spontaneous data center visit

Last week Amit and I had to spontaneously visit the data center because one of our racks wasn’t accessible anymore and some services went down. We feared that the switch we completely filled with LAN connections last week went down due to overload. But as we went there we saw that the switch was ok and fully functional. We searched in the switch log for the problem and found out that the uplink port disconnects sometimes. The problem is we don’t know where the uplink is actually going. Then we got help from a employee of the data center and found out that the uplink goes in the switch from our other rack and after making a new cable connection to the other rack everything worked fine. The employee renewed the plugs because the cable goes 10 meters over many racks so we can’t just get a new one and we went back. But we still don’t trust the cable with malfunctions and we let it unused from now.

Data center visit (this time with pictures)

Yesterday we visited the data center again to deploy one Dell server for our Hyper-V cluster. We got there with taxi again. At the way back it was even the same driver as last time. And the security guard was happier this day. It was all in all the same task like last time we went there with the exception that the switch in the rack we got still space for server is full now. So next time we need a new switch too. And like I said i took pictures. Note that unfortunately we can’t get better cable management because the systems run 24/7 productive and we can’t unplug anything not even for minutes. So we have to stick with the cables that some older System Engineers plugged.

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Detailed look at my data center visit

Last week on Monday Amit and I had to deploy a new Hyper-V server in our rented space in a data center in the industrial district of Dublin. It was a Dell Power edge we configured the week earlier. So Amit came to my desk and said we have to go, so we head over to our small server room in the office and get our server. We went down stairs and to my astonishment we went to the street and waited there. I looked over to him doubtful and he said he called a taxi. I was really surprised. So when the taxi finally came we deployed the server in the trunk and got in. Unfortunately Amit forgot to take the mount rails with him so we had to turn after a quarter of the route and Amit ran up the stairs and packed the rails. The ride was nice i got a good look on the south west of Ireland. So we arrived at the data center that looked more like a garage from the outside but with high tech in the inside. Inside was a security guard at the reception that had a look at his face that said „I want to quit my job“. We had to give him our ID cards and got access cards for the doors. We had to go through a big tube that „Scanned“ us. I don’t know how and what it scanned because it could not be metal since i got the hole server in my hands. After that we got into the server room. We have 2 rented racks in it and Amit showed me both. Then we deployed the rack and asked a coworker that does home office if everything is OK with the connection. After that we we got in the lounge and drank a coffee. Then we wanted to go home and quit a bit early, unfortunately Amit got a mail on his phone that one of our clients domains went down. After plenty of calls at domain hosters we found out that they contract just expired and they didn’t renew it. So we decided to went home. Of cause we got back to the city center with a Taxi and Amit got out earlier at the rail station and gave me the money for the taxi driver. And after that i enjoyed my end of the day.