David_Wallis

Compaq Racks... about 7 / 8 of them on this site.. each with a minimum of one PDU, these are powered from a 32A connector under the floor.. these then plug in via a 16A IEC connector, which then go from the pdu via 6A IEC to the servers..

Lets say you have a fault in a psu on one of the servers.. What trips??

Answer.. The MCB /RCD in your distribution board (in our case a 32a one)

32A connector = Unfused
16A IEC Connectors = Unfused
6A IEC Connectors = Unfused
PDU = Some breakers of some sort which dont trip.
PSU = No externally accessible fusing.

Doh
Doh
Doh.

David

beemerboy

[keeps fingers crossed as he has extension cable plugged into extension cable, plugged into belkin "surge protected" extension cable!!!!!] - straight to the wall outlet..... right next to the plug the cleaner uses for the vacuum!!! and certainly within unplugging distance from the office pleb!!!

i like to live dangerously!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
oh yeah, did i mention the leaky A/C unit above all of this??

LOL

BB

Stueyb

Yuo want a seriously shagg*d system try ours.

We have 3 racks, with individual servers kettle leads going into a 4 way extension, some of which are plugged into further extensions, which finally go to the UPS via special sockets in the wall. Its a fire waiting to happen, not to mention very unsafe if you are trying to climb behind em to do some work and you almost break your neck and/or server trying to climb over these cables.

Why you may ask, well some person higher up forgot to the sparks to install a few 3 phase supplies !!!

David_Wallis

ours isnt poorly done.. its done properly, I just think theres a major flaw the way its done..

David

Stueyb

Wasn't implying that at all David, just saying ours is lethal

David_Wallis

ours was bad.. and the 4ways have little switches in annoying places

WillieF

mmm well I have just finished what I consider to be a dogs bollocks install.

Every server in each rack has dual PSU. Each PSU has a cable running to a different PDU. Each rack has two PDU's each supplied from a different distribution board. Each PDU has a 16 A breaker in the distribution board and each distribution board is fed from different UPS's.

Each UPS is on a different phase.

All sundries - fans, switches etc are fed from a seperate PDU in each cabinet on a 6A breaker....

If you are going to do it do it right

David_Wallis

WilleF that sounds about the same as ours execept.. some servers will only run with a minimum of 2 out of 3 psu's.

Your not supposed to have different phases within 10 feet of each other.. erm..

Oh and this is a dogs bollox install.. its just not perfect by any means due to fecking ****e compaq pdu's..

Will take some photos..

Oh and the refit of the comms room (power & distribution, aircon, vesda, new floor, air management etc) was over 1m.

David

NotoriousREV

I thought our set-up was pretty good, until the Managing Director plugged the hoover into one of the surge protected 6-ways attached to the UPS. It went very quiet...until I got a bollocking for not labelling all the sockets For Computer Equipment Only

*Sonic*

How about me bringing down the whole of the 999 Control Centre for the Fire Service for 3 counties

All I did was plug a server in, and total blackout, all fire engines despatched on emergency standby, no electricity at all

UPS didnt kick in, the manual switch over didnt kick in, the generator fired up, but nothing would power up

It blew a 72A breaker from a different circuit that I was plugging into, and a kilostream to the disaster standby site (which was being decomissioned that day)

Turns out, that the socket I plugged into, had been wired back to front, positive to negative etc, I didnt even get the plug fully in the socket either


4 hours it took them to work that out !!, at least it was a nice day, whilst I stood outside and basqued in the sun, till they fixed it

Thankfully there werent any 999 calls that afternoon

*Sonic*

David

APC PDU's seem to be much better than the Compaq ones, thats what I put in now instead, plus you can switch individual ports off remotely via IP

ChrisB

I did a cab like that. I spent most of a Saturday trying to route patch cables, power leads. Some of the servers were dual homed boxes. Two public CAT5, two private CAT5, one management (HP Top Tools) CAT5, two PSU leads, Top Tools backup power, KVW cables... right fooking jungle!

David_Wallis

will be nice to sort this one.. just a shame the breakers in our distribution board are faster than the compaq ones.. and they are C rated (equivalent of motor ratings)

David

pat

And there was me thinking that the Compaq UPSes were just APC ones in drag... well the ones we had were, not that we used them.

Our setup was reasonably robust. A and B power feeds below each rack, a minimum of two PDUs for each rack, each of which could draw power from either A or B feed (so you lose a feed but you don't loose PDUs). Minimum of N+1 PSUs per server, leads spread across PDUs (where a server needed 2 out of 3 there would be 3 PDUs to cope with a PDU failure). The A and B power feeds are backed up by a pair of UPSes (if memory serves, 1.5 MVA each), which were themselves backed up by a pair of diesel generators. Power to the building was from two different suppliers, with our own little substations for each

Network wise we ran the servers dual homed to a pair of Cisco 2948G switches at the top of each rack (yes, each one off a different PDU), with a gigabit uplink to each of the Cisco 6509 core switches (again, each PSU on a different PDU). The core switches were part of a fully redundant gigabit mesh to the firewalls (again Cisco 6509s), which were gigabit meshed to the load balancers (Alteon), core switches and the exterior routers (Cisco 12000 GSR series)... there was no single point of failure anywhere in the system, save the whole datacentre getting blown up (and we had geographical diversity to cope with that eventuality).

I've yet to see a better datacentre, but I'm sure they must exist!

Cheers,

Pat.

Edited due to unfortunate typo

[Edited by pat - 5/26/2003 4:53:18 PM]

David_Wallis

Ill find some pics.. (cisco approved or whatever network!)

Blown fibre to the desktop..

David

WillieF

Pat is that data centre in Scotland per chance?

pat

Willie,

nope, that one's "darn sarf" but I could think of one or two "oop norf" which would probably be similarly equipped

Cheers,

Pat.