Tales from the server room

I worked for MSFT for five years as a hardware lab manager -- basically keeping some server farms and client test machines configured properly and running happily. The last building I was in was a gorgeous office building but it was next to impossible to get server racks in our out. The canopy over the loading dock was too low to get anything larger than a box truck into position. The building next door had a full-sized dock but there were only man doors between the two -- seven foot tall man doors and a full-size server rack can be eight feet tall. And close to 1,000 pounds fully loaded. And just a few inches narrower than the man door. To top things off, this was the Business Enterprise lab where companies like IBM or Compaq or Unisys or HP would bring their latest and greatest big iron to optimize performance for Windows Server. Fun stuff and I got to play with some amazing systems... Here is another tale over at The Daily WTF:

The Suicide Door
At the university where Diogo worked, the Computer Science program outgrew its status as an unloved child of the Mathematics department. It was to become its own department, and that meant it finally deserved its own building. Since the university in question had a very strong architecture program, the university searched for the biggest names to design the building.

Enter Laurent. He flew in to consult and prepare designs for the building; he was fresh off a project in Dubai and his next port-of-call was Tokyo. He was a name that could name names. The exterior renders he provided were stunning, full of glass and sweeping lines. The designs leapt up on a desk, stomped their feet and screamed, "I AM MODERN AND TECHNOLOGICLYISH!" To the casual spectator, they were fantastic. As Diogo discovered, when you actually had to live in the building, things got much worse.

"I assume," Diogo said during one conference with Laurent, "there will be some sort of freight elevator? The server room we're moving in involves a great deal of heavy equipment, after all."

"No, no!" Laurent smiled like he was revealing a fabulous Christmas gift. "There is no need. You see, there is an access door on the south wall, with a ramp into the basement. Your computers can go in through there."

"Well, yes," Diogo agreed, "but how are we going to move them up to the server room?"

"Up? There is no up! The server room is in the basement. Nothing heavy need go upstairs; we have no need for a freight elevator."

"I'm not sure that's a good idea," Diogo said. He explained the unique geography of the region.

Laurent extolled the virtures of his choice. It would be easy to move equipment in and out of. The naturally cooler basement would be cheaper to keep cool, reducing the costs of running a large server farm. The lack of a freight elevator would reduce the initial construction costs. Diogo continued his protests, carrying his case before the dean and eventually the university president, but their response was simple: "Laurent is a world class architect. He knows what he's doing. What buildings have you designed?"

Laurent came with a stack of designs and left with a gigantic check for his efforts. The CS department moved into their new building while the president gave his ribbon cutting speech. For most of the summer session, things were sunny and bright, and the new building worked out spectacularly. Shortly before the fall semester kicked into full swing, it rained. It kept raining for a full week, at rates ranging from a drizzle to a torrent. By the third day, Diogo was looking into renting a gondola for his commute. By the fourth, the water table rose and filled basements across the entire county.

Diogo's home was well prepared for this sort of flooding, common to the region. The basement was unfinished, the furnace was on blocks, and an emergency drain shunted the flood waters into the storm sewers. The new CS building wasn't so fortunate. As Diogo waded through the waist deep muck and murk in the basement, Jacques Cousteau swam between his legs, searching for the mysterious creatures of the deep ocean. Anything in the server room that had been below shoulder height had at least some water damage; anything below waist height was a complete loss. In the darkened room, Diogo feared that at any moment an upsurge of water would dash him against the ceiling and drown his unconsious body.

"�which is exactly what I warned you about," Diogo told the dean. It was impolitic, but honest.

Visit The Daly WTF for the University's fix and that fix's downfall. A great story and I got the Tee Shirt...