the server building room.
After putting them all in the small room for him to rack later, I got a coffee and I can honestly say it is the greatest coffee I have had, EVER! It was only 30p, Far Far better then McDonalds Shitty coffee beans.
Share your first datacenter experience! :-)
Comments
You have not had a DataCenter experiance until you have bent over an EGI cabinet and Matt has appeared.
Sounds interesting
Will have to arrange something!
It was 1995. I was doing a school science project and was writing an article about The Internet (or did I call it Information Superhighway? can't remember...) and visited a local ISP.
Was amazed by the racks upon racks upon racks of external dial-up modems attached by multiplexed serial cards into 5 or 6 machines and that's it. I think they had like 600 modems; the room looked like stereotypical 80's computer movies when the lights were off due to all the LEDs on the modems.
All of it was routed through two 1.54 megabit T1 lines. And that's it. I remember being allowed to browse the 'net while I was there, and was amazed at how blazingly fast it was.
Even more amazing: all of this was in a guy's basement.
Sorry to disappoint but Greenhays isn't their datacentre, it's an office building. Glad you liked the coffee though.
Ah, Really? What unit is the datacenter? It was a huge building.
Synergy House
@Jtodd Well Let's call it a near to datacenter experience, Anyhow it was a nice building and Michael had my server up within 1 Hour! At this momment I highly recommend BurstNET.
The most amazing datacenter I know is the CERN main datacenter at Geneva. Two stages: upper for servers, lower for disks and long term storage: two really huge tape libraries, spanning rows and rows of racks. The upper stage server room is unique, because it was built in the mainframe era. The HVAC does not support a high server density (not needed at the time of construction, decades ago). Many racks only carry one or two fully stocked blade enclosoures, but the room is big and the look from one side to the other is impressive. At the Internet carrier aisle, newer saw so many top-end Cisco gears at once.
Comdisco in New Jersey (now Sunguard now I believe). All they did was disaster recovery for big organizations. The DC designed so half the building could be on fire and the other half would keep going. Designed to withstand the worst hurricane ever recorded. Designed to be buried in 20' of snow for 30 days with no one entering or leaving. Designed for...well, you get the picture.
Lots of people had Halon fire suppression back then. Not many people practiced its use regularly.
The actual rows and rows of racks of gear were pretty normal, but the insane environmentals, emergency housing, and security were awesome.
Id love to go and see a datacenter. I dot have the cash to pay for colo though so its not possible
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You could go on a tour many offer this. You just wouldnt tell them you are wasting their time.
Here is some eye candy from softlayer
Equinix Singapore
I want to work in a datacenter.
I want to live in a datacenter.
>
I want to be a datacenter.
First visit was at BlueSquare Uk
I now collocate in the data centre I work in.
Too cold!
Although:
Also:
Use the hot servers to keep pizza warm.
The cool air in the datacenter is nice, especially during the summer. But it is too noisy.
You're sooooo brave!