Posted by: will
Posted on: 2004-07-30 15:42:00
For those who are curious, here are some pics from earlier today from our cage, including our little workspace down there (and a picture of Jason), pics of our new standardized rack setup, and some pics of networking gear / wiring.
http://newdream.net/~wby/cagepics/
Posted by: wjd
Posted on: 2004-07-30 17:52:00
Whoa cool pics. You should put these up on the main site, do a virtual tour.
Dreamhost has an isight, offer isight tech support :D
Really offtopic: It would be cool is ichat (the client) had jabber support.
willscorner.net
Posted by: BGilkison
Posted on: 2004-08-01 14:26:00
Cool! Is that a ASCII portrait of Dot from Animaniacs on Jason's screen? :)
Posted by: will
Posted on: 2004-08-02 10:36:00
I believe it's supposed to be yakko.
Posted by: ozgreg
Posted on: 2004-08-04 15:38:00
Seriously impressed with the pretty colour coded cables in the background ;) I should show these pics to my client.. Ok this is what a rack is meant to look like....
Posted by: snokarver
Posted on: 2004-08-04 16:10:00
nice. I got a tour of a nice data center last week. It's on two power grids, has six OC3s from six different providers and an OC48. To get into many of the rooms you have to have a key, type in a passcode and use your hand print while looking into a camera. They had this one machine they called the equivalent of a 400 port KVM. It was all SQL driven for authentication.
Aside from being on two power grids, they had two huge CAT generators, plus two levels of UPS's which could run everything for 30hrs... multiple redundant power circuits and network paths. The NOC looked like NASA's control room...
Posted by: will
Posted on: 2004-08-04 17:03:00
In reply to:Seriously impressed with the pretty colour coded cables in the background
Yeah - to be fair, there are some *ahem* messier sections, but we try to keep things neat, and well labeled (this is VERY important). Credit for this goes mostly to Jason, who manages most of the datacenter operations. The design of the new cabinets pictured there is almost entirely his.
I'm also a bit of a cable neat-freak myself... the two of us are a pretty neurotic pair.
We have a lot higher cable density than a lot of places (because each machine has 2 ethernet cables, serial console cable, and a power cable), which is part of why the color coding is so important.
We have a big advantage in that we tend to keep things fairly standardized - it's much harder to keep things neat when you can't plan everything out in detail ahead of time.
Posted by: nate
Posted on: 2004-08-05 07:57:00
In reply to:Aside from being on two power grids, they had two huge CAT generators, plus two levels of UPS's which could run everything for 30hrs... multiple redundant power circuits and network paths. The NOC looked like NASA's control room...
We've had equipment in a whole lot of data centers (and we've toured plenty of cool ones; Will and I got to tour the PAIX in December, which was really, really impressive) and they're pretty much all the same, no matter how unique and impressive most hosting places claim theirs is. Everybody has good connectivity, redundant power, security, etc.
That being said, the building we're in is actually considered pretty unique. Most people who know west coast datacenters consider it above average in terms of physical security. There are tons of separate datacenters in the building, more connectivity than your average place (although that means a lot less than your average end-user thinks). The most impressive thing is the power.
The building has batteries and generators just like everybody else, but it keeps a pretty long fuel supply. It (supposedly) has enough fuel on hand to operate normally off-grid for about 30 days.
All the datacenters are also underground (up to three stories underground). While all of that sounds impressive, in the end, it means very little.
And as far as I've ever been able to tell, the more impressive looking the NOC, the less technically able a company is. It doesn't matter anyway since we handle our own networking, etc. All we're paying for is floor space, air conditioning, and access to as many different upstream providers as possible.
nate.
p.s. - those hand scanners, in actual daily use, are not particularly impressive. they only measure the general shape of your hand. Will and I found at one of our previous datacenters that our hands were a similar enough shape that they were interchangable.
Posted by: snokarver
Posted on: 2004-08-07 12:15:00
Cool, all stuff I didn't know. I've only been in a couple data centers. Btw, I meant to say the place could run off UPSes for 30 hours... it could run off the generators for much longer.
One question, I see at http://newdream.net/~wby/cagepics/rr1.jpg the pink and yellow cables seem very short. Are they just folded behind the black bar, or are the less than 1m? The reason I ask is a previous employer custom cut their cables to go from switch to switch. We had a real network guy come in and the first thing he said was to replace them as the minimum length for such cables is 1m. He also listed off why. I'm not entirely sure of the validity of his statement either.
Posted by: will
Posted on: 2004-08-07 16:58:00
Well the total effective length is longer (in most cases, much longer) than 1M since those are going from switches to patch panels, which then go to other patch panels and then to equipment. I /think/ that's Ok to have short patch cables - most of the info I can find from a quick google search seems to agree. Those red and yellow cables are short - about 7".