Four days of crashes later, a senior repairman arrived and declared the AC unit's motor kaput. A lone replacement for the obsolete motor was found, but it was dropped during shipment and damaged beyond repair. A whole new rooftop unit was needed, with attendant method statement and 24 hours' notice; the latter was not a problem because the new unit would not arrive for several weeks. Meanwhile, the working AC unit collapsed under the strain of non-stop strain for a week and a half. The portable coolers and their security risk hoses had been returned so the server room became very quiet once more.
Eventually, the new AC unit was installed and things simmered down. But this server room will have to move before its equipment is upgraded or expanded, for the building owner and power company are unable to supply additional electricity to support cooling for more and hotter servers.
This story gets funnier the longer it doesn't happen to you. So, stop laughing and learn from it!
Fatal assumptions and complacency caused much of our hapless IT manager's dismay. He thought each cooling unit could handle the full load but never updated his calculations as the server heat load grew. He thought the units were wired in parallel but in fact they were in series, so when one shut down both did. He thought all of his UPS units had thermal overload protection, but the one on the email alert system didn't. He thought parts would be available on demand but they weren't. He thought he would be the first customer on his repairman's list, but he wasn't. He thought rooftop access was just a stair climb away, but it sure wasn't! A smart server manager checks and rechecks his assumptions, and takes preventive measures before stuff hits the fan, says Steve Satchell of Reno, Nevada, based Web host American Internet.
"American Internet went through an issue where the primary AC unit would freeze up on a regular basis," Satchell says "We didn't get a handle on it until we installed a Liebert AC unit (www.liebert.com), where we could get to the evaporator coils if there was a chance of freeze-up. Actually, there isn't a chance of freeze-up now because our Liebert has heaters to prevent that sort of thing!"
Subsea cable alternatives can provide a level of comfort for those concerned about disruptions. Realistically, they will continue to play a small, but critical role in the short term.
Maintaining existing network infrastructures often incurs huge technical debt before newer technologies are adopted over time.
Amid ongoing regional uncertainties, telecom infrastructure in the Middle East has expand to include terrestrial low-latency network infrastructure, which offers resilience and agility in navigating political complexities without relying solely on undersea networks.
